The final programme of the LESLIE Sustainable Land Management (SLM) International Conference 2026 has now been completed. The conference will take place on 19–20 October 2026 at Bukhara State University (BukhSU), Bukhara, Uzbekistan, within the framework of the Erasmus+ CBHE LESLIE project.
The final scientific programme brings together researchers, academics, practitioners, policymakers and students working on sustainable land management and related environmental challenges. It includes 29 oral scientific presentations and 26 poster contributions, together with two invited lectures distributed across the two conference days. The poster exhibition will remain available during the event, with dedicated viewing periods integrated into the programme.
The oral programme is organised around five main thematic areas:
- Sustainable Land Management, Environmental Monitoring and Modelling
- Circular Economy, Waste Management and Resource Efficiency
- Sustainable Development, Food Security and Environmental Policy
- Water Resources, Irrigation and Wastewater
- Climate Change, Environmental Risks and Resilience
The conference will open on Monday 19 October with participant registration, the official opening ceremony and an invited presentation on the Erasmus+ CBHE LESLIE project. The scientific sessions will then continue throughout the day, complemented by coffee breaks, poster-viewing periods and a lunch break.
On Tuesday 20 October, the programme will start with an invited lecture on the internationalisation strategy of Bukhara State University after the LESLIE project, followed by sessions devoted to water resources, irrigation, wastewater, climate change, environmental risks and resilience. The scientific programme will conclude with the closing ceremony, followed by a field trip and lunch at the Varnet High-Tech Greenhouse Complex and Botanical Garden.
The final programme reflects the international and multidisciplinary character of the conference, with contributions from universities, research centres, environmental organisations and other institutions from Central Asia, Europe and other regions.
Participants are encouraged to consult the programme in advance and identify the sessions in which their contributions are scheduled.
The final SLM2026 Conference Programme is now available on the LESLIE website.
We look forward to welcoming all participants to Bukhara on 19–20 October 2026 for two days of scientific exchange, networking and cooperation on sustainable land and environmental management.
See you in Bukhara!
The results are particularly encouraging: validation against observed flood extents produced AUC values of 0.920, 0.820 and 0.906 for the 2017, 2019 and 2024 floods, respectively, confirming the strong predictive capability of the proposed approach.
👏 Congratulations to all the co-authors for this excellent collaborative work!
The results contribute to more reliable flood and water-availability forecasting, particularly in mountain regions where monitoring data and long-term meteorological forecasts remain limited. The proposed methodology may also be adapted to other snowmelt-dominated basins in Kazakhstan and elsewhere in Central Asia.
The international team is currently engaged in intensive, collaborative teamwork to develop and finalize a comprehensive catalogue of eight specialized Micro-credentials totaling 33 ECTS credits. These flexible, market-oriented courses are specifically designed to update BSc and MSc curricula across Central Asian universities while meeting the strict international standards of regulators and industries. The curriculum structure encompasses vital regional topics, including Circular Economy for Land and Waste Management (led by Koksu University), Climate Change for Sustainable Land Management (led by Bukhara State University), Solid Waste Management and Recycling (led by the Tashkent Institute of Irrigation and Agricultural Mechanization Engineers), and Water Management for Sustainable Land Management, which is directly led by Al-Farabi Kazakh National University.
Prof. Javier Rodrigo-Ilarri also participated as a panellist in the session “Opportunities for Cooperation: Green and Digital Transition”. This panel addressed emerging areas of collaboration linked to sustainability, environmental challenges, digital transformation, and the role of universities in supporting the green transition. These themes are closely aligned with the broader objectives of the LESLIE project, particularly in relation to capacity building, institutional modernisation, and the development of skills for sustainable and innovative higher education.
Closed municipal solid waste (MSW) landfills are hotspots of anthropogenic disturbance and can remain environmentally unstable for decades, especially in semi-arid steppe/forest-steppe climates where water limitation, substrate heterogeneity, and ongoing informal dumping constrain ecological recovery. This work provides a first detailed baseline of spontaneous vegetation on a closed MSW landfill near 
Overall, the study provides a practical template for monitoring, zoning, and species selection on closed or partially closed landfills in semi-arid steppe regions, supporting the broader LESLIE objective of strengthening applied environmental capacities and sustainable land management approaches.
The 
The authors explicitly acknowledge the contribution of the Erasmus+ CBHE project LESLIE (ERASMUS-EDU-2023-CBHE No. 101129032) in disseminating the research results, underlining the project’s role in amplifying high-impact scientific outputs and their uptake by stakeholders. The article is published open access under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).
The meeting gathered EU partners—Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV) as project coordinator, University of Cassino and Southern Lazio (UNICAS), and University of Cyprus (UCY)—together with Kazakh partners (KazNU as national coordinator, Sh. Ualikhanov Kokshetau University (KOKSU), Akhmet Yassawi University (AYU), CAREC, and the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of Kazakhstan) and Uzbek partners (Fergana Polytechnic Institute (FPI) as national coordinator, TIIAME-NRU, BINRM–TIIAME-NRU, Bukhara State University (BSU), International Agricultural University (IAU), and the Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Innovations of the Republic of Uzbekistan).
A key technical session followed on micro-qualifications in Kazakhstan, focusing on definitions, conceptual approaches, programme design, and implementation experience, and enabling an open discussion on current challenges for universities when deploying micro-credentials. The afternoon concentrated on project implementation and deliverables.
The meeting closed with conclusions and next steps (UPV), followed by a guided KazNU campus tour, supporting networking and a shared understanding of the host university environment.