Front cover

A photography of Lilium martagon L. from the National Park "Rila" made by Michel Pourchet.

Dr Michel Pourchet participates in the Project OM2 - a French-Bulgarian Project for Monitoring and Management of the Environment in Rila Mountain (Bulgaria).

The Project was initiated in 1993 by 6 universities and institutes from France (National Institute of Environment, Meteo France, Universities of Paris, Grenoble and Besanson, National Parc des Ecrins) and 10 institutions from Bulgaria (Institute for Nuclear Research and Nuclear Energy, National Institute for Meteorology and Hydrology, Institutes of Forest, Zoology, Botany and Ecology of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, different faculties of the universities of Sofia, Shoumen and Blagoevgrad, The Nationar Centre of Regional Development and Householding Policy and the Historical Museum of Samokov). The OM2 Project was supported in France by MICECO, Minstere d'Affaires Etrangers, CNRS, MATRA and EDF. Since 1994, a support has been given to the project in Bulgaria by the National Science Fund at the Ministry of Education and Technologies. After 1998, the Ministry of Environment and Waters funded the construction of a basic environmental observatory at the Moussala peak.

The project aims to investigate the influence of different natural and anthropogenic factors on the high mountain ecosystems which are known to be very sensitive and difficult to recover.