At the "Forum ländlicher Raum" in Berlin on 13 January 2010, Prof. Dr. Ingo Mose gave a lecture on the topic "From endogenous to integrated regional development? Rural development concepts in transition". The forum traditionally takes place at the start of the "Green Week" in the German capital.

At the graduation ceremony of School V last Friday, 29 January 2010, Judith Niggemann was awarded one of 5 prizes for the best theses of 2009!

Judith Niggemann had written her final thesis in the outgoing Diplom degree programme in Landscape Ecology on the topic "Indicators for sustainable development of rural municipalities - Cases studies: Gagnef and Vansvro (Dalarna, Sweden)". The thesis was first supervised by Prof Dr Ingo Mose and second supervised by Prof Dr Erik Westholm from Darlana Högskola.

Pia Steffenhagen's doctoral degree procedure was successfully completed on 9 February 2010 at School V. Pia Steffenhagen was a scholarship holder of the German Federal Environmental Foundation at the Regional Sciences working group and wrote her dissertation on the topic "Comparative study of the scope and organisation of regional fundraising for environmental and nature conservation projects in rural regions of Germany and the social commitment of companies in Germany and the UK". Pia Steffenhagen was awarded her doctorate with the grade "cum laude". Pia Steffenhagen now works at the EU Office of the University of Oldenburg.

Students of environmental sciences, landscape ecology and social sciences visited Überseestadt in Bremen on 16 February 2010 under the joint leadership of Prof. Dr Rainer Danielzyk and Prof. Dr Ingo Mose. The subject of the excursion was current projects for the revitalisation of the old port districts in the Hanseatic city. Discussions with representatives of Überseestadt GmbH, the Siedentopf company, the Justus Grosse company and the University of the Arts gave the students a differentiated insight into the planning concepts for Überseestadt, the construction projects of important investors and the experiences of new users already located in the harbour. With a planning area of around 300 hectares, Überseestadt is considered the largest port revitalisation project in Germany, which is also significantly larger than Hamburg's HafenCity.

Together with Prof. Dr Ulrich Scheele and Dipl.-Geogr. Julia Oberdoerffer, both ARSU GmbH, Oldenburg, Prof. Dr Ingo Mose contributed an article on the importance of the North Sea coast as a location for the energy industry to the latest issue of the journal "Praxis Geographie" (March 2010). The themed booklet "Küsten -Wirtschaften zwischen Land und Meer" can be obtained from Schulbuchverlage GmbH in Braunschweig (contact:

Environmental Science (B.Sc.) students recently visited Kingston University London for several days as part of the module "Fundamentals of Spatial Development". Together with local students of environmental sciences and geography, they took part in an excursion programme that focused on current tasks and problems of planning and management in the catchment area of the River Thames. Urban planning interventions to revitalise the former port areas, flood protection and securing the drinking water supply were among the topics selected for the excursion, which met with unanimous approval from the students. The visit was the result of an initiative by Prof Dr Ingo Mose and Dr Peter Schaal (both from the Regional Sciences working group at ZENARiO), which aims to further develop the existing ERASMUS partnership between Oldenburg and Kingston. To date, several students from the Environmental Sciences and Sustainability Economics and Management degree programmes in Oldenburg have already spent a semester in Kingston. Conversely, ZENARiO welcomed its first guest student from London for a work placement in Oldenburg. In future, the exchange of teaching staff is also to be organised and the implementation of reciprocal excursion visits is to be consolidated. The Oldenburg environmental scientists assured their English colleagues Dr Stewart Downward and Dr Anne Clausen of their full support.

The construction of another motorway in north-west Germany, between Stade and Westerstede, has been under discussion for some time. Opponents of the planned A22 coastal motorway have now developed an alternative traffic concept. In the programme 'NordwestRadio unterwegs' (16.06.2010), Dr. Peter Schaal and others explore the question of the extent to which alternatives are viable and present the pros and cons of this route. Further information and the discussion in full length (approx. 40 min.) are available at the following link: www.radiobremen.de/nordwestradio/sendungen/nordwestradio_unterwegs/kalender102_date-20100616.html

Prof. Dr Ingo Mose has been awarded the ERASMUS Prize 2010 as part of the European Union's ERASMUS programme in Germany. The prize, awarded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), honours Mose for his outstanding commitment to the implementation of this programme.

At the end of 2010, the Center for Sustainable Spatial Development Oldenburg - ZENARiO - became the fifth member of COAST - Center for Environmental and Sustainability Research at the Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg.

The ZENARiO Scientific Advisory Board appointed by the Presidential Board of the University was constituted on Monday, 20 December 2010 in Oldenburg. The advisory board will critically monitor the centre's work in the future and formulate suggestions for further profiling in research and teaching. The members of the Advisory Board are Prof. Dr Beate Jessel, President of the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation, Bonn; Prof. Dr Rainer Danielzyk, University of Hanover, Chair of Spatial Planning and Regional Development; Prof. Dr Dirk Strijker, University of Groningen, Professorship of Rural Development; Prof. Dr Uwe Schneidewind, President of the Wuppertal Institute; and Georg Litmathe, Director of the Genossenschaftsverband Weser-Ems e.V., Oldenburg. The members unanimously elected Prof Strijker as spokesperson for the Advisory Board. In a first joint meeting with the board of ZENARiO, the members of the advisory board certified that the young centre has a considerable number of initiatives in research and teaching, which reflect the pronounced interdisciplinarity of the working groups and specialist areas involved. This provides a very good basis for the necessary further sharpening of the centre's profile, which is essential for its future work. Above all, the special focus on the important functions of space in the current sustainability debate should be emphasised even more clearly than before in order to underpin the centre's unique selling points. On behalf of the ZENARiO Board of Directors, Prof. Dr Ingo Mose, as Director, thanked the members of the Advisory Board for their willingness to support the centre and expressed his hope that, with the help of the Advisory Board, the centre would continue to develop successfully in the coming years and establish itself at the university.

The head of the Regional Science working group, Prof. Dr Ingo Mose, will be at Kingston University London from 3 to 26 May as part of an ERASMUS lecturer mobility programme. He will be a guest at the Sustainability Hub, where he will be involved in teaching and research.

Sustainability, transformation and regional development

From 16 to 19 June 2011, a trilateral workshop on "Vulnerability and the Waddensea - Sustainability, transformation and regional development" will take place at the School of Spatial Sciences at the University of Groningen with the participation of ZENARiO and the Institute of Geography at the University of Bremen. As part of the workshop, students from various degree programmes at the three partner universities will present the results of their own spatial science research work (Bachelor's and Master's theses, doctoral projects). The unifying element of all contributions is the geographical focus on the international Wadden Sea region.
The workshop, in which several professors from the three universities are also taking part, is based on an initiative by ZENARiO to tap into the potential for co-operation between the spatial science subjects at the universities of Oldenburg, Groningen and Bremen in teaching and research. The project was financially supported by funds from the NOWETAS Foundation.
The event serves as a prelude to a series of workshops that will be continued in the coming years with similar meetings in Bremen and Oldenburg.
You can download the programme as a pdf file here.

M.Sc. Landscape Ecology students led by Prof. Dr Ingo Mose took part in a cycling excursion to the Hamme-Wümme lowlands north-east of Bremen on 20 July 2011. took part in a cycling excursion to the Hamme-Wümme lowlands north-east of Bremen on 20 July 2011. The excursion took place as part of the module "Nature Conservation in Practice". Large parts of the Hamme-Wümme lowlands are designated as nature and landscape conservation areas and also have the status of European NATURA 2000 sites. Dr Gerhard Kulp from the Osterholz Biological Station welcomed the group to the "Breites Wasser" nature reserve in Teufelsmoor and explained selected local nature conservation projects. The group was also interested in approaches to sustainable regional development, e.g. in agriculture and tourism, which can be combined with the interests of nature conservation. Another topic was the potential for the possible designation of a biosphere reserve, for which there is still a lack of political will in the region.

Recently, Mr Norbert Klostermann, Head of Transport Planning in the Division for Construction, Environment and Transport at the City of Oldenburg, successfully completed his doctorate in Regional Sciences at School V of the University of Oldenburg.
His dissertation is entitled "Cycling into the city - now more than ever? Climate, energy, demographics, lifestyle: cycling today and in the future under the influence of current megatrends. Results of four international case studies". The doctoral project was supervised by Prof. Dr Ingo Mose, with Prof. Dr Helmut Holzapfel from the University of Kassel as second assessor. Mr Klostermann is the first external doctoral candidate to successfully complete a doctoral project at the AG Regional Sciences.

Underthe direction of Prof. Dr Rainer Buchwald and Prof. DrIngo Mose, students from the Master's degree programmes in Landscape Ecology, Sustainability Economics and Management and Water and Coastal Management visited the Vinschgau region in South Tyrol, Italy, from 1 to 8 October 2011. The excursion took place as part of the module "Nature Conservation in Practice" and aimed to visit several large protected areas. The Stelvio National Park (Italy), the Swiss National Park and the Biosfera Val Müstair (both Switzerland) meet in the Upper Venosta Valley and form one of the largest contiguous protected area complexes in the Alps. The group focussed in particular on the geomorphology and vegetation of the high mountain region, issues of cultural landscape change, agriculture and tourism as well as environmental education in the area of influence of the aforementioned protected areas.

Prof Dr Ingo Mose gave the opening lecture at the international workshop "Protected areas as tools for regional development" in Saint Pierre de Chartreuse, France. He spoke on the subject of "Protected areas: model landscapes for sustainable development". Around 30 scientists and park managers from France, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, the Netherlands, Great Britain, Norway, Sweden and Germany took part in the workshop. The event was jointly organised by Alparc, the Alpine Network of Protected Areas, the International Scientific Committee for Alpine Research - ISCAR and the NeReGro research network, of which Ingo Mose is a member. The Parc Naturel Régional de Chartreuse also acted as a regional co-operation partner for the event. The participants at the event, which was moderated by Prof Dr Dirk Strijker from the University of Groningen, Chair of the ZENARiO Scientific Advisory Board, were unanimous in their support for an active role for large protected areas in regional development. Biosphere reserves in particular, but also nature parks and national parks, have great opportunities to act as role models for sustainable forms of spatial development throughout Europe. This is a map extract from the map of large-scale protected areas in the Alpine region. For the complete map, please click here. Further information on alparc can be found here.

At the annual meeting of the "Rural Areas" working group of the German Society for Geography (DGfG), which took place on 17 and 18 November 2011 at the South Westphalia University of Applied Sciences in Soest, Prof. Dr. Ingo Mose was unanimously re-elected as spokesperson of the working group for a further two years. He will fulfil this function together with Prof. in. Dr Ulrike Grabski-Kieron from the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster. The working group is made up of around 130 scientists throughout Germany who deal with issues of rural spatial development. The working group is one of the DGfG's largest in terms of membership.

The presentation is available to interested parties as pdf.