Wooded Rural Landscapes in Central and Eastern Europe
20 - 22 September 2017, Rzeszow, Poland
University of Rzeszów in cooperation with the Centre of Ecological Research of Hungarian Academy of Sciences is organizing an international conference “Wooded rural landscapes in Central and Eastern Europe: biodiversity, cultural legacy and conservation.” The event will be held in SE Poland with the optional field excursion from 20 to 25 September next year.
The conference aims at fostering interdisciplinary discussion and analysis. We seek to encourage the sharing of knowledge from researchers studying wooded rural landscapes and representing from across disciplines: from taxonomy and ecology, to paleo-ecology and environmental history, to ethno-ecology, to spatial planning and landscape architecture, to land use economy involving ecosystem services. We believe such a platform will provide a theoretical foundation for the development of a new management and conservation approach that is essential for sustaining the richness and values of wooded rural landscapes in Central and Eastern Europe.
In particular, we invite researchers, conservation practitioners, economists, farmers, nature philosophers interested in the following thematic blocks:
- Wooded pastures and silvo-pastoral woods: their status in contemporary Europe (abundance and geographic distribution, syntaxonomic status, conservation); ecology (including ecological history, paleoecology, processes and factors); their biodiversity; how they will fare under climate change
- Local and traditional knowledge connected to wooded rural landscapes: gathering and using the wisdom of farmers, herders, conservationists or others
- Wooded landscapes in contemporary land use economy and policies: what does modern farming and forestry, tourism and recreation, nature conservation, landscape architecture and spatial planning need from these systems.
- Towards future sustainable social-ecological systems: assessment of ecosystem services in the region, the cultural heritage: threats and opportunities in eco-development.
