In early 2022, GEO Mountains launched 11 Task Groups. Collectively, the Task Groups spaned the full breadth of the GEO Mountains Implementation Plan – from helping contribute to our inventories and supporting nascent systematic mountain monitoring initiatives to developing training and capacity development resources (including ‘knowledge packages’) that seek to deliver the latest science into policy circles effectively. The overall objectives of each Task Group are summarised below.
Task Groups Objectives and Activities
Task Group 1.1 a. Developing, maintaining, and sharing a list of relevant gridded datasets and other tools
Objective: To contribute to the development of the GEO Mountains General Inventory by providing links to (and key metadata of) relevant, useful, important, free and open datasets.
Scope: A broad range of disciplines and themes, across all mountain regions globally (broadly/inclusively defined). The emphasis is on remotely sensed and modelled (i.e. gridded) datasets.
Task Group 1.1 b. Developing and maintaining a list of interdisciplinary in situ mountain observational infrastructure and associated datasets
Objective: To contribute to the development of the GEO Mountains In Situ Inventory by contributing metadata describing interdisciplinary mountain stations and infrastructure, as well as links to associated datasets. The group aims to add sites that are currently not in the inventory, as well as to add / improve / update information about sites that are already represented.
Scope: A broad range of disciplines and themes. Sites should be in mountainous terrain (broadly/inclusively defined).
Task Group 1.2. Contributing to a series of regional workshops / consultations
Objective: To contribute to the next phase of GEO Mountains community and stakeholder engagement work. Building upon virtual consultations help in 2021 and 2022, the group will help support GEO Mountains planned in person engagements in several mountain regions in 2023. These events will engage with data providers, seek to exploit existing data, support the establishment of regional Mountain Observatories, and contribute to capacity development. The events will also continue to seeks to establish the current “data landscape” in key mountain regions globally (data availability and user data needs), identify related outstanding barriers / challenges, and co-develop potential solutions.
Activities: Help plan and undertake a series of regional workshops / consultations.
Task Group 1.4 Contribute Knowledge Packages via GEO Mountains to the GEO Knowledge Hub (GKH), thereby making any relevant work / outputs more reproducible / extendable
Objective: To deliver “Knowledge Packages” pertaining to mountain-relevant applications to the GKH under the banner of GEO Mountains, and advocate for open and reproducible science (including as a basis for sound policy, decision making, and actions). An example can be found here.
Task Group 2.1. Analyse the extent to which data from mountain observatories are freely available, and which measurement protocols are followed
Objective: Once it is sufficiently populated, to analyze the GEO Mountains In Situ Inventory (metadata analysis) in order to establish the extent to in situ mountain datasets are shared, and whether established observation protocols are routinely applied in mountains. The group may also undertake the more ambitious tasks of seeking to identify the most critical data gaps (with respect to space, time, and elevation) for a wide range of interdisciplinary variables by means of a coverage analysis, which may be followed up by a set of recommendations for improving the situation.
Expected outcome: A scientific publication that extends the analysis of Thornton et al. (2022) to be more interdisciplinary and integrative of research-oriented sites.
Task Group 2.2. Contribute to the MRI’s existing Mountain Observatories (MOs) and Elevation Dependent Climate Change (EDCC) Working Groups to support the development of a Unified High Elevation Platform (UHOP) and a global network of Mountain Observatories
Objective: To identify opportunities for GEO Mountains to contribute to the activities of the two Working Groups, as well as to take on feedback from the WG to further improve GEO Mountains’ provision of datasets and services to the community (mainly the research community in this context).
Task Group 2.3. Contribute to a GEO Mountains workshop to identify Essential Mountain Societal / Socio-Economic Variables
Objective: To help continue work associated with the workshop held at the IMC2022 on identifying critical societal variables that should be monitored and obtained as priorities in order to track, understand and better predict the impacts of change (both climatic and societal) on mountain socio-ecological systems in an integrated sense.
Expected outcome: Scientific publication, with associated database.
Task Group 2.4. Develop a novel, global-scale spatial dataset (or datasets) related to mountain socio-ecological systems
Objective: To develop a novel spatial delineation of mountain socio-ecological systems. The resultant dataset(s) should help to fill key data gaps in the quest to characterise complex integrated mountain socio-ecological systems. The activity will be partly informed by the workshop organised in Task Group 2.3, as well as the outputs of other work on Essential Mountain Variables (e.g. EMCVs and Essential Biodiversity Variables in Mountains).
Scope: Extent should be global, but spatial resolution should also be sufficiently high to capture important local-scale variability driven by e.g. complex topography and other “mountain-specificities”.
Expected outcome: Novel dataset and associated scientific publication.
Task Group 2.5. Establish links with the paleoscience community to help ensure that paleodata pertaining to mountains are discoverable, accessible, and usable
Objective: To ensure that paleodata is sufficiently represented in the GEO Mountains General Inventory. The group seeks to strengthen the engagement of the paleoscience community, including with respect to applying provided mountain paleo datasets (e.g. mountain climate modelling or natural hazard quantification work).
Task Group 3.4. Develop educational, training materials and capacity building activities related to the drivers, processes, and impacts of environmental, ecological, and societal change in mountains
Objective: To lead and coordinate the development of education, training, and capacity building activities within the scope of GEO Mountains. Accordingly, the geographic emphasis is on (but not limited to) the focal regions of the Adaptation at Altitude programme.
Possible activities: Summer schools, online video series, course notes, workshops, “hackatons” etc.
Task Group 3.5. Applying existing data and information resources to respond to pre-identified assessment and policy needs
Objective: To ensure that GEO Mountains makes and coordinates relevant contributions of data, information and expertise to major global assessment exercises and policy agendas, e.g. the IPCC, IPBES, UNFCCC/Paris Agreement, UN Sustainable Development Goals/2030 Agenda and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, as well as more regional assessment efforts and related exercises.