ABSTRACT
Global climate change is a topic of urgent and widespread interest as we face an uncertain future and realize that we have played a role in causing fundamental and rapid change. Climate change now dominates many scientific endeavors, influences geopolitical dynamics, and is debated in international venues. We can assess the state of the entire biosphere by detecting trends at the global scale and running global simulation models. At the other extreme, many examples of biological change at the local scale are attributed to climate change. Often, however, we neglect to address these regional scales, where populations interact with their environment in complex ways and where critical decisions are made that drive global systems and constrain local impacts and responses. Mountain systems are an example of globally dominant regions that have an integrated response to climate change at multiple scales. Mountains comprise 20% of the world's terrestrial land surface and are home to at least 10% of the human population. A better understanding of mountain–climate relationships is clearly important for understanding and addressing global-scale environmental change such as the climate shifts seen in the past 50 years.
