THE MEDIAS DISTRIBUTED DATABASES FOR ENVIRONMENTAL INFORMATION. PLANNED APPLICATIONS TO CENTRAL ASIA ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

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THE MEDIAS DISTRIBUTED DATABASES FOR
ENVIRONMENTAL INFORMATION. PLANNED APPLICATIONS
TO CENTRAL ASIAENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

• PRESENTED BY
• Dr. G. BEGNI, MEDIAS-France, France.
• H. MAKHMARA, MEDIAS-France, France.
• Dr. S. NIKULINA, UNDP, Uzbekistan.
• Pr. E. ZAKARIN, Space Research Institute,
  Kazakhstan.
• Pr. E. GORDOV, SCERT/IOM, Russia.
• at the CITES International Conference, September
  2003, organised by SCERT, INM, IOM, Tomsk State
  University with the support of the EC INCO
  programme under the auspices of the national
  IGBP Committee.

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THE MEDIAS DISTRIBUTED DATABASES FOR
ENVIRONMENTAL INFORMATION. PLANNED APPLICATIONS
TO CENTRAL ASIAENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

• "Think globally, act locally
• Global change issues are a major scientific and
  socio-economic concern for the whole mankind.
• Nevertheless, its origins and impacts are of
  specific concern at the regional, national and
  local scales, which bring the actual attention of
  citizens and policy makers.
• Addressing these issues need a multidisciplinary
  and a multi-scale approach, integrating complex
  scientific research, and major socio-economic
  challenges, implementing heterogeneous
  information sets.

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THE MEDIAS DISTRIBUTED DATABASES FOR
ENVIRONMENTAL INFORMATION. PLANNED APPLICATIONS
TO CENTRAL ASIAENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

• Communication between scientists and
  decision/policy-makers is most often a hard work
  at all levels and scales!
• Having federative structures bringing together
  scientific (at large) and managerial approaches
  appear as a relevant solution to help filling
  these gaps.
• Having dedicated regional interdisciplinary
  scientific networks, closely linked to major
  international programs dealing with global change
  issues, are a part of the answer. International
  programmes evolve in that way.
• Accepting to share access to information is
  mandatory.

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THE MEDIAS DISTRIBUTED DATABASES FOR
ENVIRONMENTAL INFORMATION. PLANNED APPLICATIONS
TO CENTRAL ASIAENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

• Such an idea led to develop the MEDIAS network
  and its federative structure, MEDIAS-France.
• From its very beginning (1994), this initiative
  has been pushed forward by ENRICH and START
• The leading objective of ENRICH is to pursue a
  major coherent European contribution to
  international actions in global change research,
• START (IGBP/IHDP/WCRP) focuses on training and
  capacity building to strengthen the participation
  of developing countries in global change
  research. Regional research networks are
  established and developed.
• Other structures encouraged regional initiatives
  - see further.

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THE MEDIAS DISTRIBUTED DATABASES FOR
ENVIRONMENTAL INFORMATION. PLANNED APPLICATIONS
TO CENTRAL ASIAENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

• The main goals of the MEDIAS network are
• to foster appropriate interdisciplinary studies
  that address global environmental issues from a
  regional perspective,
• to develop data archiving and management of long
  term observing systems, analysis and synthesis of
  results,
• to organise training and capacity building
  activities, as well as outreach actions towards
  decision makers,
• to promote dialogue with the socio-economic
  world, mainly at regional scale.

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THE MEDIAS DISTRIBUTED DATABASES FOR
ENVIRONMENTAL INFORMATION. PLANNED APPLICATIONS
TO CENTRAL ASIAENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

• MEDIAS-France is the co-ordination unit of the
  MEDIAS network (about 2300 members).
• At the beginning, it was mainly focussed on the
  Mediterranean and Africa. Now, it is encouraged
  to spread over other key regions and to address
  innovative issues.
• Namely, its acts as the secretariat of the START
  Mediterranean Committee (MEDCOM).

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THE MEDIAS DISTRIBUTED DATABASES FOR
ENVIRONMENTAL INFORMATION. PLANNED APPLICATIONS
TO CENTRAL ASIAENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

• MEDIAS-France is neither a research centre nor a
  operational information archival and processing
  unit.
• Its objective is to act as a service structure to
  the benefit of the scientific world.
• Its role is to encourage scientists and
  researchers to have a better dialogue and proper
  synergies, to help them to have a friendly access
  to better information tools and training
  opportunities, and to have their voice better
  heard by their own colleagues, international
  donors and decision makers.

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THE MEDIAS DISTRIBUTED DATABASES FOR
ENVIRONMENTAL INFORMATION. PLANNED APPLICATIONS
TO CENTRAL ASIAENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

• MEDIAS-France acts in close connection with
  several scientific organisations, among which
  START and LUCC.
• LUCC is a joint IGBP/IHDP interdisciplinary
  programme aimed at improving the understanding of
  the land use and land cover change dynamics and
  their relationships with the global environmental
  change. LUCC engages actively both the physical
  and social science communities. It encourages and
  endorses the development of relevant projects and
  regional networks.

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THE MEDIAS DISTRIBUTED DATABASES FOR
ENVIRONMENTAL INFORMATION. PLANNED APPLICATIONS
TO CENTRAL ASIAENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

• The Aral sea basin is one of the major hotspots
  region in the world where economic development
  led to a very severe environmental situation.
• The question of a sustainable development taking
  into account all the components of the system has
  to be addressed in a comprehensive scientific
  way.
• Some international structures as INTAS, START,
  APN, are paying a specific attention to these
  issues.

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THE MEDIAS DISTRIBUTED DATABASES FOR
ENVIRONMENTAL INFORMATION. PLANNED APPLICATIONS
TO CENTRAL ASIAENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

• The economic development of the Aral Sea basin
  was based upon cotton monoculture.
• It implied an important water consumption and
  evaporation, which could no longer compensate the
  Aral sea natural evaporation
• In addition, fertilisers and pesticides led to an
  heavy water and soil salinisation by water and
  wind transportation.

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THE MEDIAS DISTRIBUTED DATABASES FOR
ENVIRONMENTAL INFORMATION. PLANNED APPLICATIONS
TO CENTRAL ASIAENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

• The negative impacts of that situation make it
  not sustainable on the long run.
• These negative impacts should in particular be
  evaluated in terms of resource availability and
  adequate consumption, irreversible environmental
  degradation, economical loss for several sectors,
  human health.
• These issues should be addressed in line with the
  WSSD implementation plan.

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THE MEDIAS DISTRIBUTED DATABASES FOR
ENVIRONMENTAL INFORMATION. PLANNED APPLICATIONS
TO CENTRAL ASIAENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

• Such studies imply an integrative approach,
  bringing together Land Use and Land Cover issues,
  resources availability and consumption, and
  socio-economic considerations and criteria at
  several temporal and spatial scales.
• Nevertheless, an emphasis should be made on long
  term and regional scale aspects.
• Water resources issues at large should be
  acknowledged as a federative theme.

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THE MEDIAS DISTRIBUTED DATABASES FOR
ENVIRONMENTAL INFORMATION. PLANNED APPLICATIONS
TO CENTRAL ASIAENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

• This implies by definition a LUCC oriented
  approach (plus some WCRP aspects).
• Appropriate skills exist in the region.
  Nevertheless, no endorsed LUCC network or LUCC
  project exist in the region so far.
• It was decided to face that paradox and set up
  such a network and the related activity. First
  steps and promising iterations were already made.

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THE MEDIAS DISTRIBUTED DATABASES FOR
ENVIRONMENTAL INFORMATION. PLANNED APPLICATIONS
TO CENTRAL ASIAENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

• MEDIAS-France launched the idea of the network in
  close consultation with SRI, Kazakhstan (E.
  Zakarin), then with LUCC IPO, START and APN.
  Links were set up with LUTEA. Several other
  organisations in Europe and Central Asia joined
  the nascent network.
• MEDIAS-FRANCE may host the network management
  (including the metadatabases and multiproxy
  databases) as a regional sub-network of the
  world-wide MEDIAS network. The scientific
  co-ordination should be in the Aral Sea region.

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THE MEDIAS DISTRIBUTED DATABASES FOR
ENVIRONMENTAL INFORMATION. PLANNED APPLICATIONS
TO CENTRAL ASIAENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

• Indeed, the core network was set up by
• Kazakhstan SRI, Environment Institute
• Uzbekistan SANIGMI, UNDP
• Russia SRI, IOM (SCERT)
• France MEDIAS-France, Université de Reims
• Germany DLR/DFD, IFU
• Now, formally involving other partners to set up
  a comprehensive multidisciplinary network is
  mandatory.

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THE MEDIAS DISTRIBUTED DATABASES FOR
ENVIRONMENTAL INFORMATION. PLANNED APPLICATIONS
TO CENTRAL ASIAENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

• Several actions were led to start the initiative
• A project was set up and submitted to INTAS
  funding, unfortunately without success,
• Side meetings were held during the LUTEA
  Conference in Ulan-Bataar, June-July 2001, and
  the ENVIROMIS-2002 Conference in Tomsk, July
  2002, leading to the following key decisions.

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THE MEDIAS DISTRIBUTED DATABASES FOR
ENVIRONMENTAL INFORMATION. PLANNED APPLICATIONS
TO CENTRAL ASIAENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

• Key decisions
• Send a proposal to LUCC for regional network
  endorsement. Encouraging iterations are on the
  way.
• Prepare a kick-off workshop. That workshop will
  take place in Tashkent, January 2004, under the
  aegis of START, APN, MEDIAS-France, UNDP and the
  Uzbekistan University.
• In parallel, fruitful contacts were taken with
  INTAS. A key person of the network was invited to
  the mid-term symposium of the ARAL Sea INTAS
  projects.

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THE MEDIAS DISTRIBUTED DATABASES FOR
ENVIRONMENTAL INFORMATION. PLANNED APPLICATIONS
TO CENTRAL ASIAENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

• Technically, the water resources issues at large
  in connection with land use and land cover are
  considered as the key issue to build upon.
• Regional and global factors have an impact on
  resources,
• Political decisions have a key impact on regional
  issues,
• Water consumption in connection with land use and
  land cover have key impacts on regional water
  balance and socio-economic aspects, with strong
  feed-backs.
• These aspects in turn have an impact on policy
  making.
• The simplified overall diagram can be shown as
  follows

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THE MEDIAS DISTRIBUTED DATABASES FOR
ENVIRONMENTAL INFORMATION. PLANNED APPLICATIONS
TO CENTRAL ASIAENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES
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THE MEDIAS DISTRIBUTED DATABASES FOR
ENVIRONMENTAL INFORMATION. PLANNED APPLICATIONS
TO CENTRAL ASIAENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

• The work should be led through electronic
  communication (fora), dedicated workshops and
  lead to syntheses in line with LUCC objectives.
• Key inputs are results of research programs and
  updated key information, in particular relevant
  indicators.
• This should lead to identify consolidated
  scientific results and research gaps to be
  filled.
• Network endorsed reports could then be issued and
  transmitted to START, LUCC, the scientific
  community and the relevant policy makers.
• Capacity building has to be taken in due
  consideration.

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THE MEDIAS DISTRIBUTED DATABASES FOR
ENVIRONMENTAL INFORMATION. PLANNED APPLICATIONS
TO CENTRAL ASIAENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES
Central Asia Network Organisation Scheme
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THE MEDIAS DISTRIBUTED DATABASES FOR
ENVIRONMENTAL INFORMATION. PLANNED APPLICATIONS
TO CENTRAL ASIAENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

• The issue of multidisciplinary information
  databases should not be neglected!
• Relevant information should be located,
  formatted, put into proper databases and
  referenced through metadatabases.
• Databases are kept under control, while an access
  through a metadata base should be made available
  through acknowledged standards and efficient
  friendly interfaces.
• A Meta Catalog portal should allow first to
  retrieve metadata, then to choose and retrieve
  datasets.
• Sophisticated techniques developed by
  MEDIAS-France proved efficient to build up such a
  information systems.

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ARALSEA-MDB INFORMATION SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE
4.Choose datasets
1.Search by criteria (User friendly interface)
Meta Catalog (Portal to the ARALSEA I.S)
6. Retrieve datasets
4.Query data
2.Query metadata
3.Retrieve metadata
Meta database (ISO 19115 AND/OR FGDC)
5. Locate and query datasets from relevant data
sources
Exchange protocol
Exchange protocol
Exchange protocol
Data source 1
Data source n
Data source 2
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THE MEDIAS DISTRIBUTED DATABASES FOR
ENVIRONMENTAL INFORMATION. PLANNED APPLICATIONS
TO CENTRAL ASIAENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

• CONCLUSIONS - LOOKING FORWARD
• Environment, socio-economic future and
  sustainable development raise major concerns in
  Central Asia.
• The MEDIAS network can be regionally developed in
  synergy with START, LUCC other actors to
  encourage regional research, promote
  international dialogue and channel new scientific
  developments.
• It also fosters the dialogue between scientists
  and decision/policy makers at all levels to
• "Think globally, act locally