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A recap of news and activities from the MRI office for the month of July, including a visit to ICIMOD in Kathmandu, Nepal, to deliver inaugural lecture on Disater Risk and Water Management at the Himalayan University Consortium Academy 2017; activities related to the sixth assessment report cycle for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC); a call to the MRI community to contribute with views and feedback on newsletters and communications at MRI, and more....
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A warm welcome to our new staff at MRI
| The MRI grows! We are pleased to announce that the MRI office is now joined by two new staff members, Ms Grace Goss-Durant and Mr Christoph Bacher. Grace has been appointed as the new MRI Communications Manager, a professional with strong editorial skills and a proven track record in project management, planning, and production of communications materials for a variety of publications and online channels. With degrees in environmental social sciences, climate change & sustainable development and a postgraduate degree in creative writing, Grace will oversee MRI’s new communications strategy and implementation of key communication products to showcase the MRI’s research community contributions to science in the mountains. Christoph Bracher joins the MRI as Research Assistant. He holds a masters degree in environmental history and is currently completing a second masters degree in geography. At the MRI, he is contributing to research tasks related to MRI’s commitments under the Sustainable Mountain Development for Global Change program, engaging with key MRI regional partners in assessing the state of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and their application and relevance for mountain regions. We look forward to working with both Grace and Christoph and jointly work towards this new phase at MRI – Welcome! |
 Grace Goss-Durant |
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Ahead on the MRI agenda for mountain-related events in 2017
1. First authors meeting for the IPCC Special Report on Oceans and Cryospehere, Nadi, Fiji.
2. International Climbing and Mountaineering Federation’s (UIAA) General Assembly, Tehran, Iran.
November:
1. 6th International Symposium for Research in Protected Areas, Salzburg, Austria.
2. 15th Swiss Geoscience Meeting 2017 (SGM 2017), "Moving Boundaries", in Davos, Switzerland.
December:
1. ICIMOD's International Conference on Resilient Hindu Kush Himalaya: Developing Solutions towards a Sustainable Future for Asia.
2. MRI's Science Leadership Council meeting, Rome, Italy.
3. Mountain Partnership’s high-level conference on mountains “Mountains under Pressure”, at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in Rome, Italy.
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October has been a busy month for the MRI office! We've attended and participated in key international events, and taken some intense initial steps towards internal planning and strategy-building for the MRI's new focus from 2018 onwards.
On behalf of the MRI, Executive Director Dr. Carolina Adler attended a number of events in October. These included the IPCC's first authors meeting for the Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate (SROCC) held in Fiji and the General Assembly of the International Climbing and Mountaineering Federation (UIAA) held in Shiraz, Iran.
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The special issue, with guest co-editors Carolina Adler (MRI), Christian Huggel (University of Zurich), Anne Nolin (Oregon State University) and Ben Orlove (Columbia University), will be published in the journal Regional Environmental Change (REC), focusing on the impacts of climate change on the high-mountain cryosphere and downstream regions as well as response to these impacts.
Through this special issue, we seek to highlight contributions from the mountain research community in providing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on Oceans and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate (SROCC) assessment process with state-of-the-art knowledge and evidence for impacts and adaptation in mountain regions. For this reason, we strongly encourage the mountain research community to make their research known and accessible for this assessment process via this special issue. Paper proposals, as extended abstracts, are to be submitted to the guest editors by 1 August 2017.
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Huss, M., Bookhagen, B., Huggel, C., Jacobsen, D., Bradley, R., Clague, J., Vuille, M., Buytaert, W., Cayan, D., Greenwood, G., Mark, B., Milner, A., Weingartner, R., and Winder, M. (2017): Towards mountains without permanent snow and ice. Earth's Future, 5, doi:10.1002/2016EF000514.
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Articles in MRD often relate to the climate change debate at the core of the IPCC process currently gearing up for the 6th Assessment Report. Two papers in this open issue offer contrasting positions: one is critical and advocates a stronger local perspective (on mismanagement of irrigation water and landslips in Pakistan), the other uses the global perspective to discover patterns (in a review of climate change impacts on ecosystem services). Other papers deal with maize diversity and poverty reduction in Guatemala, offer a new approach to assessing tap water recharge in Japan, present a method for measuring bark biomass in Nepal, and assess the habitat ecology of a profitable but endemic resource in Tibet.
The issue is available online and open access:
http://www.bioone.org/toc/mred/37/2
Read about the journal’s section policies, guidelines, and submission procedure at:
http://www.mrd-journal.org/
The MRD Editorial Team
MRD Editorial Office, University of Bern, Centre for Development and Environment
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
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11-12 September, Crans-Montana, Switzerland
Climate change has global causes and effects. This conference addresses growing challenges and their consequences for fragile environments both in the high latitudes and high altitudes, focusing on the polar regions and the Alps. It brings together researches from natural and social sciences to facilitate dialogue among experts with the aim of comparing observations from these regions, tracing causal chains, and connecting the global and local scales of analysis. Problem-based issues such as biodiversity, urbanization, permafrost, health and risk management, structure the conference workshops.
The conference’s emphasis on links between local and global processes, as well as its interdisciplinary approach, also enable the promotion of academic and public awareness on the climate change mechanisms impacting familiar and distant locations.
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As part of its continuing education program, the University of Geneva proposes a new Certificate of Advanced Studies (CAS) called «Geomatics for a Sustainable Environment» in English. The instructor-led teachings will take place as a Geneva summer school from 4 to 15 September 2017.
Several tools, thematics and hands-on exercises covering GIS, Remote Sensing, Spatial Data Infrastructures, Geoprocessing, Geostatistics, Species Distribution Modeling, Soil and Water Assessment as well as Ecosystem Services Assessment will be presented, giving attendees an expertise or consolidated knowledge in geomatics and environmental fields. More details in the attachements…
