The Mountain Component of MAIRS

MAIRS is an initiative of START and the ICSU’s Earth System Science Partnership together with regional networks. The interest of MAIRS highly corresponds with the MRI’s interest to develop a Global Change Research Network in the Hindu Kush-Himalayan Region. The first workshop of the MAIRS Mountain Group (see below) was co-organized by MRI.

„Monsoon Asia mountains“ in MAIRS are defined as those areas lying more than 1000 m above sea level that are affected in some way by the Asian monsoon. Thus, the region includes the mountains of Himalaya, Karakoram, Hindu-Kush, Pamires, Kunlun, Tienshan, Qinlin Dahingganling and Changbaishan from southwest to northeast as well as the mountainous maritime areas of China, Korea, Japan and Taiwan.

Go to the MAIRS website.

The long-term objectives of the integrated regional studies that will ultimately combine field experiments, process studies, and modeling components are:

1. To better understand how human activities in regions are interacting with and altering natural regional variability of the atmospheric, terrestrial, and marine components of the environment;
2. To contribute to the provision of a sound scientific basis for sustainable regional development; and
3. To develop a predictive capability for estimating changes in global-regional linkages in the Earth System and to recognize on a sound scientific basis the future consequences of such changes.

The studies will consider:

• Major demographic, socio-economic, and institutional drivers for change (urbanization and industrialization, energy production and biomass burning, land use/cover change and water resources harvesting, including dam construction);
• Effects on regional and atmospheric composition/pollution, regional water cycle and coastal systems, and local ecosystem structure and function;
• Impacts on biogeochemical cycles and the physical climate system, including its variability at different scales;
• Potential impacts of global and other feedback effects on the regional biospheric life support system (food systems, water resources and health).