Mountain Sessions at EGU 2024

Details: Category: MRI News; Published: 28 February 2024

The 2024 General Assembly of the European Geosciences Union (EGU) takes place in Vienna, Austria and online, from 14–19 April 2024. This event includes confirmation of several exciting, mountain-related sessions, including many convened by representatives of the MRI. The deadline for early bird registration is 18 March 2024.

The EGU General Assembly 2024 brings together geoscientists from all over the world to one meeting covering all disciplines of the Earth, planetary, and space sciences. The EGU aims to provide a forum where scientists, especially early career researchers, can present their work and discuss their ideas with experts in all fields of geoscience. Find out more on the EGU website.

MRI-Endorsed Sessions

ITS3.4/NH13.4 Navigating socio-ecological systems in mountain regions and beyond: addressing land use change, water resources, and global change adaptation

Convener: Carolina Adler | Co-conveners: Herlin Chien, Maddalena Pennisi, Diana Pascual Sanchez, Noemí Lana-Renault, Sven Fuchs, Margreth Keiler

Landscapes and land use change dynamics taking place over centuries have resulted in considerable environmental change conditions in many places worldwide, posing challenges for regional sustainability and resilience to climate and global change. However, these intricate social-ecological systems, such as mountains, watersheds and beyond, can also serve as natural laboratories through which an understanding of global change processes can be enhanced, as well as promote opportunities for learning and implementing solutions to address these challenges. In this inclusive EGU session, we delve into the complexity of diverse environments and their changes, emphasizing the heterogeneous landscapes shaped by traditional activities over centuries. A primary focus of the session is the imperative for effective land management strategies in response to these challenges. The discussion encompasses the diverse impacts of land use and other processes of change on water resources and the critical need for adaptive strategies to mitigate environmental risks. Ecosystem services, including soil fertility, biomass provision, and biodiversity, play a pivotal role in the assessment of land management strategies, aiming to enhance resilience and reduce climate change risks. The interdisciplinary nature of mountains and other systems is underscored, recognizing the difficulties in adequately parameterizing complex terrain in models and the scarcity of high-elevation monitoring infrastructure, to name a few such constraints. We seek contributions that bridge disciplinary boundaries, incorporating empirical studies of mountain climate, cryosphere, ecology, hazards, and hydrology. Understanding socio-economic dimensions and risks is prioritized, integrating demographic changes, land-use alterations, and projections to understand hazards, vulnerability, and exposure interactions. This collaborative session provides a pivotal platform to advance knowledge, encourage interdisciplinary research, and design comprehensive strategies for sustainable management in mountains, watersheds, and other regions. It stands as a testament to the collective commitment to address the intricate challenges faced by these unique environments, fostering a holistic understanding of their dynamics under global change.

This session is endorsed by the Mountain Research Initiative and the Institute for Interdisciplinary Mountain Research of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

AS1.35 Mountain Weather and Climate

Co-organized by CL4
Convener: Stefano Serafin | Co-conveners: Maria Vittoria Guarino, Sven Kotlarski, Douglas Maraun, Anna Napoli

Mountains cover approximately one-quarter of the total land surface on the planet, and a significant fraction of the world’s population lives in their vicinity. Orography critically affects weather and climate processes at all scales and, in connection with factors such as land-cover heterogeneity, is responsible for high spatial variability in mountain weather and climate. Due to this high complexity, monitoring and modeling the atmosphere and the other components of the climate system in mountain regions is challenging both at short (meteorological) and long (climatological) time scales. This session is devoted to a better understanding of weather and climate processes in mountain and high-elevation areas around the globe, as well as their modification induced by global environmental change.

We welcome contributions describing the influence of mountains on the atmosphere on meteorological time scales, including terrain-induced airflow, orographic precipitation, land-atmosphere exchange over mountains, forecasting, and predictability of mountain weather. Contributions connected with the TEAMx research programme are encouraged.

Furthermore, we invite studies that investigate climate processes and climate change in mountain areas and its impacts on dependent systems, based on monitoring and modelling activities. Particularly welcome are contributions that merge various sources of information and reach across disciplinary borders (atmospheric, hydrological, cryospheric, ecological, and social sciences) and that connect to the Elevation-Dependent Climate Change (EDCC) Working Group of the Mountain Research Initiative.

CR1.5 Snow, ice, and water in a changing climate - Observations, processes, models, and societal impact

Co-organized by HS13, co-sponsored by WMO
Convener: Wolfgang Schöner | Co-conveners: Emily Potter, Tao Che, Owen King, Ethan Lee, Elias J. Deeb, Robyn Barbato

Climate change has a significant impact on the amount, spatial and temporal distribution of the cryosphere (snow, glaciers, permafrost) and the associated water resources in different regions of the world. Several studies show that the response of the cryosphere to climate change is not simply an effect of temperature change, but depends on several factors, such as geographic location (climate zone), latitude and regional atmospheric influences (e.g. interaction with synoptic-scale atmospheric currents). However, the observation capacities and process understanding of these interactions are quite different for the individual regions. For example, despite its great importance in mountain regions, a comprehensive inventory of snow in mountains on a global scale based on robust data is still lacking. Overcoming this research gap is one of the main motivations for the joint committee "Status of Snow Cover in Mountain Regions", a joint endeavour of IACS, WMO and the MRI.

The aim of the conference is to bring together the knowledge and experience of researchers from different regions of the world (e.g. mountains, Arctic) who are working on similar topics relating to climate-induced changes in the cryosphere. An expected outcome of the conference is therefore to take stock and present the current state of knowledge and identify research gaps that can guide future work. Given the overall importance of the cryosphere for ecology, economy and human life in general, researchers from different and also interdisciplinary fields are invited to contribute and these are encouraged for all regions of the world and using a variety of data sources and analytical methods (including modelling attempts, in situ observations, satellite products or reanalysis data).

HS2.1.4 Mountain hydrology under global change: monitoring, modelling and adaptation

Convener: Marit Van Tiel | Co-conveners: Andrea Momblanch , David Haro Monteagudo, Daniel Viviroli

Despite only representing about 25% of continental land, mountains are an essential part of the global ecosystem and are recognised to be the source of much of the world’s fresh water supply. A considerable part of the world’s population depends on this water supply, around 26% live directly in the mountains and 40% live downstream of rivers originating in the mountains. The large elevation ranges and the heterogeneity of elevation-dependent hydro-meteorological conditions make mountains particularly sensitive to climate variability and change, but therefore also unique areas for identifying and monitoring the effects of global change.

This session aims to bring together the scientific community doing hydrology research on mountain ranges across the globe to share results and experiences. Therefore, this session invites contributions addressing past, present and future changes in mountain hydrology due to changes in either climate and/or land use, how these changes affect local and downstream territories, and adaptation strategies to ensure the long-term sustainability of mountain ecosystem services, with a special focus on water cycle regulation and water resources generation. Example topics of interest for this session are:

Sources of information for evaluating past and present hydrological conditions (in either mountain surface and/or ground water systems)
Methods for differentiating climatic and anthropogenic drivers of hydrological change in the mountains.
Modelling approaches to assess mountain hydrological change.
Evolution, forecasting and impacts of extreme events.
Case studies on adaptation to changing mountain water resources availability.

BG3.26 Treeline ecotones under global change: linking spatial patterns to ecological processes

Convener: Matteo Garbarino | Co-conveners: Maaike Bader, Alessandro Vitali, Johanna Toivonen, Nicolò Anselmetto

Treeline ecotones are transition zones between closed forest and climatically tree-less areas. Due to their climate sensitivity they are considered sentinels of global-change effects on terrestrial ecosystems. Vegetation patterns in treeline ecotones are constrained by multiple factors acting at different spatial and temporal scales. Climatic treeline positions are strongly influenced by global- and regional-scale climatic patterns, but other factors such as soil, meso-topography, and natural and anthropogenic disturbances dominate patterns at the landscape scale. Moreover, species competition/facilitation and micro-topographic heterogeneity are key factors for vegetation dynamics at finer scales. A current trend in vegetation dynamics both at latitudinal and altitudinal treelines is the accelerated encroachment of trees and shrubs, caused by interactions between climate and land-use changes. This encroachment can have far-reaching consequences for the biodiversity and functioning of mountain and subarctic ecosystems. Spatial vegetation patterns likely hold important information about the factors and processes (e.g. seed dispersal, safe-site characteristics, biotic interactions) that control this encroachment, yet few of treeline research deals with the spatial component of patterns and processes. For this reason, it is crucial to improve our understanding of spatial processes and the spatial signals of global change impacts in treeline ecotones and there is a need for a multiscale and multidisciplinary approach, to plan better adaptation strategies and monitor biodiversity trends in such sensitive ecosystems and to better link treeline metrics to ecological questions. Specifically, remote sensing can be combined with field data and modeling to capture the heterogeneity and variability of ecological conditions in treeline ecotones and couple observed spatial patterns to ecological processes. In this session, we invite contributions from all fields of research related to either the detection and description of treeline spatial and temporal patterns or the processes that may be relevant for these patterns.

SPECIAL ISSUE ON BIOGEOSCIENCES JOURNAL: A special issue based on the session topic, is already scheduled and will be focused on observational and modeling studies conducted along the extreme climatic and ecological gradients at the latitudinal and elevational treelines of the globe. We encourage submissions from diverse disciplines including, remote sensing, geography, geochemistry, microbiology, soil sciences, geomorphology and climatology. The special issue is open to both BG3.26 session participants and external scientists.

SPM112 Joint Body on the Status of Mountain Snow Cover (MRI, WMO, GCW, IACS)

In-person splinter meeting for the Joint Body on the Status of Mountain Snow Cover (JB-SMSC) for all the attendees at EGU24. This Joint-Body is a collaboration between the International Association of Cryospheric Sciences (IACS), the Mountain Research Initiative (MRI), and the WMO Global Cryosphere Watch (GCW). In this meeting, we shall discuss progress and future activities on various topics related to the JB: global mountain inventory of in-situ snow observations, remote sensing climatological analysis, and more. Members of the JB are welcome to attend as well as any others who are interested in this endeavor.