Monitoring from mountains.

• Position: Recent Trends - Global climate change - Brief Article

A United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) initiative will use its unique network of biosphere reserves to monitor global climate change. Home to some 500 million people, mountain areas are also the source of water for more than half of the world's population. "Mountain biosphere reserves are ideal natural research centres for studying global change and monitoring its effects on the socio-economic conditions of mountain people", said UNESCO Director-General Koichiro Matsuura.

Mountains are extremely sensitive to global change. One dramatic sign is that glaciers on most mountains are melting. The snow-capped peak of Mount Kilimanjaro in the United Republic of Tanzania has since 1912 lost some 82 per cent of its permafrost, a third of this in the past two decades. Glaciers in...