Acknowledgements

The idea of this edited book “Mountain Ecosystems and Resources Management, Vol. 1” emanated from Summer Field School on Mountain Ecosystems and Resources Management edition 1 [www.grassrootsglobal.net/mer2020] that was organized very successfully in 2021 with the involvement of near 630 people from 69 countries. A large number of the FSc MER 2020 participants and faculty members submitted their full papers as the contributions to this book; however, many of those full papers could not qualify as quality works. Those having qualitative contents and written texts were included in this Volume 1. Few of those articles will be included in Volume 2 intended to be published in 2024.

We are primarily grateful to the authors who provided their full papers for this Volume 1. Without their agreement to provide their full papers and permit to publish as chapters, this book would not have taken a shape. Next stage of the preparatory work was to obtain peer review of independent experts on each of the full papers. Large number of experts from different countries contributed their time and efforts to read the raw texts and gave their expert comments. We are really indebted to the independent reviewers as listed in the end of this book. Prof. Sanjay-Swami and Prof. G. Poyyamolly had assisted and contributed their massive amount of time not only help in editorial process but also in some initial processes.

Professor Dr. Hussein Baghirov, Founder & President of Western Caspian University, Azerbaijan, and first/former Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources Azerbaijan, is specially acknowledged and thanked for his fine expert contribution to write FOREWORD for this book. Without his greetings and warm appreciative remarks in the Foreword, this book has no relevance in mountain contexts. He is exemplary scholar, scientist and global leader in mountain sciences.

In the design of this book, 3Media Design has played critical role in preparing the cover pages in a precise eloquent graphics. We are especially thankful to Mr. Irshad Mohd. for his farsighted and graphic design works as excellent state of the art. The web version of this book is again the creative works of 3Media Design with the core works of Mr. Sajjad Hussain. We thank many other friends who supported still significantly the completion of this book.

As a publisher, The Grassroots Institute and the team are particularly obliged to provide enabling platform for publishing work. Efforts of all the colleagues who were involved in this work are appreciated and acknowledged.

Last but not least, we will be very thankful to the readers of this book and, especially, to those who would give their feedback. Feedbacks are requested to be sent to the respective authors with a copy to the Editor and the Publisher. We will try to place the feedback comments along with identity of the reader on the web pages of the book. We wish that the individual readers and related organizations will benefit from this work.

- Dr. Hasrat Arjjumend (Editor)