DUSHANBE, August 25, 2008, Asia-Plus — An international conference, formally titled “Climate Change and Landscape Evolution in the Central Asian Mountains and the Surrounding Basins: Past, Present and Future,” has opened in Dushanbe.
According to Tajikistan’s Academy of Sciences, the conference, staged by Bairoit University, Germany under support of the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs, is held in memory of the 80th anniversary of the German-Russian Alay/ Pamir Expedition in 1928.
In 1928 the interdisciplinary German-Russian Alay/Pamir Expedition took place. It was a milestone in the German-Russian scientific collaboration including specialists in geology, physical and cultural geography, photogrammetry and mountaineering. One of the outstanding results was the first detailed topographic map of the high mountain ecosystems of the Northern Pamir and Alay prepared by Richard Finsterwalder from the Technical University in Munich.
The source at the Academy of Sciences said that the conference is considering the issues related to the state of knowledge concerning the Late Quaternary landscape evolution, climate change and its possible effects on land use systems and the socio-economic development in these ecologically highly sensitive mountain ecosystems. This seems particularly important because the region lies at the transition zone between two large-scale atmospheric circulation systems, the mid-latitude Westerlies and the Indian Summer Monsoon, each with varying intensities in the past.
The political and socio-economic changes during the last two decades have drastically changed the land use systems and the pressure on the natural resources. Given the current climate change scenarios, it is important to investigate future options for sustainable socio-economic development and eco-management.
