Mountains are complex social-ecological systems and natural laboratories in which to tangibly explore and understand how drivers and processes of global change manifest in specific places. In this session, we invite inter- and transdisciplinary contributions that examine past, present, and future environmental change, their associated impacts for ecosystems and people in mountain environments, and measures taken to address these impacts. This session is open to conceptual as well as empirical measurement and/or modelling or scenarios studies of mountain climate, cryosphere, ecology, hazards, and hydrology, which also incorporate studies on intersecting socio-economic dimensions and risks. Mountains as complex terrain can be difficult to adequately parameterize in (climate) models and many areas of the world lack high-elevation monitoring infrastructure that can record data at the relevant locations, densities, scales, frequencies, and resolutions needed. Likewise, there is a need to capture and account for socio-economic changes such as demographic and land-use change and their projections to improve our understanding of how hazards, vulnerability, and exposure interact in terms of impacts and risks.
We particularly welcome contributions that describe how steps are being taken to address such knowledge gaps, including high-elevation integrated monitoring efforts, observations along elevational gradients, climate downscaling strategies and remote sensing innovations, and integration methods that include societal data and information to characterise and represent a more comprehensive systems approach to global change. As 2025 marks the UN-declared International Year for Glaciers' Preservation, and the kick-off to the UN Decade of Action for Cryosphere Sciences, this session especially invites contributions that take a multi-disciplinary perspective and approach to addressing the challenges and opportunities posed by a changing cryosphere in mountain regions, with particular attention to the human dimensions associated with adaptation and resilience.
This session is endorsed and supported by the Mountain Research Initiative and the Institute for Interdisciplinary Mountain Research of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.