Background

GEO Mountains brings together research institutions and mountain observation networks to enhance the discoverability, accessibility, and usability of a wide range of relevant data and information pertaining to environmental and socio-economic systems – both in situ and remotely sensed – across global mountain regions. In early 2022 GEO Mountains established eleven Task Groups (TGs) to develop its existing observatories and identify key mountain variables and their associated datasets. This survey is one activity of TG 2.3.
About Task Group 2.3
The objective of TG 2.3 is to identify Essential Socioeconomic Variables (ESVs) required for the understanding and monitoring of key global change processes within mountain social-ecological systems. Task Group 2.3 complements ongoing work to identify and establish databases for Essential Climatic Variables (see Thornton et al. 2021) and Essential Biodiversity Variables in mountains. A workshop held during the International Mountain Conference (Austria) in September 2022 developed a list of candidate ESVs, building on the results of a similar workshop held in Zurich in 2020.

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* 1. Contact information

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* 2. Have you participated in other Task Group 2.3 activities?

About this survey

The purpose of this survey is to gather your additions to the current list of candidate ESVs. There are two possibilities, you may (1) brainstorm your ideas on which ESVs should be monitored in mountains or (2) also provide feedback on our current list of candidate ESVs. You may also use our current list of candidate ESVs as inspiration for your brainstorm.

The ESV list presented in this survey is a list of candidate ESVs. Our approach thus far has been to temporarily put aside questions of data availability when considering which ESVs to include on the list, rather, this is a ‘wishlist’ of ESVs. We want to answer the following question: if we had access to any and all possible data, which data would be the most useful to understand and compare change in global mountains?

When providing your contribution to the candidate ESV list, it might be useful to think about specific research you have carried out and consider what data was valuable or what data would have been useful but was not available. Then consider whether such data, or similar data, would also be relevant for other mountain regions.

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* 3. In which mountain region do you principally work?

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* 4. What socioeconomic variables do you consider to be most important to understand and compare change processes in mountains?
Please write your answers on separate lines as bullet-points, e.g.:
- Variable 1
- Variable 2
...

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* 5. If you know of other similar research that seeks to identify standard/essential socioeconomic variables, or of frameworks or papers that might be useful for TG2.3, please tell us about them here.
Please write your answers on separate lines as bullet-points, e.g.:
- Suggestion 1
- Suggestion 2
...

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* 6. If you have any other comments on our ESV list and its structure, or more generally on the work of Task Group 2.3, please write them here.

You may now skip to the end and submit the survey. Or, if you would like to provide us with more detailed feedback on our current candidate ESV list, you may continue below.
We may invite those who provide more detailed feedback to participate in future in-person or online workshops, or to co-author a paper on the Task Group 2.3. activities.

Below you will be shown the current list of candidate Essential Socioeconomic Variables and will be able to comment on specific topics as well as add general comments. We have divided the feedback rounds into the following 4 categories: Demography; Livelihoods; Physical Infrastructure and Land Use; Social Structure and Wellbeing. This reflects the categorisation of topics and their ESVs in the list.
Where cells are blank, this is where no value has been identified in previous workshops. Your suggestions here are welcome.
If you have suggestions of datasets where relevant data could be found, please include this with a link, if possible.

If you have general comments on the list, you can write these in the general comments box at the end of the survey.

Terminology
Topics are thematic groupings of ESVs. Indicators are the data required to construct an ESV: for example, to calculate 'Tourist density' ESV within the 'Population Density' topic, we need two indicators (number of tourist beds and the number of residents), the ESV value is produced by calculating: no. of tourist beds / no. of residents. The source datasets could be, for example, regional tourism statistics (for no. tourist beds) and a national census (for no. residents).

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Demography

Demography

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* 7. What feedback do you have for the topics in the demography category?

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* 8. What datasets can you suggest for the topics in the demography category?

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* 9. Further comments on the Demography category, its contents and structure

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Livelihoods

Livelihoods

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* 10. What what feedback do you have for the topics of the livelihoods category?

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* 11. What datasets can you suggest for the topics of the livelihoods category?

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* 12. Further comments on the Livelihoods category, its contents and structure

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Physical Infrastructure and Land Use

Physical Infrastructure and Land Use

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* 13. What feedback do you have for the topics in the Physical Infrastructure and Land Use category?

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* 14. What datasets can you suggest for the topics in the Physical Infrastructure and Land Use category?

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* 15. Further comments on the Physical Infrastructure and Land Use category, its contents and structure

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Social Structure and Wellbeing

Social Structure and Wellbeing

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* 16. What feedback do you have for the topics in the Social Structure and Wellbeing category?

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* 17. What datasets can you suggest for the topics in the Social Structure and Wellbeing category?

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* 18. Further comments on the Social Structure and Wellbeing category, its contents and structure

Thank you for taking the time to give your feedback. If you would like to be added to the mailing list for this Task Group or to the GEO Mountains general mailing list, please write to Dr James Thornton at james.thornton@unibe.ch

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