GLOCHAMORE (GLObal CHAnge in MOuntain REgions), a joint project of UNESCO–MAB and the Mountain Research Initiative (MRI) (Becker and Bugmann 2001) is funded under the European Union (EU) Sixth Framework program ‘Sustainable Development, Global Change and Ecosystems’ to develop and implement a strategy to detect signals of global environmental change in mountain environments across a network of observation sites in selected UNESCO–MAB Biosphere Reserves (MBRs; see the map of MBRs published in MRD vol 25 no 3, August 2005, p 283). Following the MAB Biosphere Reserves Integrating Monitoring concept (Lass and Reusswig 2002), these observations will involve both natural and socioeconomic systems (Lee and Schaaf 2004). The present article presents the recommendations of natural scientists and MBR managers based on a workshop held in Vienna, Austria, 9–10 May 2004, entitled “Long-term Monitoring and Analysis of Indicators of Environmental Change in Mountain Regions.”
The scope of the recommendations
The recommendations concern 1) cryospheric indicators related to snow cover, glaciers, permafrost, and solifluction processes; 2) indicators for freshwater ecosystems, their sediment record, and for watershed hydrology; and 3) indicators for terrestrial ecosystems, particularly plant communities and soil invertebrates. In view of resource limitations, 3 levels of observation are proposed:
Global change drivers and impacts in high mountain regions
Glaciers and permafrost react sensi tively to changes in atmospheric temperature because of their prox imity to the melting point. Warming during the 20th century, and its pronounced effects in the glacial and periglacial belts of mountains (Haeberli and Beniston 1998), cates an accelerating rate of change globally. If sustained, this may result, for example, in the disappearance of smaller mountain glaciers and the deep thaw of perenni ally frozen ground (eg Sonesson and Messerli 2002; Watson and berli 2004).
Alpine environments react sen sitively to climate change, and mod els (eg Walker et al 2001) forecast large reductions in the extent of alpine environments, up to 80% the Himalayas (Alcamo 1994) and 100% in the Australian Snowy Mountains (Pickering et al 2004). The main drivers of change in alpine environments are climate, land use, and N deposition (Sala al 2001; Walker et al 2001). Ecosys tem changes are likely to affect water yield and quality, and soil sta bility, factors which can evidently impact on local dwellers' livelihoods.
The selection of indicators
The indicators were selected on basis of their conceptual relevance, feasibility of implementation, response variability, and ease of interpretation and utility (Kurtz et al 2001; Grabherr and Pauli 2004).
The essential set of variables enables the detection of abiotic and biotic changes triggered by climate change, pollution, or land use change. Their measurement allows basic comparisons across MBRs and provides a fundamental input for complex studies. If requirements—be it with respect to selecting the essential variables or in relation to sampling design (eg number of sampling units, frequency)—are not met, inferences that can be made will be limited.
An improved set of variables allows a refined definition and understanding of the system studied and enables the elucidation of certain responses by phenomena and organisms to global change. Such a dataset requires more complex analytical techniques and expert knowledge than the essential one.
An optimum set of parameters allows integration across systems (atmosphere, cryosphere, hydrosphere, terrestrial ecosystems). Such a comprehensive dataset enables the analysis of the impacts of global change on biotic and abiotic interactions such as biodiversity, food webs, or on energy and element budgets.
General data requirements
Common to the studies concerned is the need for background data on atmospheric variables that determine climate and weather (Table 1). In addition, ancillary data such as terrain data (digital elevation models) and remotely sensed imagery are required. In combination with geographical information systems, such data form a basis for spatial integration.
Special data requirements
CRYOSPHERE
Snow, ice, and perennially frozen ground have contrasting indicator values for detecting environmental change, and differing functions in ecosystems. Cryospheric changes are being recorded as part of global climate-related observing systems (Haeberli et al 2002; Harris et al 2003).
Snow
The measurement of snow depth is an essential requirement in a long-term study to detect changing patterns in snow distribution and in corresponding changes in permafrost distribution, vegetation, and meltwater yield.
Most ground-based snow recording networks with daily measurements operate near settlements, roads or railways for avalanche or road condition forecasting. Weekly or monthly snow cover data (depth and water equivalent) are available from regions where hydropower generation, agriculture or water supply are of importance. Few remote mountain areas have automatic measurements of snow depth and long-term (>50 years) datasets are rare. Remote sensing is used in some areas to map snow cover. However, as such maps use modeled latitudinal and altitudinal gradients, they require field verification.
Glaciers
Glaciers are reliable indicators of integrated long-term climatic changes. The observations made by the Global Terrestrial Network on Glaciers (Haeberli et al 2000) include regular data on glacier changes (volume, length) by using a combination of field measurements, remote sensing, and modeling. Glacier mass changes at the regional level are recorded by using index stakes, combined with repeat field mapping, repeat stereo photogrammetry, or air-borne laser scanning (Kaser et al 2003).
The World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS, http://www.geo.unizh.ch/wgms/) collects detailed data on mass balance changes from 15 glaciers worldwide, and about 60 glaciers are being observed at a lesser intensity for regional signals. The distribution of the observed glaciers is uneven among climate zones and mountain ranges. The GLOCHAMORE project offers an opportunity to rectify this by including in the WGMS network all MBRs with major glaciers (eg Gurgler Hauptkamm, Austria, and Huascarán, Peru).
Permafrost
Climate-induced changes deep in the perennially frozen alpine slopes and rock walls have a large time lag because of the slow diffusion of heat at depth, and the thawing of permafrost continues long after the surface soil and rocks have defrosted. Mountain permafrost is often only a few degrees below zero, and as a result, reacts sensitively to warming. The response, however, is difficult to predict as it depends on surface cover (especially snow depth and duration), the nature of the substratum (eg bedrock, coarse debris, or soil) and on ground ice contents. A first result of permafrost thaw is the increased surface instability of mountain slopes (Harris et al 2001; Noetzli et al 2003; Gruber et al 2004). A Global Terrestrial Network for Permafrost (GTN-P) of the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS; Burgess et al 2000) is collecting data on permafrost, including a series of 7 100-m-deep boreholes in bedrock along a latitudinal transect across Europe (Harris et al 2001).
Recommendations
In GLOCHAMORE we propose a basic protocol applied across the relevant MBRs, with the option to collect additional data for scientific and local management needs. Data requirements for cryospheric variables are listed in Table 1.
MOUNTAIN WATERS
Water links and integrates landscape and catchment elements and is a crucial resource for ecosystems and human societies. Freshwater systems are sensitive to a range of global change impacts, such as climate warming, deposition of nutrients and pollutants, increase in UV radiation and CO2.
Lakes
Lakes, at the bottom of catchments, integrate all inputs. This is important for understanding the cumulative impact of upslope processes (Psenner 2002; Burt 2003). Lake-bottom deposits enable one to make inferences about the resilience, vulnerability, adaptation, or recovery of biotic and abiotic components of aquatic systems in relation to disturbances (eg rapid climate change, changes in catchment vegetation, human impact, acidification) at a range of timescales that go well beyond available long-term studies. Moreover, sediment studies enable the establishment of baseline conditions (eg for weathering rates, atmospheric pollution, trophic status)—a prerequisite for management scenarios and monitoring. The combination of measured data and historical records provides a powerful instrument for studying global change impacts in an integrative manner (terrestrial and aquatic processes) at the catchment scale. For these reasons, sediment studies should form part of the GLOCHAMORE approach.
Watercourses
Streams and rivers, unlike lakes, are highly dynamic and respond rapidly to changes in the hydrological cycle. Numerous hydrological stations measure discharge and water quality at the catchment outlets, providing information about their overall chemical budgets. There is a good knowledge of the biology of rivers and of benthic invertebrates, macro-algae and protozoa, and information on biofilms (eg Battin et al 2001) in alpine streams is increasing rapidly. All these make watercourses amenable to indicating global change impacts in mountain catchments.
Detailed methodology is available (eg MOLAR Water Chemistry Group 1999) for physico-chemical parameters (eg atmospheric deposition, water chemistry, meteorology) and biota (eg plankton, macro-invertebrates, bacteria) in mountain lakes (Wathne et al 1995; Wathne and Hansen 1997; Patrick and Flower 1999; Battarbee et al 2002; Battarbee et al 2003) and streams (Brittain and Milner 2001).
Recommendations
As an essential set, we suggest the recording of precipitation, discharge at the catchment (or lake) outlet, water temperature, pH, conductivity, and epilithic diatoms in lakes and water courses (Table 2). Pilot studies should decide whether a single representative catchment can be found for a MBR, or whether the study of more than one catchment is required.
TERRESTRIAL ECOSYSTEMS
The literature on the methodology of studying changes in species and populations of plants and animals is extensive (eg Elzinga et al 2001). Well-established systematic long-term observation studies, such as GLORIA for alpine environments (Pauli et al 2004), or the UK Environmental Change Network (Brooker and Turner 2004) contain elements of a broadly applicable scheme. The generic criteria and indicators developed by the Centre for International Forestry Research (Prabhu et al 1999) for sustainable forest management seem readily adaptable to the needs of long-term observations in montane forests in MBRs. The combination of methods developed in GLORIA, with methods available for soils and soil-dwelling invertebrates (eg Kaufmann 2004) and for forest ecosystems, offers a methodological basis for studying long-term responses of terrestrial ecosystems to climate change in MBRs. The study of invertebrates can greatly improve our understanding of the nature and functioning of the trophic web. However, their inclusion requires careful evaluation of available expertise and budget constraints (Kaufmann 2004).
Recommendations
Vegetation and land use maps at the MBR-scale (Table 3) are essential. At the improved level, qualitative and some quantitative information on features indicating climate, pollution and land use impacts is required. At the optimum level, detailed ecological studies on changes in species cover/abundance and ecosystem functioning are the target.
Conclusions and outlook
The proposed network of MBRs includes countries with different economic capacities and cultural traditions. In addition to economic and logistic considerations, such as financial support from the local government and the availability of local expertise in the host country, successful implementation necessitates that decisions observe local cultural heritage.
From the outset, sufficient attention should be paid to the details of hypothesis formulation, survey design (eg ad hoc sampling versus proper probability sampling), data quality, and statistical power (Legg and Nagy 2005). An essential criterion is that the resources allocated to a study are adequate and a mechanism is in place to ensure that a sufficiently high standard is maintained, ie the capability to reject a false null hypothesis with reasonable power (eg Peterman 1990). If resources are limited to such an extent that the estimated power is inadequate, then it is necessary to decide whether to proceed or to abandon the study altogether, as there is little point in financing a program that cannot reject a null hypothesis that is false (Manley 1992).
It is essential for all the proposed studies that the ultimate aim is not only the detection of change per se but rather the detection of changes which indicate departures in the state(s) of the system(s) studied—and other connected systems—large enough to yield new qualities. For example, the change in the glacier mass balance becomes of major interest once it is related to the anthropogenic system, eg water supply, or through hazards resulting from permafrost thaw or glacier lake outbursts. Equally, while from the point of view of biodiversity, changes in species composition in some research plots above the treeline are important, for ecosystem functioning we need to understand how changes in vegetation structure affect soil stability and processes, and hydrological properties which, in a cumulative manner, affect resource use by humans.
Cause and impact are becoming increasingly difficult to separate as natural systems are being increasingly altered by the accumulated results of human activities (Orr 2004). There is a strong need to develop interdisciplinary approaches that combine social and natural sciences to understand the nature–society system and its responses to change (Parr et al 2003). The impacts of global change cannot be studied without a collaborative approach by the various disciplines of the natural sciences on the one hand, and most importantly, without full integration between the natural sciences and the socioeconomic disciplines, on the other. Integration, which includes end users such as MBR managers, is required to ensure that the scientific data collected find application in assisting management decisions. GLOCHAMORE has a work group on social monitoring of global change in mountain regions, the work of which has been reported recently (Price 2004).
Monitoring of human impacts, combined with long-term studies of natural systems, offers a start in the direction of integrated studies. Through monitoring one can design a scheme to target indicators that are driven by human action, and MBR managers can set threshold values (eg for sustainability), which can be met by management. However, a fully integrated manner of studying the nature–society system will entail finding common denominators and coining a new language understandable to both the natural and social sciences. The GLOCHAMORE project strives to support such progress. An integrated approach to the long-term study of the complex interactions of natural and societal (socioeconomic) drivers and impacts of global change in mountain regions was discussed at the GLOCHAMORE open science conference in October 2005.
Acknowledgments
The Mountain Research Initiative funded the writing of this article. The authors thank G. Greenwood and two anonymous referees for their comments on the manuscript. The participants in the Workshop were: R. Bradley, J.-P. Dedieu, W. Haeberli, C. Harris, A. Kääb, G. Kaser, C. Marty and J. Sanchez Gutierrez (Cryosphere Work Group); R. Brooker, J.-J. Brun, H. Bugmann, M. Cortes, G. Grabherr, D. Hohenwallner, R. Kaufmann, C. Klettner, L. Nagy, H. Pauli, Y. Raftoyannis, L. Sarmiento, T. Schaaf, B. Sieg and E. Spehn (Terrestrial Work Group); A. Becker, L. Camarero, S. Lange, A.F. Lotter, L. Mandalia, A. Marchetto, R. Psenner, and B. Tomasetti (Hydrology Work Group).
REFERENCES
TABLE 1
Recommended features and their sampling frequency and methods for the recording of atmospheric, snow, glacier, and permafrost properties in UNESCO-MAB Mountain Biosphere Reserves. C, cryosphere; H, hydrosphere; T, terrestrial ecosystems
TABLE 2
Recommended features and their sampling frequency for the recording of physical, chemical, and biological properties in water courses and water bodies in UNESCO-MAB Mountain Biosphere Reserves.
TABLE 3
Recommended features and their sampling frequency to be recorded in terrestrial ecosystems in UNESCO-MAB Mountain Biosphere Reserves.
