Community Projects

The beautiful, biodiversity-rich mountain systems of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region provide vital water catchment services for the region’s fast-growing population. But climate change, alien invasive species and over-grazing are degrading these mountains and making it harder for them to act as water towers for lowland agriculture, towns and cities. If action isn’t taken now the consequences could be catastrophic for hundreds of millions of people.

African Mountain Research Foundation is a UK registered charity set up to help safeguard these fragile mountain systems by enhancing field research, supporting landscape conservation and restoration programmes, and improving national and regional policy-making.

SoilTemp is a global network building a database of microclimate time series and associated biodiversity data for use in ecology. GEO Mountains is supporting this initiative to increase the global coverage of microclimate monitoring in mountain regions across the globe. See here for an update on recent progress. 

CSO is a NASA-funded citizen science campaign to measure snow. The project aims to improve our understanding of snow depth variability in mountainous regions.

We need community-based observers, including backcountry professionals and recreationists, to help gather snow observations. "On the ground" measurements aid interpretations of satellite and airborne snow measurements collected by NASA and other agencies. 

The Canadian Mountain Assessment (CMA) is advancing an innovative, made-in-Canada approach to knowledge assessment that brings together Indigenous and Western ways of knowing to address three fundamental questions: what do we know, not know, and need to know about Canada’s diverse and rapidly changing mountain systems? 

The final assessment report will provide a first-of-its-kind look at the state of knowledge of Canada’s mountains, including the relative scope of knowledge across topics and geographies, based on diverse lines of evidence. The CMA provides a platform for connecting and mobilizing researchers, practitioners, and Indigenous Peoples with knowledge of mountains, and is therefore also helping to catalyze a community of practice related to mountains in Canada.

African montane forests are biodiversity-rich, unique ecosystems that provide numerous benefits to human beings at both local and regional scales: water, timber, firewood and building materials, medicinal plants, wild fruits and honey, among others. 

They also play an important role in hazard prevention, climate modulation, carbon sequestration and lowland water and food security.

In order to achieve the requirements of the Natural World Heritage, the monitoring of the territory was established in cooperation with the Centre for Development and Environment (CDE) of the University of Bern. 

Its target is to indicate social and environmental changes in the World Heritage Region. 

This initiative operates in the Northwestern portion of the Municipality of Quito, Ecuador, in a montane forest landscape that covers 124,000 ha and spans an elevational range from 400 to 4,700 m a.s.l.

The area has high diversity and endemism, as it sits in the transition of the Choco-Magdalena and Tropical Andes biodiversity hotspots.

A faster tropical upper-tropospheric warming is having a negative impact on the overall integrity of páramo environments.

The goal of our long-term, multi-tiered research project is to deepen our understanding of the function and importance of these environments and assess the best suite of adaptation strategies for their conservation.

The project Eco4Alps will develop 6 Earth Observation based services that respond to common challenges related to ecosystem mapping and monitoring in the Alpine region: ecosystem mapping, forest disturbance, forest phenology, forest fire recovery, grassland management and grassland abandonment. 

These services will address the specific requirements of key national, regional and international stakeholders active in the monitoring of Alpine ecosystems, including the Mountain Research Initiative and the Alpine Convention.

Montesinho Natural Park is one of the largest natural parks in the Iberian Peninsula. 

It is located in the northeast of Portugal in a mountainous area characterized by extensive biodiversity, magnificent landscapes, and one of the largest patches of black oak in Europe.

Alpine Treelines Online is a community-based information facility for alpine treeline research.

It includes treeline information resources and maps, as well as tools and protocols for collecting and analysing data for studying treeline spatial patterns and dynamics.

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