Preface

Recognising the significance of mountain regions for global change research, the IGBP core projects BAHC and GCTE, together with START/SASCOM, organised a workshop in Kathmandu, Nepal (March/April 1996), which resulted in IGBP Report #43: "Predicting Global Change Impacts on Mountain Hydrology and Ecology".

Immediately after the workshop, the results were discussed in a special session at the first IGBP Congress (Bad Münstereifel, Germany, 18 - 22 April 1996), which was attended by members of the SSCs and representatives of the IGBP core projects BAHC, GCTE, LUCC, PAGES and GAIM and by the IGBP Secretariat, in particular the IGBP Executive Director. The session participants welcomed the results of the Kathmandu Workshop and representatives of LUCC and PAGES enthusiastically expressed an interest to participate in the further development of the initiative.

Two important follow-up events, which complemented the results of the Kathmandu Workshop, were a LUCC Workshop on "Dynamics of Land Use/Land Cover Change in the Hindukush-Himalayas" in Kathmandu, Nepal (April 1997), and the "European Conference on Environmental and Societal Change in Mountain Regions" in Oxford, UK (December 1997).

The reports from these meetings, together with IGBP Report #43, served as the basis for developing a draft document for this Initiative on "Global Change and Mountain Regions" at a joint IGBP/IHDP (BAHC, GCTE, LUCC, PAGES) workshop in Pontresina, Switzerland (16-18 April 1998). Fifteen experts attended the workshop, sponsored mainly by the Swiss Academy of Natural Sciences (SANW). The participants of the Pontresina workshop emphasized the need for interdisciplinary environmental change research in mountain regions, involving both natural and social scientists. Thus, in addition to the IGBP and its core projects mentioned above, IHDP and its science projects IDGEC and GECHS, as well as START and its regional programmes were suggested to be invited to join the group of collaborators. Moreover, at a meeting of the BAHC SSC in April 1998 in Paris, the official representatives of WCRP/GEWEX, Rick Lawford, and of UNESCO/IHP, Mike Bonell, expressed the interest of their programmes to participate in the initiative and provided input to it.

At the Second IGBP Congress in Shonan Village (Japan) in May 1999, the Initiative was formally endorsed by the four IGBP Core Projects BAHC, GCTE, PAGES, and LUCC. The Initiative will be implemented as an inter-core project collaboration among these Core Projects, with tight linkages to the other programmes mentioned above.

We would like to thank all contributors to the document as listed below as well as the sponsoring organisations and projects for their support and contribution. We also would like to emphasize that the IGBP Mountain Research Initiative did not actually start to form in 1996, but it is rather the product of an awareness building process that lasted several decades and was carried through by a fairly small number of visionary scientists. We are grateful for their lasting efforts.