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BACKGROUND: In the period of transition from a centralized economy to the market economy, occupational health services in Kyrgyzstan have survived through dramatic, detrimental changes. It is common for occupational health regulations to be ignored and for basic occupational health services across many industrial enterprises and farms to be neglected. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to demonstrate the present situation and challenges facing occupational health services in Kyrgyzstan. FINDINGS: The transition from centralized to the market economy in Kyrgyzstan has led to increased layoffs of workers and unemployment. These threats are followed by increased workload, and the health and safety of workers becomes of little concern. Private employers ignore occupational health and safety; consequently, there is under-reporting of occupational diseases and accidents. The majority of enterprises, especially those of small or medium size, are unsanitary, and the health status of workers remains largely unknown. The low official rates of occupational diseases are the result of data being deliberately hidden; lack of coverage of working personnel by medical checkups; incompetent management; and the poor quality of staff, facilities, and equipment. Because Kyrgyzstan is a mountainous country, the main environmental and occupational factor of enterprises is hypoxia. Occupational health specialists have greatly contributed to the development of occupational medicine in the mountains through science and practice. CONCLUSIONS: The enforcement of existing strong occupational health legislation and increased financing of occupational health services are needed. The maintenance of credible health monitoring and effective health services for workers, re-establishment of medical services and sanitary-hygienic laboratories in industrial enterprises, and support for scientific investigations on occupational risk assessment will increase the role of occupational health services in improving the health of the working population.

BackgroundIn the period of transition from a centralized economy to the market economy, occupational health services in Kyrgyzstan have survived through dramatic, detrimental changes. It is common for occupational health regulations to be ignored and for basic occupational health services across many industrial enterprises and farms to be neglected.ObjectiveThe aim of this study was to demonstrate the present situation and challenges facing occupational health services in Kyrgyzstan.FindingsThe transition from centralized to the market economy in Kyrgyzstan has led to increased layoffs of workers and unemployment. These threats are followed by increased workload, and the health and safety of workers becomes of little concern. Private employers ignore occupational health and safety; consequently, there is under-reporting of occupational diseases and accidents. The majority of enterprises, especially those of small or medium size, are unsanitary, and the health status of workers remains largely unknown. The low official rates of occupational diseases are the result of data being deliberately hidden; lack of coverage of working personnel by medical checkups; incompetent management; and the poor quality of staff, facilities, and equipment.Because Kyrgyzstan is a mountainous country, the main environmental and occupational factor of enterprises is hypoxia. Occupational health specialists have greatly contributed to the development of occupational medicine in the mountains through science and practice.ConclusionsThe enforcement of existing strong occupational health legislation and increased financing of occupational health services are needed. The maintenance of credible health monitoring and effective health services for workers, re-establishment of medical services and sanitary-hygienic laboratories in industrial enterprises, and support for scientific investigations on occupational risk assessment will increase the role of occupational health services in improving the health of the working population.

Front Cover -- Environmental Water Requirements in Mountainous Areas -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- List of contributors -- Acknowledgments -- Contributors -- Book Reviewers -- 1 Mountainous areas and river systems -- 1.1 Introduction -- 1.2 Mountain areas -- 1.2.1 Defining a mountain -- 1.3 Mountain ecosystems -- 1.4 Mountain resources and services -- 1.5 Mountainous rivers and streams -- 1.5.1 Hydrogeomorphological characteristics -- 1.6 Hydrological characteristics -- 1.7 Sediment transport -- 1.8 Hydrochemical characteristics -- 1.9 Biological characteristics -- 1.10 Conservation and threats -- 1.10.1 Land-use change -- 1.10.1.1 Urbanization -- 1.10.1.2 Agriculture -- 1.10.1.3 Overgrazing -- 1.10.1.4 Mining -- 1.10.1.5 Tourism -- 1.10.2 Airborne pollution -- 1.10.3 Global climate change -- 1.10.4 Renewal energy production -- 1.10.4.1 Hydropower production -- 1.10.4.2 Wind energy production -- 1.11 Outlook -- References -- 2 Hydrological data sources and analysis for the determination of environmental water requirements in mountainous areas -- 2.1 Hydrological data requirements in environmental flow assessment studies -- 2.1.1 Importance of hydrological data -- 2.1.2 Flow regime -- 2.1.3 Hydrological data characteristics -- 2.1.4 Projected streamflow conditions -- 2.2 Hydrological data sources/measurement and processing of hydrological data -- 2.2.1 Hydrometric data -- 2.2.1.1 Monitoring stream stage -- 2.2.1.2 Discharge measurement -- 2.2.1.3 The stage-discharge relationship -- 2.2.1.4 Other methods of discharge measurement -- 2.2.1.5 Indirect estimation of historical flows -- 2.2.1.6 Hydrometric data quality -- 2.2.2 Other hydrological data -- 2.2.3 Data sources -- 2.3 Modeled hydrological data in ungauged or poorly gauged watersheds -- 2.3.1 Problems and solutions -- 2.3.2 Streamflow data naturalization.

Their specific potentials and opportunities of mountain areas need to be considered as much as their challenges. Mountain areas are too diverse to elaborate an integrated European strategy. However, a framework for development strategies in mountain areas can be developed, taking into account the specific challenges and importance of mountain farming, the high levels of biodiversity in mountain areas, and their specific exposure to climate change. Cohesion policy could use such a framework to better address the demographic challenges of many mountain areas and to promote their economic and social development more efficiently with an enhanced sustainable development perspective. This also presupposes more flexible multi-level governance arrangements.

This volume contains the majority of the papers presented during a conference that took place on 16th-21st May, 1997 in Łódź, Poland. The conference was organized by the Institute of Archaeology, University of Łódź and Département d'anthropologie, Université de Montreal (Canada). The conference was funded by the University of Łódź and by IREX (International Research & Exchanges Board), which also supported this publication. The publication was partly founded by the University of Łódź and by the Foundation of Adam Mickiewicz University, too. The major questions of the conference were, 1) what is the current evidence for eastern or southern influences in the development of eastern European Mesolithic and Neolithic populations, and 2) to what extent are current political trends, especially the reassertion or, in some cases, the creation of ethnic and national identities, influencing our interpretations of the prehistoric data. The idea for such a conference came into being through the co-organizers' long-term studies of the development of those prehistoric human populations which inhabited the vast region stretching north and east from the Oder river and Carpathian Mountains to the foothills of the Urals. In a tradition established in modern times by Gordon Childe, virtually all of the transformations of Eastern Europe's Neolithic Age human landscape have been assumed to be responses to prior developments in the Balkan peninsula and Danube basin. We think that a body of new evidence requires a renewed analysis of the distributions of cultural products, peoples, and ideas across Eastern Europe during the Mesolithic through the Early Metal Age within a much wider geographic context than previously has been the case. This includes giving adequate attention to the far-ranging interactions of communities between the Pontic and Baltic area with those located in both the Caucasus and the Aralo-Caspian regions. We hope that this volume will contribute to such a redirection of future analyses.

Abstract. In this paper a method is proposed to identify mountainous watersheds with the highest flood risk at the regional level. Through this, the watersheds to be subjected to more detailed risk studies can be prioritised in order to establish appropriate flood risk management strategies. The prioritisation is carried out through an index composed of a qualitative indicator of vulnerability and a qualitative flash flood/debris flow susceptibility indicator. At the regional level, vulnerability was assessed on the basis of a principal component analysis carried out with variables recognised in literature to contribute to vulnerability, using watersheds as the unit of analysis. The area exposed was obtained from a simplified flood extent analysis at the regional level, which provided a mask where vulnerability variables were extracted. The vulnerability indicator obtained from the principal component analysis was combined with an existing susceptibility indicator, thus providing an index that allows the watersheds to be prioritised in support of flood risk management at regional level. Results show that the components of vulnerability can be expressed in terms of three constituent indicators: (i) socio-economic fragility, which is composed of demography and lack of well-being; (ii) lack of resilience and coping capacity, which is composed of lack of education, lack of preparedness and response capacity, lack of rescue capacity, cohesiveness of the community; and (iii) physical exposure, which is composed of exposed infrastructure and exposed population. A sensitivity analysis shows that the classification of vulnerability is robust for watersheds with low and high values of the vulnerability indicator, while some watersheds with intermediate values of the indicator are sensitive to shifting between medium and high vulnerability.

12 páginas, 7 figuras, 2 tablas. ; [EN] In recent decades, mountainous areas that contain some of the best-preserved habitats worldwide are experiencing significant, rapid changes. Efficient monitoring of these areas is crucial for impact assessments, understanding the key processes underlying the changes, and development of measures that mitigate degradation. Remote sensing is an efficient, cost-effective means of monitoring landscapes. One of the main challenges in the development of remote sensing techniques is improving classification accuracy, which is complicated in mountainous areas because of the rugged topography. This study evaluated the 3 main steps in the supervised vegetation classification of a mountainous area in the Spanish Pyrenees using Landsat-5 Thematic Mapper imagery. The steps were (1) choosing the training data sampling type (expert supervised or random selection), (2) deciding whether to include ancillary data, and (3) selecting a classification algorithm. The combination (in order of importance) of randomly selected training data, ancillary data (topographic and vegetation index), and a random forest classifier improved classification accuracy significantly (4–11%) in the study area in the Spanish Pyrenees. The classification procedure includes important steps that improve classification accuracies; these are often ignored in standard vegetation classification protocols. Improved accuracy is vital to the study of landscape changes in highly sensitive mountain ecosystems. ; The Spanish government (Configuración Espacial de la Biodiversidad y Conservación del Ecosistemas project, I+D+I. CGL2008-00655/BOS, Ministry of Science and Innovation) and the European Community (Land and Ecosystem Degradation and Desertification: Assessing the Fit of Responses project, FW7 ENV.2009.2.1.3.2) funded this study. In addition, we thank the managers of Ordesa and Monte Perdido National Park for providing information and assistance. For assistance with the bibliographic search, we thank Cristina Pérez de Larraya. The suggestions of IC Barrio considerably improved earlier versions of the paper. We thank Bruce MacWhirter for his critical reading of the manuscript and for providing helpful suggestions. Finally, we thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. ; Peer reviewed