UNIVERSIDAD DE CONCEPCION PROPOSAL FOR IUFRO LANDSCAPE ECOLOGY 2012- CHILE Dear Dr. Jiquan Chen As agreed in Portugal, I’m writing to you to provide details about our proposal for the next IUFRO LE conference to be held in 2012. 1) Organizing committee: It will be formed by four researchers who work on different topic related to landscape ecology. They are affiliated to three national universities:

- Universidad de Concepción: Dr. Cristian Echeverria (Landscape ecology), Dr. David González (remote sensing).

- Universidad Católica de Temuco: Dr. Fernando Peña (physical geography). - Universidad Austral de Chile: Dra. Laura Nahuelhual (environmental economy)

These three universities represent the most important academic institutions in southern Chile. 2) Venue: we suggest carrying out the conference in Concepción, the capital city of the Bio-bio Region. Concepción is the second-largest city in the country with approximately 1,5 million of inhabitants. The climate of Concepción is dry summer nadir in February. It has an oceanic influence, which keeps temperatures mild throughout the year. In October, the mean temperature ranges from 7 to 16ºC. In particular, we proposed to carry out the event at the Universidad de Concepción (English: University of Concepción- UdeC) (www.udec.cl). This university, one of the Chilean traditional universities, is one of Chile's oldest and most prestigious universities, and the most important outside of the capital, Santiago. The University holds 18 faculties (colleges/ divisions) distributed in 3 campuses. Concepción is the central campus. We have selected three modern auditoria at the Concepción Campus to hold the conference’s sessions simultaneously. The capacity of these auditoria varies from 80 to 184 people and are located at less than 100 meter each other. For the opening sessions or key speaker presentations, the university also counts with a 220 people auditorium or a theatre for more 700 people in the city centre (1,5 km from campus). In case that the number of attendees is larger than the auditoria’s capacity, we have the possibility to hire conference rooms in a local hotel in the city centre. In this case, the cost would need to be assumed by the conference budget. 3) Sponsors and pre-financing. Authorities from the three universities have confirmed their participation as organizing institutions and are willing to collaborate in the search of financial support with governmental and private organisations.

UNIVERSIDAD DE CONCEPCION Additionally, our Faculty of Forest Sciences has committed an advance of 4,000 USD for the preliminary activities of the conference. In addition to this, the UdeC’s headquarter agreed to provide another 3,000 USD as advance. The UdeC is able to add an additional amount next year if necessary. In total, we have 7,000 USD to starting funds. This amount does not include the funds that can be raised from local companies or governmental organisations, or the funds that will be raised by the other two organising universities. We hope to count with the support from IUFRO colleagues to raise as much money as possible for the scholarships in order to able to support young researchers and students. 4) Payments and accounting services. The UdeC counts with the system called “virtual mall” that can be used for the payments of congress fee. Credit card can be used in the virtual mall. This can be accessible from the congress website. The Faculty’s accounting officer is available to manage all the payments and cost relative to the conference. Also, the web site of the event can be designed and maintained by the organising universities. 5) Transportation and Accommodation: it is possible to get Concepción city by air and by bus. The airport is located at 6 km from the University Campus. There are more than four daily flights from Santiago to Concepción. Alternatively, there are many bus connections from Santiago to Concepción. There is a wide offer of hotels in the city, from B&B to 5 stars hotels. The UdeC counts with several agreements with local hotels (for discounts) that we can be used to accommodate the participants. UdeC owns a travel agency that is available for attendees to coordinate their domestic or international flights. Also, they can organise tours for participants. 6) Topics and themes. In addition to the topics treated in the recent conference in Portugal, we suggest to include themes related to monitoring and valuation of ecosystem services in changing landscapes, society and rural development in degraded landscape, and forest landscape restoration. 7) Conference schedule. We plan to have three days of presentations and one-day field trip in the middle of the congress. Also, we plan to offer post- congress field trip to the Andes Mountain and to southern Chile. There are more than four options for one-day field trips close to the city and others for post-congress field trip for 2 or 3 days. All the field activities that we plan will be closely connected to the conference main topic and will be developed using a high standard service.

UNIVERSIDAD DE CONCEPCION

If you have any inquire, please do not hesitate to contacting me.

Sincerely,

Dr. CRISTIAN ECHEVERRIA

Head of Landscape Ecology Laboratory

Faculty of Forest Sciences

University of Concepción

cristian.echeverria@udec.cl

www.lep.udec.cl