I am pleased to announce the establishment of a IALE chapter in Iran, as the first IALE regional chapter in the middle east.

After working intensively for several months with Prof. Felix Kienast, President of IALE International, to do all the necessary steps for setting up a new regional chapter, in April 2012, the EC of IALE International has accepted IALE-Iran as an official IALE chapter and then IALE-Iran  was recognized by the IALE Council in May 2012.

Iran is a vast country subject to diverse climatic and environmental conditions and hence harbors an immense diversity of terrestrial and marine species. During the last decades, several ecological issues like landscape fragmentation, land degradation, land use change, urbanization and biodiversity loss have been emerged in Iran as a result of development. The effects of  these issues in Iran could be reduced if  knowledge of landscape ecology  implemented by  researchers  and  managers  to  understand  patterns and  processes  behind these problems.

The establishment of the Iranian chapter of IALE can foster the process of extending scientific knowledge to practitioners and encourage communication between scientists, policy makers, planners and practitioners in the field of landscape ecology in Iran.

We are grateful that IALE International supports the establishment of our chapter with a financial support for the chapter organization and also for organizing the international conference in 2013.

We will do our best for scientific cooperation with IALE-International.

best regards,

Sima Fakheran, President of IALE-Iran