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In light of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, announcements were issued in April 2020 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on the Sixth Assessment (AR6) reporting timelines for Working Groups (WGs) I and II, as well as new experiences with a virtual format for the WG III Third Lead Authors meeting.

The agri-food system is undergoing transformation as population rises and the demand for food (particularly animal food products) increases. This change necessarily entails a competition with other areas under development (such as urbanization, biofuel production, etc.) for resources like land and water, resulting in compromises and trade-offs due to a variety of priorities of all the many actors involved, like researchers, policy makers, private companies, NGOs, and more. Each actor may envision sustainability in ways that conflict with the others, creating clashing priorities.

The 2015 Belmont Forum call on Mountains as Sentinels of Change was aimed at fostering research on climate, environmental and related societal change in mountain regions by facilitating research with respect to drivers of change, ecosystems and biodiversity, water, hazards, vulnerability, risks, adaptation and resilience.  The awarded projects are coming close to their final stages.  

The MRI Working Group “Elevation-Dependent Warming” expands its scope of work to include climate processes in addition to warming, and therefore announces a name change to “Elevation-Dependent Climate Change”.

While the livelihood of mountain forests is threatened by increasing temperatures brought on by climate change, the topographic complexity of mountain areas (large variation of climate and soils in a small area due to differences in elevation and geographical aspect) might mitigate this impact, creating a natural protective buffer between the landscape and global warming. The degree of damage climate change may cause to mountain forests and the potential to reverse the damage, however, merits further research.

On the heels of the success of last year's '10 New Insights in Climate Science,' Future Earth once again invites expert input worldwide on which key findings should be included in this year's report via this survey before 8 May 2020

A special issue of the bilingual Journal of Alpine Research/Revue de Géographie Alpine ‘Eau, tourisme et montagne/Water, Tourism and the Mountain’, guest edited by Emmanuel Reynard, features five new papers that highlight ways in which the tourism sector in mountain regions is adapting to climate change.

Among these articles is one co-authored by MRI Science Leadership Council member Samuel Morin, titled ‘Snow Reliability and Water Availability for Snowmaking in the Ski resorts of the Isère Département (French Alps), Under Current and Future Climate Conditions,’ whose co-authors include Martin Gerbaux, Pierre Spandre, Hugues François, and Emmanuelle George.

Although snow’s role in mountain ecosystems is a vital one, research into snow cover changes and their potential consequences in mountain systems is lacking.

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