Friday, 20 May 2011

• Workshops Taking Shape

  The biggest news for me personally is that I will be returning to China on Sunday 22 May 2011 as part of my on-going CAS Visiting Professorship. Unlike last year's trips, this one is lightning quick - just 10 days - to work with Prof. Yao and the ITP staff on the Science Plan for the Third Pole Environment Project. I'll be back on 2 June, but not back in the office until the following Tuesday, 7 June 2011. Yao tells me the weather in Beijing is nice right now. I am looking forward to seeing the Chinese capital in a season different from the summer monsoon or the early winter cold.

   

  I am pleased to announce that Dr. Pablo Lagos is now serving as MRI's Coordinator for Latin America, thanks to funding from the Swiss Development and Cooperation Agency through CONDESAN.  Pablo is a climatologist and has been working on climate change issues for years with the Geophysical Institute of Peru. He is mandated to develop further the ACT network between now and the end of 2012. We look forward to Pablo's work and also a renewed connection with Miguel Saravia and his colleagues at CONDESAN. You will soon see more information on the MRI website.  I hope soon to be able to make a similar announcement regarding MRI's Global Change Research Network for African Mountains.

   

  MRI has fixed the dates and locations for two of its Synthesis Workshops. The workshop on Building Resilience of Mountain Social-Ecological Systems to Global Change, developed in conjunction with Julia Klein at CSU and Anne Nolin at OSU, will occur on 12-16 September 2011 at Pingree Park, the mountain campus of Colorado State University. I remember Pingree Park from my graduate student days at CSU, and am looking forward to seeing the lodgepole pine forests of the Front Range again.

   

  The workshop on Urban Growth in High Mountains: Understanding the Process and Options for Management under Global Change, will be held in Nainital, Uttarakhand, India from 1 to 5 November 2011. This workshop has been developed by Prakash Tiwari of Kumaon University in Nainital, Manfred Perlik, from ETH but on his way to Université Joseph Fourier, and Bernard Charlery of Université de Toulouse2- Le Mirail.  Nainital is on the way to the Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve so I may need to take some time to get closer to the mountain, weather permitting.

   

  We continue to discuss the Mountain Ecosystem Service workshop with Ariane Walz of PIK-Potsdam, Sandra Lavorel of Université Joseph Fourier and Adrienne Grêt-Regemay. This workshop will probably occur in the fall of 2012 and probably in Europe, so we have some time yet to complete our planning.

   

  We are moving ahead with two Key Contact Workshops, one at the European Ecological Foundation meeting in Avila, Spain on 25 September which will be run by Astrid Björnsen,  our MRI-Europe Coordinator, and the other on 4 December 2011 in Berkeley just before the AGU meeting, run by me.

   

  The leaders of CIRMOUNT, the (mostly American) Consortium for Integrated Climate Research In Western Mountains, conferred by conference call on 12 May 2012, and approved Connie Millar's and Diane Delaney's advance work for the next MtnClim conference, which will occur in Estes Park Colorado in the first days of October 2012. MtnClim is really quite an excellent meeting, and it would be great if more Europeans could participate, which of course requires that the program be one to which European researchers can contribute. I have been keeping the French Science Attaché on Environment and Sustainable Development apprised of developments, as he expressed a particular interest. The CIRMOUNT group has yet to specify its themes but when it does, MRI will advertise it widely.

   

  We have also started to plan from MRI's Global Commission meeting in conjunction with IGBP Congress in London on 30 March 2012.  Wouter Buytaert of Imperial College London has graciously offered to host the meeting.The Global Commission meeting will be very similar to the Strategy Session that MRI held just aster the Perth Conference in September 2010. The Global Commission provides oversight of the Coordination Office activities, suggests new directions for MRI in the light on new opportunities, such as those to be discussed at the IGBP Congress, and carries MRI's agenda back into national and international research programs.

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