Interdisciplinary perspectives are needed to understand the human impacts of cryosphere change

There is a high level of confidence and scientific consensus that climate change is the primary driver of the melting and thawing of the cryosphere and that the cryosphere changes are happening at unprecedented rates. While the bulk of literature in this space is about physical changes in the cryosphere, increasingly, a body of literature has evolved that also recognizes the contribution of the cryosphere to human societies, particularly that of high mountain communities. On the lines of the ecosystem services framework, the cryosphere services framework has been used to classify the different goods and services that the cryosphere provides to human societies. These services include supply services (irrigation, water supply, etc.), socio-cultural services (sports, tourism, spiritual, etc.), regulation (regulating climate and water systems), and habitat services. While the cryosphere provides a whole range of goods and services for mountain communities, as mentioned above, not all of these are well documented. Significantly, how these services are being impacted due to the melting and thawing of the cryosphere is poorly understood. Even within the services, some, like material services (e.g., supply of water for irrigation and agriculture), and disservices such as disasters, are better documented than non-material services like the spirituality of landscapes. A part of the reason lesser attention is given to human aspects of the cryosphere change is the lack of inter-disciplinary perspectives in cryosphere studies, as well as the use of critical epistemologies from social sciences which can be used to examine how politics, power, and intersectionality influence societal responses to changes in the cryosphere. I will use this session to argue for enhanced interdisciplinary collaborations to understand human impacts and adaptive responses to cryosphere change.