MRI Community-Led Activities are primarily led by researchers, with the MRI Coordination Office supporting administration and communications.

MRI Working Groups

MRI Working Groups bring together individual researchers to address research questions and synthesize activities aligned with the MRI’s objectives. These Working Groups provide a platform for discussion, exchange, and research, with two-year work plans (with possible extensions) specifying planned peer-reviewed publications, conference presentations, or the compilation of data sets. These working groups are open to the community, and we encourage MRI network members to actively participate in their activities—especially early career researchers.

At present, the MRI has five working groups, which are also encouraged to cross-fertilize ideas and create synergies among them. These are:

  1. Mountain Social-Ecological Futures
  2. Elevation Dependent Climate Change
  3. Mountain Observatories
  4. Mountain Governance
  5. Mountain Resilience

Learn more about MRI Working Groups


Synthesis Workshops

These bring researchers together to address specific topics of interest to the mountain research community, supporting community-led ideas and generating outputs that respond to knowledge needs in their research and for policy. Seed funding is provided by the MRI Coordination Office to support these activities after annual calls for proposals. The active participation of early-career researchers and other underrepresented groups is encouraged and is part of the funding conditions for supporting these workshops in future.

Learn more about MRI Synthesis Workshops
 

MRI Co-PI/SLC-Led Incubators

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 2020–2022 objectives of GEO Mountains.



Local/Regional Exchanges

The effects of global environmental change are felt differently in local and regional contexts. Accordingly, aggregating data, information, and knowledge based on experiences and observations at these scales can pose methodological challenges when synthesizing and combining information for global assessments. This is key to consider, given how important it is to account for the local sociocultural contexts and conditions in each unique mountain region. Partnerships with local and regional and/ or thematic mountain networks are therefore crucial and will continue to be supported, not only to address global data and information needs but also to help enhance local capacity building and provide an exchange opportunity for researchers between different mountain regions, including South–South collaborations. The MRI has ongoing collaborations and partnerships with relevant networks and institutions in the Andes, Hindu-Kush-Himalaya, Caucasus, North America, Japan, Africa, and Europe, fostering exchange and dialogue that also link MRI members in these regions with global-scale activities. GEO Mountains will also provide a tangible and nodal role through which to further support these collaborations in future.

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