Mountains represent unique areas for detecting climate change and assessing climate change impacts. There is an increasing awareness on climate change impacts the mountains, mountain ecosystems, species and mountain people. The extreme colder environments of mountains possess several climatic factors that generate stress for life, such as low temperature, high exposure to radiation, low nutrient and water availability, desiccation, etc. These biotic and abiotic factors influence both structural and functional characteristics in the biological communities (animals, plants and microbes).
The mountain ecosystems and the mountain communities have received attention during international debates such as the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015, the Paris Agreement 2015 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Targets 2030. Importance of resilience and adaptations acquired by the mountain biodiversity to cope up in harsh climatic conditions has been realized in these forums.
In this International Conference, the efforts will be on bringing together the distinguished groups of researchers who have been working on various aspects of mountain biodiversity across disciplinary and geographical boundaries. The conference will focus on the presentations on biodiversity (animals, plants and microbes) with particular reference to their coping mechanisms in low temperature environment of mountain ecosystems in general, with a focus on the Himalaya and Antarctica in particular.