Mountain Sentinels Collaborative Network

Overview

Mountains are globally ubiquitous, locally unique, iconic social-ecological systems that provide benefits, or ecosystems services, to over half of the world’s population. Mountains provide a disproportionate measure of the world’s ecosystem services yet are exposed to disasters, degradation, extreme events and climate change.

For the first time in history, the majority of humans live in urban areas. From our cities, many regard the distant mountains solely as remote places of beauty, recreation and spiritual renewal. Too often we fail to recognize their contributions to our collective survival as providers of clean air and water, producers of weather and timber, sources of minerals and food, and reserves of cultural and biological diversity.

Among the first to face unprecedented environmental, social, economic and political changes, mountain environments and their inhabitants sit upon the vanguard of change in a world ever striving to sustain itself.They are the sentinels.

The Mountain Sentinels Collaborative Network is an international research coordination network (RCN) composed of transdisciplinary, globally-representative teams of mountain scientists and stakeholders, using socio-economic, political and biophysical observations and models to engage in knowledge co-creation and coordinated practice.

SEnTINELS stands for Social-Ecological, Transdisciplinary, International Network for Environment and Livelihood Sustainability in mountains.

Mountain Sentinels has three main goals:

1. Expand an international network of linked mountain biophysical and social science researchers and diverse stakeholders.
2. Explore and evaluate transdisciplinary modeling frameworks for mountains globally.
3. Promote international, transdisciplinary approaches linking science with policy and practice.

This project is funded by the Coupled Human Natural Systems program of the U.S. National Science Foundation.