These provide seed funding to groups of MRI Co-PIs and MRI Science Leadership Council (SLC) members to lead research synthesis activities and publications, providing incentives and support for Co-PIs/SLC members to lead and generate ideas that inspire research agendas or to create MRI Working Groups. The MRI SLC consists of a cohort of leading senior researchers in diverse fields, appointed to two-year terms with the possibility of extending their term. They convene at annual meetings as MRI Governing Body members to discuss strategic interests, create synergies, and coordinate activities, facilitated by the MRI Coordination Office.
At the most recent meeting, which took place in early March 2020 near Geneva, Switzerland, the MRI SLC cohort for 2020–2021 defined new SLC-led incubator activities.
These activities target, respectively, mountain-specific syntheses of telecoupling and paleoscience in mountain social-ecological systems. Telecoupling refers to the socioeconomic and environmental interactions and flows between distant yet coupled human and natural systems, such as natural resources, people, or financial capital (Hull and Liu 2018). This SLC-led activity links to and exchanges with similar thematic initiatives in other networks, such as the Global Land Program. Findings are also expected to complement and support the work of the MRI Mountain Governance Working Group.
The second SLC-led incubator looks at paleoscience and the identification of data and information proxies of past changes in mountain social-ecological systems worldwide. This activity looks to revisit and revive efforts already started as part of the MRI’s earlier proposals on building and integrating paleoscience in mountain observations, envisaging close exchange and interactions with members in the Past Global Changes network. This also complements the activities of the MRI Elevation Dependent Climate Change and Mountain Observatories Working Groups and provides a valuable contribution to the 2023–2025 objectives of GEO Mountains.
