date: Thu, 25 Jun 1998 18:02:06 +0100 from: Keith Alverson subject: PAGES input to Global Change in Mountain Regions to: keith.alverson@pages.unibe.ch, ammann@sgi.unibe.ch, rbattarb@geography.ucl.ac.uk, behling@bio.uva.nl, rbradley@geo.umass.edu, k.briffa@uea.ac.uk, karlen@natgeo.su.se, lotter@sgi.unibe.ch, maggi@alpha.disat.unimi.it, markgraf@spot.colorado.edu, messerli@giub.unibe.ch, frank.oldfield@pages.unibe.ch, yugo@ees.hokudai.ac.jp, matti.saarnisto@gsf.fi, rthompson@usgs.gov, thompson.3@osu.edu, veit@giub.unibe.ch, c_wake@unh.edu Dear PAGES mountain scientists, Apologies for the format of the last message attachment. Here the attachemts are included in word 6.0 format as well as in ascii text embedded in this message. At the recent PAGES SSC meeting (June 19-21, Pallanza) the PAGES steering committee endorsed participation in an intercore project on global change in mountain regions. The other interested projects include GCTE, BAHC, LUCC, and IHDP. Enclosed are two word 98 documents. The executive summary of the implementation plan for this project and the pages contributions to the implementation plan as they currently stand. We are now at a stage where a wider involvement from PAGES scientists who are doing research in mountian regions is being suought in order to develop a more detailed implementation. I would greatly appreciate any comments on these documents, any new input either as text or figures which would highlight PAGES ongoing efforts in mountain regions, as well as offers from scientists who would like to take the lead in this initiative. Feel free to distribute these documents widely should you know of interested scientists who did not receive this mailing. Replies can be sent to me by either by email (alverson@pages.unibe.ch) or c/o the PAGES IPO in Bern. Keith ______________________________ Potential PAGES contributions to the IGBP/IHDP "Global Change in Mountain Regions" initiative Keith Alverson, Heinz Veit and Bruno Messerli BACKGROUND The "Global Change Research in Mountain Regions" program is currently developing an implementation plan as an IGBP inter-core project cooperation with input from BAHC, GCTE, LUCC and PAGES as well as the IHDP. A draft version of the executive summary of this implementation plan is included below. To date PAGES role in this project has been: 1. The written contribution from Bruno Messerli (PAGES IPO) contained in an appendix to IGBP report 43; 2. The input of Keith Alverson (PAGES IPO) and Heinz Veit (University of Bern) at the workshop in Pontresina Switzerland at which a draft version of the Mountain Initiative implementation plan was begun, and a draft version of this "PAGES contributions" document was written. MOTIVATION Mountain areas are valuable locations to carry out paleoclimatic research for exactly the same reasons that they are being considered as prime regions to investigate global change. … High sensitivity to climate change. … Steep relief leading to intense geomorphic and hydrological processes. … A wide variety of ecosystems within a small geographical area providing a model, with sharper gradients and smaller overall scales, which can provide insight into latitudinal and temporal ecosystem changes. OBJECTIVES 1. Make a fundamental contribution to the improvement of our understanding of physical and biological processes within ecosystems and to global change studies in mountain regions. 2. Define the envelope of natural variability within which the climate and ecosystem monitoring program can be assessed, thereby facilitating the extrapolation of observed time series of hydrological and ecological characteristics into the past, and the future. 3. Construct examples and scenarios of climate change impacts at the landscape level from the paleorecord, both with and without human impacts, which provide an excellent mechanism for validation of climate and ecosystem models. Past landscape development provides an understanding of modern and future conditions. Many modern plant communities, permafrost, glaciers and soils are strongly influenced by the environmental conditions from years, decades, centuries, even millennia in the past. This dependence on past conditions will continue to influence any potential future reorganizations due to global climate change. A hierarchy of timescales exist in both climatic forcing and ecosystem dynamics including extreme events, changes in seasonality, interannual modes of oscillation such as ENSO and the NAO, decadal, century and millennial scale variability. Behavior on all of these timescales require different methods and archives for their study. In order to address questions on this wide range of temporal and spatial scales, it is of utmost importance that a synergy is established between paleoclimate mountain research and modern ecosystem and land use based monitoring, modeling and synthesis studies. For example, complementary locations for global change monitoring stations with intensive paleoclimate study sites should be sought where possible. PRINCIPAL RESEARCH THEMES 1. Long-term observation systems to detect and analyze signals of global change, as the mountain-specific component of the Global Observing Systems (GTOS/GCOS/GHOST/FRIENDS) Monitoring of modern climate and ecosystem parameters provides an invaluable calibration of proxy records of past climatic and environmental change. Paleoclimatic records contained in ice cores, tree rings, lake sediments, terrestrial and aquatic biological assemblages all depend critically on transfer functions based on comparisons of the modern responses to instrumentally measured climatic parameters. The dependence of proxy records on specific climatic parameters can also change in time. Such changes provide both a challenge in interpreting paleorecords as well as valuable insights into changing ecosystem dynamics. Such nuances necessitate long term monitoring. Thus, both short and long term monitoring are fundamental to PAGES research. It is important to plan monitoring activities which, in addition to providing their own inherent value, can facilitate a smooth blending of the proxy based information with recent instrumental data, thereby maximizing the accuracy and length of the available aggregate climate record. Whenever possible monitoring programs should seek to complement and benefit from PAGES monitoring programs which already exist, for example on the Tibetan plateau as part of the HIPP program, and on high altitude tropical glaciers worldwide in support of ice coring work. In establishing a global monitoring program attention should be paid to ways in which the program can both serve the wider interdisciplinary climate research community as well as the ways in which it can benefit from extant monitoring programs such as those within the PAGES research umbrella. Selections of sites, for example, could take account of the locations of intense paleoclimatic research. In addition, isotope monitoring is an example of a key area of potentially fruitful interaction between studies of modern climate and ecosystem dynamics and paleoclimatic reconstructions. Key to developing methodologies for coordinated use of altitude related indicators of anthropogenic global change, and its impacts, is knowledge of the continuing natural background variability with which and anthropogenic changes will interact. Natural background loads in precipitation and atmospheric deposition are recorded, with annual resolution in ice cores from mountain glaciers. Varved sediments in proglacial lakes provide records of natural variability in climate and lake ecosystem dynamics with a similarly high resolution. In the past century, anthropogenic effects, mainly due to local pollution, are also reflected in these records. 2. Integrated modelling framework for analysis and vulnerability assessment Models need to be rigorously validated. Such validation can make use of data obtained from altitudinal gradient and catchment studies. Another method of validation, and improvement, of these models is to compare them with reconstructions of climatic and land use change driven hydrological and ecological changes of the past. As with any model data comparison, a crucial requirement for meaningful comparison is explicit estimates of uncertainties in the model fields as well as the reconstructions. For example, detailed reconstructions of past environmental response to climatic forcing in mountainous regions provide an excellent test for the applicability of plant functional types to a wide range of background climatic situations. In return, plant functional type definitions can provide an excellent method for streamlining the biospheric interactions components of paleoclimate models. These models are often run for much longer periods of time than modern climate simulations and, as such, require that computational efficiency be maximized at the expense of species level detail. 3. Environmental-change-related process studies in mountain environments, in particular along altitudinal gradients and in associated headwater basins. There are well established PAGES programs in reconstructing, for example, treeline, permafrost occurrence, species occurrence and Equilibrium Line Altitude. Similarly, high alpine lacustrine sediments, because of the relative lack of anthropogenic influences, comprise a core PAGES proxy record. In identifying environmental change processes along altitudinal gradients, attention should be paid to the added value provided by an accurate reconstruction of the long term past behavior of the system. Assessing the lag times associated with ecotone response to environmental change is an area of active research within PAGES. 4. Development of scaling and regionalization methods for mountain regions. The connections between catchment scale dynamics and global climatic change is far from trivial. It is a connection that has been particularly intensely studied within the paleoclimate community because of the point source nature of paleoclimate proxy data. In addition, the paleoclimate record allows comparisons across a staggering temporal and spatial array of sites. For example paleoclimatic tree line reconstructions for the past 100,000 years from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego are being produced as part of the PAGES PEP I program. It is exactly such spatial and temporal syntheses which can begin to provide the full spectrum of information required to asses of scaling and regionalization methods in mountain regions. 5. Development of strategies to ensure sustainable development in mountain regions, and to avoid or mitigate damaging effects of disastrous events. Many mountains of the world have a long history of human influence. In the alps there is at least a 50,000 year history of human habitation with strong human impacts beginning to be seen in paleoclimate records around 5,000 years ago. In the Andes human habitation has been marked by dramatic oscillations, often in concert with climatic and ecosystem changes, and has a record reaching back some 10,000 years. There is a strong relationship between the natural environment in Holocene times and human activities. The interaction and feedbacks between human activities, land use, climatic and environmental change, and disastrous events is recorded in paleorecord. Reconstructing and understanding these interactions in the past can provide an important tool for understanding how to create strategies for human security in the face of climatic variability and environmental change in the future. __________________________________ "Global Change Research in Mountain Regions" Proposal for an IGBP/IHDP Implementation Plan Executive Summary Rationale Mountain regions occupy about one-fifth of the Earth's surface. They are home to approxi-mate-ly one-tenth of the global population and provide goods and services to about half of hu-manity. Accordingly, they received particular attention in "Agenda 21", endorsed at UNCED. Chapter 13 of this document focuses on mountain regions, and states: "Mountain environments are essential to the survival of the glob-al ecosystem. Many of them are experiencing degradation in terms of accelerated soil ero-sion, landslides, and rapid loss of habi-tat and genetic diversity. Hence, proper management of moun-tain resources and socio-economic development of the people deserves immediate action." Moreover, mountain regions often provide unique opportunities (sometimes the best on Earth) to detect and analyse global change processes and phenomena: 1) Due to the often strong altitudinal gradients in mountain regions, meteorological, hy-dro-logical (including cryospheric), and ecological conditions (in particular ve-ge-tation, soil, and related conditions) change strong-ly over relatively short distances. Consequently, bio-di-ver-sity tends to be high, and characteristic sequences of eco-systems and cryospheric systems are found along mountain slopes. The bound-aries be-tween these systems (e.g., ecotones, snowline, and glacier boundaries) experience shifts due to environmental change and thus can be used as indicators; some can even be observed at the global scale by remote sensing. 2) Many mountain ranges, particularly their higher parts, are not affected by direct human activities. These areas include many na-tional parks and other protected, "near-natural" environments. They may serve as locations where the environmental impacts of climate change alone, including changes in atmospheric chemistry, can be studied directly. 3) Mountain regions are distributed all over the globe, from the Equator almost to the poles and from oceanic to highly continental climates. This global distribution allows us to per-form comparative regional studies and to analyse the regional differentiation of environ-mental change processes as characterized above. Accordingly, mountain regions are of particular significance for global change research. A Joint IGBP/IHDP Initiative Recognising the significance of mountain regions for global change re-search, the IGBP core projects BAHC and GCTE, together with START/SASCOM, organised a workshop in Kath-man-du, Nepal (March/April 1996), which resulted in IGBP Report #43: "Predicting Global Change Impacts on Mountain Hydrology and Ecology". This report was complemented by documents from two follow-up meetings: a LUCC Work-shop on "Dynamics of Land Use/Land Cover Change in the Hindukush-Hi-malayas" in Kath-man-du, Nepal (April 1997), and the "European Conference on Environ-men-tal and Societal Change in Mountain Regions" in Oxford, UK (December 1997). The reports from these meetings served as the basis for developing a draft implementation plan on "Global Change Research in Mountain Regions" at a joint IGBP/IHDP (BAHC, GCTE, LUCC, PAGES) workshop in Pontresina, Switzerland (16-18 April 1998). Fifteen experts at-tend-ed the workshop, sponsored mainly by the Swiss Academy of Natural Sciences (SANW). In the implementation plan, the need for interdisciplinary environmental change research in mountain regions involving both natural and social scien-tists is emphasized. Thus, in addition to the IGBP and IHDP core projects mentioned above, IDGC and GECHS (IHDP) as well as START and its regional programmes should join the group of collaborators. Objectives The IGBP/IHDP Initiative on Global Change Research in Mountain Regions is based on an "integrated approach" for observing (detect-ing, monitoring), modelling and investigating global change phenomena and processes in moun-tain regions, including their impacts on ecosystems and socio-economic systems. Both en-vironmental aspects - in particular land use/ land cover changes and climate change - and socio-economic aspects - in particular social, economic, and political driving forces and changes - as well as their complex interactions and interdependencies will be taken into account in their mountain-specific forms. The ultimate objectives of the approach are: o to develop a strategy for detecting signals of global environmental change on mountain en-vi-ron-ments; o to define the consequences of global environmental change for mountain regions as well as low-land systems dependent on mountain resources; and o to develop sustainable land, water, and resource management strategies for mountain re-gions at local to regional scales. It is understood that, at least in the coming decades, socio-economic changes are likely to be at least as important as en-vi-ron-men-tal changes in mountain regions. The environmental changes may significantly threat-en sustainable development in these regions, and both environmental and socio-eco-nomic changes may reduce the ability of these regions to pro-vide critical goods and services to society in the mountains as well as downstream and else-where; for instance, in terms of wa-ter and energy supply, biodiversity, attraction to tourists, and measures to avoid or mitigate damaging effects of disastrous events (floods, debris flows). Research Activities The implementation plan for global change research in mountain regions is structured around the following five overarching themes: 1) Long-term observation systems to detect and analyse signals of global change, as the moun-tain-specific component of the Global Observing Systems (in particular GTOS/ GCOS/GHOST/FRIENDS) 2) Integrated modelling framework for analysis, vulnerability assessment and predictive studies, including the development of scaling and regionalisation methods for mountain regions 3) Environmental-change-related mountain specific process studies, in particular along altitudinal gradients and in associated headwater basins 4) Development of strategies to ensure sustainable development in mountain regions, and to avoid or mitigate damaging effects of disastrous events. Below, more details are given on these topics and their implemen-ta-tion. Activity 1: Long-term observation systems to detect signals of global change Due to their continuous exposure to extreme environmental conditions, mountain ecosystems have developed well-adapted but often sensitive forms of life which respond in characteristic ways to continuous and/or abrupt environmental changes. Accordingly, the record of events that have influ-enced the dynamics of mountain systems is archived in glacier deposits, lake sediments, wetlands, tree rings, vegetation patterns and structure, and also in glacial ice. Actually, the cryosphere, due to its sensitivity to environ-mental changes, represents a valuable, widely observed indicator of global change. Moreover, mountain ecosystems are not only useful to follow past and present environmental changes, but can also serve as reference sites for comparison with changes in lowland eco-systems which are under more complex pressures. Activity 1 will therefore consider indicators that define signals of change in atmospheric inputs and the associated responses of mountain systems. It will be accomplished through the coordi-na-tion of ongoing research (supported by various national funding agencies and, e.g., the Euro-pean Commission) and, where required, the initiation of new projects in mountain regions around the world. Wherever possible, long-term observation of these indicators will build on ex-isting struc-tures and networks (e.g., high mountain field stations, biosphere reserves, gauged water-sheds), equating to level 3 of the Global Hierarchical Observation system GHOST. Prox-imity to sites within the network of the World Glacier Monitoring Service will also be envisaged. Sets of indicators are proposed both for the study of direct cause-effect relationships in individ-ual systems, and also to follow changes that derive from the complex interactions of different drivers of global change. The indicators fall into the following three groups: o snow and ice (cryosphere): seasonal snow, snow chemistry, permafrost, and glaciers; o water balance components (precipitation, runoff, evapotranspiration) and lake dynamics; o vegetation, fauna, and soils: short-, medium-, and long-term changes, typically based on a permanent plot approach. These indicators have been chosen based on the current understanding of the processes deter-min-ing the dynamics of mountain systems. However, our understanding of these processes is in-complete, and more detailed studies are desirable to refine the definition of suitable indicator variables. Ecological and hydrological experiments can be very valuable in this respect (see Activity 3 below). Tasks under this activity will concern studies of the cryosphere, plant communities and soils, Alpine aquatic ecosystems and water balance components as well as interrelations between the different characteristics. Activity 2: Integrated modelling framework for analysis and predictive studies Modelling is an important tool for synthesizing and analysing field data, for making sensitivity analyses, including vulnerability assessments, and ultimately for studying in a predictive mode the effects of global change on mountain regions. Cor-re-sponding to the integrated approach outlined above, it is necessary to develop and provide for wider application a frame-work allowing the analysis and predictive studies of hydrological and ecologi-cal characteristics and their linkages in mountain regions under changing climatic and land co-ver/use conditions. As a specific step towards this end, models of terrestrial ecosystems and coupled hydrological systems dynamics will be tested and applied along altitudinal gradients and in associated headwater basins in different mountain regions, based on either existing or new transects. These transects should meet the following requirements: o extending across several vegetation zones; o including both continuous changes and thresholds of ecosystem properties; o designed similarly across different mountain regions; o including a large number of sampling sites. These activities are focused towards the development and application of predictive regional mod-els of mountain landscapes that incorporate the dynamics of ecosystem structure, bio-geo-chemistry, hydrology, and land cover/use. This will involve the resolution of a number of chal-lenges, including linking models of ecosystem structure with biogeochemistry and hydro-logy; handling the interactions between different plant life forms; and explicit modelling of the changes of land cover/use and their interactions with regional-scale ecosystem dynamics. Ecosystem models will be selected or developed for the appropriate scales and major questions of interest. They will utilise data from study sites with the most complete and long-term data sets. As quantitatively-structured expressions of existing knowledge, models must be evaluated rigorously, and evolve to answer new questions or address the changing needs of resource managers. They must effectively consider scaling issues in both temporal and spatial do-mains, recognising that: o extrapolation across scales is rarely linear in ecosystems; o establishing background levels of variability requires a consideration of several scales; o the dynamics of emergent properties are scale-sensitive. Consequently, research programmes need to have a standardised design that can be adapted to spe-cific ecosystems while retaining enough common elements to permit cross-site comparisons at dif-ferent scales of interest. Within such core data sets, several types of scaling will be con-sid-ered: o spatial: plots to mountain ranges, with an emphasis on nested watersheds; o temporal: hourly fluxes to century-long trends, depending on the hydrological or ecological process under consideration; o ecological: individuals to trophic levels. Two tasks were identified to be specifically addressed: "Integrated regional modelling" and "scaling and regionalisation" Activity 3: Mountain specific process studies along altitudinal gradients and in associated headwater basins Ecological and hydrological experiments, par-ticu-larly manipulative ones, along altitudinal gra-di-ents and in high-elevation catchments will pro-vide valuable data on the potential responses of moun-tain ecosystems to human-induced global change, as well as increasing understanding of the biotic feedbacks that accompany environ-mental change and influence ecosystem function and hydrological processes. Thus, this re-search will provide information for developing and testing process-based models of mountain ecosystems; it will help to refine the se-lec-tion of indi-ca-tors men-tioned above, and to de-fine additional sensitive indicators of global change. Recognising that the agents of global change vary regionally, these studies should stress the most important environmental forcing factors for different regions, and be used to determine the sen-si-tivity of ecological and hydrological systems to these factors. The spatial scale will vary from studies along extended altitudinal gradients and whole catchment analyses to the plot level, de-pending on the factor of concern, the goal of the study, and the available resources. Basic research themes to be addressed in these studies will include: o evaluation of the links between biological diversity and ecosystem function, especially along altitudinal gradients; o tracer studies of stream- and baseflow, to identify and trace sources and flowpaths of water; o topographically-based modelling of runoff, soil moisture, and vegetation dynamics. This work will be linked to research focusing on two forcing factors of global change: o climate change: meteorological monitoring and synthesis; climate manipulations of eco-sys-tems; altitudinal gradients as a proxy for climate change; stream chemistry as an indi-ca-tor of global change; o increases in nitrogen deposition: basic monitoring; fertilisation experiments; 15N pulse-chase experiments; d18O tracer experiments; snowmelt recharge of NO3- water. Tasks under this activity will focus on experiments, including manipulative ones, and on related small scale modelling studies of hydrological and ecological processes, and their interaction, being subject to environmental change, as well as on land cover/use development ensuring sustainable development and avoiding or mitigating disastrous effects of natural hazards. Activity 4: Strategies to ensure sustainable development An ultimate overall objective of this initiative is to develop sustainable land, water, and resource management strategies for mountain regions. Activities pursuant to this objective will take place in mountain regions where global-scale driving forces are having the greatest impacts, in order to develop regional-scale strategies for mitigation and adaptation. A primary task will be to identify potentially unsustainable trajectories in land and/or water resources that are partially driven by global change and portend threats to the ability of specific regions to support current and future livelihoods. Three priorities are suggested for assessment: o changes in forest area and/or composition and structure, with implications for agricul-ture, rates of erosion and magnitude of floods, and biodiversity; o intensification and/or extensification of agriculture (including grazing), with implications for food security, rates of erosion and magnitude of floods, and biodiversity; o change in water regimes due to factors such as changing agricultural practices, increas-ing temporary or permanent population, and/or increasing energy generation, with implications for downstream water supply, energy availability, flooding, and sediment transfer. Work on these linked themes must involve local people in defining and implementing research, recognising the complementarity between local knowledge and scientific investigation: o evaluating optimal combinations of traditional and innovative resource management systems, in order to ensure the stability and resilience of both natural and human-managed ecosystems and the conservation of biodiversity; o assessing appropriate institutional arrangements, based on understanding of traditional arrangements, the processes which contribute to changing them, and the alliances and interactions between mountain communities and interest groups at different levels; o evaluating economic instruments to achieve a new balance between production and the provision of societal benefits in relation to driving forces of global change, including climate change (especially changing frequencies of extreme events), migration, and the evolution of communication networks. Draft Implementation Plan Based on the above a draft implementation plan is under preparation which will be distributed to the international science community for consideration, comments and suggestions. Attachment Converted: "c:\eudora\attach\exec_sum.doc" Attachment Converted: "c:\eudora\attach\pag_contr.doc" ______________________________________________________________________________ Keith Alverson, Science Officer e-mail: alverson@pages.unibe.ch PAGES International Project Office Phone: +41 31 312 3133 Bärenplatz 2, CH-3011 Fax: +41 31 312 3168 Bern, Switzerland Internet: http://www.pages.unibe.ch/ ______________________________________________________________________________