Invited keynote speakers, scientific sessions with oral and poster presentations and a stakeholder session with international panellists provided thought-provoking insights to the multi-facetted topic that was further discussed in a workshop on bridging the gaps between science, policy and practice.

The final ARANGE meeting was dedicated to the synthesis of the project and planning of final tasks until the end of the project lifetime.

Further infos will soon be made available!

In a couple of days the ARANGE Science Conference is about to happen in the High Tatras in Slovakia, a perfect stage to reflect upon “Mountain Forest Management in a Changing World”.

The Organizers are busy with final preparations – latest updates are available on the Conference Website. Please have a look!

Following the scientific conference, the final ARANGE project meeting will conclude on recent findings and set the roadmap for the final tasks.
Further Infos will be made available on the official ARANGE website.

The conference will be structured around the three Research Themes of Future Earth:

1. Dynamic Planet
   Observing, explaining, understanding, projecting Earth, environmental and societal system trends, drivers and processes and their interactions; anticipating global thresholds and risks.
2. Global Sustainable Development
   Knowledge for sustainable, secure and fair stewardship of biodiversity, food, water, health, energy, materials, and other ecosystem services.
3. Transformations towards Sustainability

Understanding transformation processes and options, assessing how these relate to human values, emerging technologies and social and economic development pathways, and evaluating strategies for governing and managing the global environment across sectors and scales.

For further information please visit the Conference website.

First Announcement and Call for Abstracts

The conference will provide the opportunity to present and discuss the potentials and limitations of current and possible future approaches to mountain forest management for providing portfolios of ecosystem services under current and future climatic and socio-economic conditions.
Themes of the conference are:

•  Potentials and limitations of current management approaches to provide multiple ecosystem services
• Climate change impacts on ecosystem service provisioning in mountain forests
• Disturbance regimes in mountain forests and implications for ecosystem services
• Alternative management strategies in mountain forests and consequences on ecosystem service provisioning
• Decision support tools for mountain forest management
• Governance approaches to secure multiple ecosystem service provisioning in the future

Contributions dealing with one of these topics are welcome.

More information is available at http://www.nlcsk.sk/mfm-conference.

September 7-11, Durban, South Africa

The Congress – the first to be held in Africa – is inclusive of people from all countries, regions and sectors, whether they belong to a government organization, NGO, private company, scientific or professional body, a forestry society, or simply have a personal interest in attending. The broad participation and inclusive discussion on forestry issues will facilitate their mainstreaming in global agendas on sustainable development as well as building new partnerships.

Call for Abstracts has just been launched and is open until 15 December 2014!

More information is available on the FAO congress website

The event will be dedicated to active learning and bottom-up elaboration of conference results. Objectives are:

- explore how new European policies can contribute to the structuring of supply chains and territories
- faciltiate exchange of ideas between mountain LAGs
- explore the family dimension of mountain farming
- prepare contributions for the world exhibition 2015 “Feeding the planet, energy for life”

More information is available at:
http://www.euromontana.org/en/agenda/european-mountain-conventions/la-qualite-montagnarde-prosperite-pour-la-population-et-les-territoires.html

The Forum Carpaticum integrates different fields of expertise to generate theoretical and practical environmental and social knowledge for the Carpathian mountain region. The objectives of Forum Carpaticum are:

• to link research and practice related to coupled human and natural systems in mountain regions;
• to scientifically support actions leading towards sustainability in the Carpathian region;
• to increase the visibility of the Carpathian region in global change research agendas.

The 1st Forum Carpaticum (FC2010) in Kraków, Poland identified the need for better data generation, availability, and accessibility to information in the Carpathian Mountain ecological region. The 2nd Forum Carpaticum (FC2012) in Stará Lesná, Slovakia addressed this need by covering the whole Data-Knowledge-Action cycle, i.e. focusing on how data are generated and transformed into useful knowledge, how the knowledge is transferred to policy and practice, and how it can feed back to research planning.
Forum Carpaticum 2014: Local Responses to Global Challenges aims to explore ways to address global challenges in the local and regional context. The main themes of the 3rd Forum Carpaticum (FC2014) conference in Lviv, Ukraine are related, but not limited, to the policy priorities of the Europe 2020 Strategy and the Horizon 2020 Programme, focusing on major challenges affecting the Carpathian ecoregion.

More information is available here.

ARANGE colleagues are within the organising committee of this international event, focussing i.a. on:

- Terrestrial Survey Methods
- Remote Sensing Survey Methods
- Ecosystem and Environmental Services
- Biophysical + Natural Drivers of Forest Change
- Anthropogenic Drivers of Forest Change
- Management Systems & Concepts
- Management Paradigms

More infos are available at
http://www.fchange2014.wzw.tum.de/fc14-wzw-tum-de.1.0.html

The International symposium on climate change in mountain areas: observation for adaptation is organised by the Working Community of the Pyrenees (CTP) through the Pyrenees Climate Change Observatory (OPCC).

After three years of work on this cooperation project between CTP member regions, the OPCC brings together in this event both local and European stakeholders – authorities, researchers and technicians, particularly vulnerable economic sectors, and media – committed to developing knowledge about climate change and its evolution, and measures to adapt to its impacts. More infos ara available here.

The International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO) is open to all individuals and organizations dedicated to forests, forest products, and related disciplines. The 24th IUFRO World Congress will provide attendees the opportunity to share knowledge and build relationships with colleagues from around the world.

More information is available here.