Post date: Apr 16, 2015 6:57:46 PM
American Climber Science Program
2015 Peru Expeditions – Call for Scientists
Contact: John All (climberscience@gmail.com)
Director, American Climber Science Program
Mountains provide critical services for much of humanity, but currently they are undergoing unprecedented changes due to intensified human land uses and climate changes. The American Climber Science Program (ACSP) would like to invite participation from scientists in our research program that examines these changing environmental conditions. The ACSP provides logistical support and lowers the costs for exploratory and early-stage as well as fully developed and funded research projects. We organizes mountain research expeditions so that different research teams can go into the field together and share logistics in order to minimize the costs and increase field data collection efficiency for each researcher and/or student.
The goals of the ACSP are to work with local land managers and researchers to examine environmental interactions in specific mountain regions by combining multiple high quality projects simultaneously so that research synergies emerge. We seek inclusion of projects that are publishable, fundable and that have potential to meet the needs of local stakeholders. For example, our expeditions to the Cordillera Blanca examined water quality, grazing and fire impacts on vegetation, aerosol deposition on glaciers, CO2 concentrations, and atmospheric optical depth measurements. By combining these efforts into a single expedition, the field data collection was carried out very efficiently and produced peer-reviewed publications and grant proposals as well as presentations and reports to local land managers.
How does the ACSP work?
Scientists provide the funding and equipment for their specific projects, contribute towards shared logistics, and the ACSP provides expedition logistical support and manpower to assist with data collection. Students who are interested in participating can help with other scientist’s projects or propose their own and scholarships are available. We have volunteers (mainly climbers but also other scientists willing to help when not working on their own projects) who can live in harsh environments and who will help collect data without cost to an individual researcher. Past expeditions have included ecologists, physicists, atmospheric scientists, geologists, toxicologists, etc. (visit our websites www.climberscience.org and www.mountainscience.org for more examples).
In 2015, the ACSP will be working in Huascarán National Park (HNP), and in the Cusco region of Peru. The Cordillera Blanca has over 33 peaks higher than 6,000 meters and hundreds of 5,000+ meter peaks. Both Cusco and HNP are UN Biosphere Reserves and World Heritage Sites. We have already conducted successful expeditions to HNP every year from 2011-14 that gathered a great deal of baseline data and have led to several publications and grant proposals to agencies such as NSF, NASA, and USAID. Our work is in carried out in conjunction with many Peruvian stakeholders including local Universities, National Park officials, and national Ministries and is responsive to their expressed needs for environmental information.
Please contact us at climberscience@gmail.com to express interest in our expeditions or in future activities.