The CIRMOUNT Ecosystem Responses Work Group focuses on the impacts and influence of mountain climates on species and ecosystem processes, and has identified several specific emphases:

• Take advantage of the gradient of impacts from mid-elevation urban/wildland interfaces up to high elevation protected areas to identify context-dependent challenges to ecosystem adaptation from climate change.
• Process-oriented (fire, insects, productivity) and species-oriented (species response, bioclimatic envelope, species vulnerability) approaches need to be included.
• Multi-scale consideration of processes and impacts (local to regional to continental), considering site-level changes but also widespread effects.
• Extensive inclusion of land managers (e.g., lateral discussion of priorities, research, applications, a resource of natural history), with discussion about presenting syntheses, not simply individual studies.