ALTA – Altitudinal Transects Across the Americas

Reenvisioning climate and biodiversity monitoring.

Mountains are cradles of biodiversity and provide drinking water to 60% of humans. And yet mountain ecosystems are experiencing rapid and irreversible changes. Distributed and coordinated long-term mountain biodiversity monitoring programs provide crucial baseline data for:

– tracking species migrations,
– studying climate adaptation, and
– modeling vulnerabilities (from individual species to entire ecosystems).

To be most effective, broadly adopted, and sustainable, biodiversity monitoring should be inexpensive and open to all.
Therefore, in order to enhance the cost-effectiveness and sustainability of mountain biodiversity monitoring, ALTA will:

– share science and technology
– adhere to principles of open science
– value and welcome local knowledge holders
– facilitate the expansion of the monitoring network by locally-led groups

We are just starting out and need movers and shakers to help us build ALTA. We are currently sampling in temperate (Virginia, Tennessee) and tropical (Puerto Rico, Costa Rica) mountains. We are looking for early-career researchers interested in measuring ancillary data like soil biogeochemistry, microbial composition, insect diversity, or interested in developing low-cost climate and biodiversity monitoring sensors.

Funding: We have some funding available to help with things like materials (no equipment), laboratory sampling fees, and travel.

Data and Co-authorship: The data generated will be collectively owned but individual researchers will be the data stewards. Co-authorship is based on idea generation, sampling, and writing manuscripts. This is something we do together.

Commitment: 1 meeting a month to brainstorm ideas, discuss logistics, time in the field, and time processing/analyzing data and writing any manuscripts.