Organisers: North Vidzeme Biosphere Reserve Administration and Vidzeme University College

This is the first announcement of the 2nd Scientific Conference of the North Vidzeme Biosphere Reserve to be held in Valmiera, Latvia on 13 and 14 November 2008. Please mark these dates in your planners.

The main conference theme will be different aspects of the integration of biodiversity conservation requirements into planning documents at different levels: regional development plans, ecological landscape plans, municipal plans and site management plans for specially protected nature territories. This will include also various aspects of enforcement and compliance with, the above mentioned types of plans. Different examples of achieved consensuses between biodiversity conservation needs and development would be of particular interest.

As before, the aim of this conference is to achieve better understanding among experts from different fields of science, to establish new contacts and possible planning of joint research projects. Organisers expect wide participation from active scientists, students, project managers, educators and others.

Although the main topic in 2008 will be Sustainable Planning Instruments and Biodiversity Conservation, also other submissions not directly corresponding to this topic will be considered on the condition that they relate to the three main functions of the Biosphere Reserves: conservation, education and regional development. Quality papers will be peer-reviewed and published.

The working language will be English. Both oral presentations and poster sessions are welcome at the conference. Please submit abstracts of presentations (max 200 words) by 15 May 2008.

Submissions must be sent electronically to: with the subject ‘NVBR scientific conference'. Documents should be formatted in MSWord and should indicate your name, full address, including telephone and e-mail, and whether the submitted contribution is intended as an oral presentation or a poster.

The 1st NVBR Scientific Conference was held in Valmiera on 23 November 2006. Fifteen oral presentations and 10 poster reports were presented to more than 100 participants from 5 countries (Belarus, Canada, Estonia, Japan and Latvia). We wish to broaden representation of participants in the 2nd Conference in order to make it a truly international forum.

Instruction for authors