Raymond S Bradley

Department of Geosciences and Climate System Research Center

University of Massachussetts, USA

Elevation-dependent warming: evidence, mechanisms and research needs

Ray Bradley is a University Distinguished Professor in the Department of Geosciences and Director of the Climate System Research Center at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He did his undergraduate work at Southampton University (UK) and his postgraduate studies (MSc, PhD) at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado, Boulder. He also earned a DSc from Southampton University, for his contributions in paleoclimatology.

Bradley is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Arctic Institute of North America and he was elected a Foreign Member of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters. He received the Oeschger Medal of the European Geosciences Union and was awarded a DSc honoris causa from Lancaster University (UK) and from Queen’s University (Canada). He currently holds the Zuckerberg Leadership Chair at the University of Massachusetts, and he is a Visiting Professor at the University of Bergen, Norway.

Bradley’s research focuses on climate variability over recent centuries and millennia, using instrumental and proxy records of past climate. His research has made major contributions to our understanding of climate change over the last millennium. Bradley has written or edited thirteen books on climatic change, and authored more than 190 peer-reviewed articles on the topic.

 

Courtney Flint

Department of Sociology, Social Work and Anthropology

Utah State University, USA

Framing the human dimensions of mountain landscapes

Courtney Flint is an Associate Professor of Natural Resources Sociology at Utah State University. Her current research explores perceived values and vulnerabilities related to natural resources in communities and landscapes, particularly related to water sustainability in the Intermountain West. She also has projects exploring interdisciplinarity and data sharing as well as exploring social science methods and frameworks toward development of regional and global mountain observatories. Courtney serves as vice-chair of the US Environmental Protection Agency's Board of Scientific Counselors' Sustainable and Healthy Communities Committee.

 

Monique Fort

Department of Geography, History and Sciences of Society

Université Paris-Diderot, France

Managing mountain natural hazards in developing and developed countries

 

Monique Fort (PhD in Quaternary Geology, State Doctorate in Geography) is Professor Emeritus in Geomorphology and Environmental Sciences, Natural Hazards and Risks, at the Department of Geography of Paris Diderot – Sorbonne-Paris-Cité University. Previous assignments include the University of Paris-North and Dartmouth College (USA). Chair of the French Group of Geomorphologists, she served as Vice-President of the International Association of Geomorphologists (2005-2009), and co-chaired the Scientific Committee of the 8th International Conference on Geomorphology (Paris, 2013). Monique is a member of the IGU Commission “Mountain response to Global Change”, the Scientific Committee of the French Alpine Club, and the Regional Nature Park of Queyras. She has worked extensively in various active mountains of the world (Alps, Central Asia and Himalaya). Her main research interests have evolved from studying the relations of landforms with respect to geological structures to glacial and climatic fluctuations and palaeoenvironmental reconstructions. On-going fieldwork includes studies on current instabilities and natural hazards (mostly large scale landslides and catastrophic floods) in the Himalayas and Pamir mountains, and flood impacts and their prevention in the French Alps and Languedoc regions in climate change context. Her recent publications have appeared in Geomorphology, Quaternary International, Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift, Palaeo-3, Geografia Fisica e Dinamica Quaternaria and Environmental Earth Science, and she has contributed to books on natural hazards and landscapes, mostly dealing with the Himalayas.

 

Hans Hurni

Centre for Development and Environment

University of Bern, Switzerland

Land degradation and sustainable land management in the Ethiopian mountains and highlands

 

Hans Hurni is founding president of the board of the Centre for Development and Environment (CDE) and ordinary professor for geography and sustainable development at the Institute of Geography, Faculty of Natural Sciences, University of Bern, Switzerland.   Besides this, he is editor-in-chief of the international, peer-reviewed journal ‘Mountain Research and Development’; he was director of the Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) North-South programme from 2001-2013; he teaches and supervises postgraduate students (Post-doc, PhD and MSc levels), and is a member of the senate of the University of Bern, past president of the Swiss Commission for Research Partnerships with Developing Countries (CASS-KFPE, 1999-2002), and past president of the World Association of Soil and Water Conservation (USA, 1991-1997). In 2009 he received an honorary PhD from Haramaya University in Ethiopia.

 

Julia Klein

Department of Forest, Land and Watershed Stewardship

Colorado State University, USA

Transdisciplinary approaches to mountain environment and livelihood sustainability from local to global scales

 

Julia Klein is an Associate Professor in the Department of Ecosystem Science & Sustainability and a Research Scientist at the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory at Colorado State University. She received a BA in Political Science from Cornell University and an MSc and PhD in Ecosystem Science from the University of California at Berkeley. Upon receiving her doctorate, she was awarded a NOAA Postdoctoral Climate and Global Change Fellowship. The broad goals of Dr Klein's research are: to understand how interacting global changes affect pastoral and mountain ecosystems and livelihoods; to detect the patterns and underlying mechanisms driving these responses and feedbacks; and to identify actions and pathways to increase adaptation opportunities to global change. Her projects typically combine diverse methods, including experimental manipulations, landscape analysis, local ecological knowledge and modelling. The main geographic focus of her research has been the eastern and central alpine grasslands of the Tibetan Plateau; however, she also works on the shortgrass steppe and alpine region of Colorado and conducts global syntheses of grassland, arctic/alpine and mountain systems worldwide. Dr Klein is an Associate Editor for Arctic, Alpine and Antarctic Research, a member of the Scientific Leadership Committee for the Mountain Research Initiative, and the founder and lead-PI of the Mountain Sentinels Collaborative Network. She is also proud to be an active mom of three young and very energetic kids.

 

Christian Körner

University of Basel, Switzerland

Global Mountain Biodiversity Assessment

Mountain future in a bioclimatic framework

 

Christian Körner is professor emeritus for Botany at the University of Basel, Switzerland, where he was appointed chair in 1989. His interest in alpine ecology is rooted in his doctoral thesis at the University of Innsbruck, where he explored alpine plant water relations. The early experience that alpine plant species have evolved rather different strategies to solve the same problems, coined his interest in functional biodiversity research and comparative ecology at a global scale. This also led to a unifying theory of elevational limits of tree growth. Christian Körner's team runs an alpine research station in the Swiss Alps, and he has chaired the Global Mountain Biodiversity Assessment (GMBA) of DIVERSITAS since 2000. Other research activities include in situ exposure of natural ecosystems to elevated CO2 across climatic zones, stable isotope works, plant phenology and freezing resistance (a recent ERC project), and a mechanistic understanding of plant growth.

 

Veerle Vanacker

Earth and Life Institute, George Lemaitre Center for Earth and Climate Research

University of Louvain, Belgium

 

Changes in human-landscape interactions after forest cover change in the Andes

 

Veerle Vanacker is Associate Professor of the Earth and Life Institute at the University of Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium. After graduating in Geography, she defended a PhD in Sciences at the University of Leuven, and was visiting scientist at the University of Hannover (Germany), Dartmouth College (US), and the Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Science Department at MIT. Veerle received the Development Cooperation Prize from the Belgian Directorate-General in 2003, and the EGU Division Outstanding Young Scientist Award in 2012. The central theme of her research is the quantification of the effect of natural and anthropogenic disturbances to sediment and geochemical fluxes in mountain regions. Her research is characterized by an integrated approach that combines spatial information from remote sensing data with erosion data and geomorphic models to quantify changes in sediment and solute fluxes due to human disturbances. Much of her research focuses on fundamental scientific questions that are relevant for ecosystem services management in developing countries. As such, she coordinated research projects and field campaigns in Ecuador, Ethiopia, Vietnam and Sri Lanka, and contributed to the UNESCO Friend Nile project from 2003 till 2008.