There is increasing recognition that a new type of science is required to support the sustainability transformations needed to address current environmental crises and social injustices. This is especially the case in mountain areas, which are disproportionately affected by global change, but that are also a fertile ground for innovative solutions based on unique environmental conditions, biocultural diversity, and histories of resilience. But while the growing field of sustainability sciences witnesses a boom of diverse types of inter- and transdisciplinary experiments, there is a lack of synthetic reflexive exercises across disciplines, knowledge types, and mountain contexts. In this synthesis workshop, we aim to identify and explore promising approaches from transformative research conducted in and for mountains. We invite participants from sessions across thematic fields that developed and applied innovative approaches, methodologies, and institutional processes to support sustainability transformations in diverse mountain regions. We are particularly interested in experiences that bridge knowledge systems, promoting plural perspectives and visions for mountain futures. We also welcome disruptive, experimental, and decolonial perspectives that explicitly consider power relations and question the way science is produced and reproduced. We propose to jointly reflect on barriers to sustainability transformations and how to overcome them. We wish to contribute to a new type of science that is committed to fundamentally going beyond established frameworks to support the design of innovative pathways towards more sustainable and just mountain futures.
Microplastics (MPs) have recently been reported to have reached cryospheric regions including the High Asia raising concerns about their potential impact on climate, snow, and glacier melt. While few research groups have shown the inclination to assess the MP contamination and its impact of cryospheric reserves, no concerted effort has yet been taken up. The MP contamination of snow and glaciers in India has not yet been investigated owing to a host of reasons like clarity in sampling protocols, lack of facilities, remoteness of glaciers, and attitudes of research groups to jointly collaborate. Here we provide a comprehensive overview of the current understanding of MPs in the cryosphere, focusing on their distribution, sources, transport mechanisms, and potential ecological consequences. Furthermore, we discuss various sampling methodologies, extraction protocols, and identification techniques currently used in cryosphere-related studies globally. Additionally, the emerging issue of MP pollution in the Indian Himalayan glaciers, its potential impact and the necessity of studying MP contamination shall be discussed. We highlight the future scope of research based on the current knowledge gaps for a better understanding of MPs pollution in glacial environments.
The Himalayan Region is blessed with the water resources and the Himalayan Rivers have made several lakes during their course. The South Asian Region is being due to many reasons losing them drastically. This region is losing the identity of these lakes. The Wular Lake was known as the largest Fresh water in South Asian Region and the Dal Lake made due the Jhelum River, rivers like Kabartal in which is the largest freshwater oxbow lake made in the course of the Budhi Gandak in the Asian continent a paradise for migratory birds, Loktak Lake. These lakes are not disappearing just because of climate warming rather dumping of pollutants knowingly and local, state or national governments remain ruthless in managing these resources leading to the vanishing river ecology and adjacent mountain’s ecology too. The polluted rivers and lakes are causing damages to mountain flora and fauna. The workshop has basic ideas if this workshop to develop the ideas to preserve water bodies in the Indian Himalayan contour by developing the idea of governing the water heritage of Himalayan Region by an integrated Himalayan administration and protection of the Himalayans waters by developing the small water banks in the Himalayans Terrain to preserve moisture in the Himalayan soils to sustain vegetation and maintaining bio diversity and the soil level. In absence of moisture the Himalayan surface would be prone to erosion.
The mountain cryosphere provides vast freshwater reservoirs critical to ecosystems and downstream communities. Yet they are harbingers of a changing climate through their sensitivity to warming. A low-to-no snow (L2NS) future, or widespread, persistent, and deleterious snow, ice, and permafrost loss, is possible given increasing temperatures and alterations in precipitation magnitude and phase. L2NS will impose a series of cascading hydrologic changes to the water-energy balance, impacting vegetation processes, surface and subsurface water storage, streamflow, and ultimately water-energy resources and ecosystem function. Strategies for adaptation of livelihoods, power generation, and ecosystem function post-L2NS are rarely exchanged across sectors, research communities, and mountain ranges. This session aims to bring together a diverse set of researchers and stakeholders to exchange successes and failures from regions where L2NS is or will be a future reality and discuss how to overcome uncertainties in estimating the warming level and time horizon of L2NS emergence.
Mountain areas are important systems for biodiversity and global biogeochemical cycles and deliver a broad range of essential ecosystem services. In many mountain regions, including the Alps, global change has been taking place at higher rates than on global average with potentially critical impacts on ecosystems, which are characterized by small-scale complexity and high vulnerability. While patterns of the responses of mountain ecosystems to global changes are increasingly emerging, there are significant gaps in the understanding of the underlying processes and their larger scale implications in a future world.
Alpine environments are sensitive ecological systems that are prone to climatic and anthropogenic perturbation. While many research initiatives are investigating the impact of our industrial society on alpine landscapes and ecosystems or are looking for possible adaptation and mitigation strategies under warming climatic conditions, comparatively little research has been directed towards a systematic study of human-environmental interactions in alpine environments by pre-industrial societies or during pre-historic times. Such historical perspectives, however, provide a long baseline of past changes needed to understand the natural variability of alpine environments and its resilience over a variety of timescales. The perspectives also provide a variety of links to scientific and historical research results and datasets.
In this synthesis workshop (geo)archaeological, palaeoenvironmental, palaeoclimatic, and ethnohistoric research strands conducted in alpine environments will be brought together. The goal is to create a platform for researchers interested in understanding the historic and long-term perspective of alpine climates and ecosystems and the changing role of humans using these environments.
Up to date, many lives and livelihoods worldwide are lost in the perpetual vicious cycle of “disaster, respond, recover and repeat”. The request during the Sendai World Conference on DRR in 2015 to change the paradigm: “From managing disasters to managing risks,” has not yet taken place completely. In mountain environments systemic & cascading disaster risk and lacking disaster risk management range among main obstacles for sustainable development and transformative resilience. Without improved DRR, prevention and ERP mountain regions will continue to face severe impacts due to climate change, growing populations and rapid urbanization. Hence, an open question is, how the Sendai Framework can be applied to the specific nature/environment of mountain regions. Main challenge is here the topic of risk governance including the missing links in mainstreaming DRR and coherent policies. This workshop follows a trans-disciplinary approach: from science to policy and practice in risk reduction planning. It aims at exchanging on state of knowledge, raise awareness on research gaps, and initiate future research activities on this topic.
(Clean) water as an increasingly valuable and scarce natural resource provided by uplands to the lowlands. Water management and particularly equal access to clean water as an increasingly conflictual topic with high relevance for power structures in mountains. This represents often an international dimension as many mountain regions stretch across national borders. The aim of this Workshop is to stimulate exchange among participants about the diversity and multidimensionality of challenges in water management and to advocate for multidisciplinary research and practice in water management with its local specificities in mountain regions worldwide.
The management of natural resources plays a crucial role facing the challenges of the ongoing socio-ecological transformation of mountain communities. In mountain areas, community management of resources (e.g. use of pastures in transhumance, use of water for irrigation etc.) has a long tradition. However, the current challenges for resource use (e.g. water, minerals, space for sports and recreational use, cultural and natural heritage designations) involve new stakeholders and need to be actively addressed with new, innovative ideas.
The aim of this workshop is to discuss and compare current and innovative answers to tackle the challenges faced in mountain areas with an inter and transdisciplinary approach/perspective.
