Managing mountain ecosystems in a changing climate: integrating long-term data

Abstract/Description

Climate change has emerged as one of the most significant threats to both nature and humanity. Today, we are witnessing a humanitarian crisis in many mountain ecosystems, driven by extreme weather events such as landslides, droughts, and increasingly frequent and intense dry spells. Agroforestry and forests offer nature-based solutions for climate change adaptation and mitigation, while also supporting biodiversity and securing critical ecosystem services. Agroforestry and the restoration of degraded forest landscapes are gaining momentum as essential strategies for restoring the health and functionality of mountain ecosystems. However, it is becoming clear that the growth patterns, water-use efficiency, and survivability of tree species are highly sensitive to climate variations, with stress-induced mortality altering the structure of forest landscapes. Assessing vegetation vulnerability, climate resilience, and human adaptation strategies requires a deep understanding of tree species diversity, genetic and phenotypic growth strategies, and their temporal and spatial responses to fluctuating water availability. Unfortunately, science-based knowledge on tree species selection and management, particularly for native tropical species, is limited. There is also a critical gap in understanding how tree species grow in response to climate variability and how they might adapt to future climatic changes. Thus, there is a pressing need to generate regional and global data across broad climate gradients and multiple temporal scales (inter-annual and intra-annual variations) using a combination of multi-parameter measurements and socio ecological knowledge. We will present the multiple roles of agroforestry in contributing to the conservation of biodiversity and local livelihoods in mountain ecosystems from our studies in Eastern Africa. We will present methods and tools, including tree-ring and stable isotope analyses, to examine the history and frequency of extreme drought events, characterize drought tolerance, and assess water-use efficiency in trees and forests and the need to establish living labs as key biodiversity and climate observatories to inform evidence-based, nature-based solutions and policy decisions aimed at increasing the resilience of local livelihoods and ecosystems in mountain regions and beyond.