Prince Sultan Bin Abdul-Aziz, the second deputy premier and minister of defense and aviation, will open on Dec. 5 a four-day international conference on water resources at King Saud University in Riyadh. He also will award the Prince Sultan International Prize for Water to its winners. The conference, to be held under the auspices of Prince Sultan Research Center for Environment, Water and Desert, focuses on four pivotal topics: Water resources, arid environment, desertification and the use of modern technology in studying desert environment. The conference will discuss research papers on important topics, such as integrated water-resource management, flood control, economical desalination technologies, advances in irrigation and combating agricultural pollution. Other topics include legal and administrative water-resource issues, desert pollution, plant cover, conservation of biodiversity in arid environments and global warming. The conference will discuss modern means to combat desertification, sustainable development of natural resources and protection of wildlife in desert environments. Papers also will be presented on remote sensing, geographical information and global positioning systems, biotechnology as well as modern measuring systems and devices. --MORE 1045 Local Time 0745 GMT
