The Conference was devoted to the state-of-the-art and usage of modern environmental observation techniques, modeling tools and information technologies for air, water, soil and vegetation cover pollution assessment in integrated information systems aimed at environmental management for industrial areas on city and regional scale. It was organized by the Institute of Atmospheric Optics of Siberian Branch of RAS, Institute for Numerical Mathematics RAS, Institute of Optical Monitoring of Siberian Branch of RAS, Tomsk Region Committee on Ecology, under the auspices of INCO COPERNICUS2 Programme, Tomsk Regional Administration and Scientific Council on Mathematics and Informatics SB RAS.
The Conference was aimed at filling a gap between basic science achievements and their practical applications in this domain as well as at creating a solid foundation for mitigation of pollution in selected areas. It was addressed to critically important for NIS country issues, which are not yet finally solved in Europe as well.
International Agencies promoting environmentally oriented activity in NIS and Europe (Copernicus, INTAS, NATO, ISTC, CRDF and 5th Framework Programme in general) used this Conference for monitoring current state of their projects falling into this area as well as to give them vision and result diffusion.
The Conference had been run as a set of consequent sessions devoted to different aspects of the theme. The list of Sessions includes: Opening/Plenary session; Observations, local and remote sensors for air, water, soil and vegetation assessment; Remote sensing; GIS and multi-dimensional databases; Urban and regional scale modeling; Hydrologic systems; Assessment of soil and vegetation cover; Urban and regional atmosphere: environment state and climatic change assessment; Integrated information systems for environment assessment/management; DSS: environmental management and legal aspects; Joint session with the participants of the conference “Environment Control and Management” and Special session – Monitoring of INTAS environmental projects.

Four types of papers were delivered at the Conference, namely invited lectures (1 hour), invited papers (30 min), contributed papers (15 min.) and poster presentations. During seven days of work 4 invited lectures and 24 invited (among them 8 papers on Special session on monitoring INTAS projects), 46 contributed and 106 poster pesentations were delivered, which occupied near 30 working hours.

Papers were presented from 59 institutions from 8 countries, which includes papers from 51 Russian institutions, from 1 France, 2 Italy, 1 Israel and 1 Netherlands institutions. Institutions from Uzbekistan contributed with 2 papers, from Belarus with 2 papers, while institution from Ukraine contributed with 1 paper. Russian papers present activity of different research and educational centers, namely 8 Moscow institutions, 16 Tomsk institutions, 11 Novosibirsk and 3 S.Petersburg and 2 Irkutsk institutions. Apatity, Krasnoyarsk, Seversk, Perm, Chita, Yakutsk, Barnaul, Khabarovsk, Ulan-Ude, Tyumen and Sterlitamak cities were presented by 1 institutions each. It should be stressed that 17 papers were presented by young scientists alone and in 27 papers young scientists were co-authors. Total number of young scientists participated in the Conference amounts up to 50, which is more then one third of total number of participants. It should be added also that developed at the IAO Information Center information system was used in process at the Conference organization, which opens to remote users an access to the Conference Program, Abstracts and all relevant information.

Also the Joint session with the participants of the conference “Environment Control and Management” took place. The two conferences were held in parallel. That session was an opportunity to address common points of interest. Some typical examples are: monitoring such topics as climate changes and GHG’s atmospheric concentrations, regional ecological situation, using observation stations, geoinformation approach and modern information technologies.

For monitoring of the INTAS projects in Environmental Sciences the Special Session had been run, where 8 papers describing results and current state of work of 10 recently funded or currently performed INTAS environmental Projects were delivered. It gave to the Projects results a vision and dissemination as well as provided the participants with useful for organization of cooperative projects hints.

Last but not least, an unforgettable trip on the river was organised, allowing discovering the majesty of the Siberian nature and landscape and better understanding men and women living in these regions. It also gave the participants of the Conference the opportunity to estimate the environmental state of the Tom river basin.