The Global Observation Initiative in Alpine Environments (GLORIA) is an international science program based in Vienna, Austria that promotes monitoring the responses of high-elevation plants to long-term climate change. GLORIA capitalizes on standardized protocols developed by a wide collaboration of scientists, and exploits the relative comparability of alpine summit environments worldwide. The basic GLORIA approach depends on "Multi-Summit Target Regions", for which inventory and monitoring are prescribed on four mountain summits per target region. The summits are selected to be within a single bioclimatic region and to extend from treeline elevation to the nival zone. Sites are instrumented with temperature dataloggers, and are extensively photo-documented. All data are archived at the international headquarters and data are available to all interested scientists. To date, over 30 multi-summit target regions have been installed in Europe and elsewhere. With the completion of the first target regions in the United States (Glacier National Park, MT; Sierra Nevada, CA; and White Mountains, CA), CIRMOUNT proposes a North American GLORIA Chapter.

The primary goal of the CIRMOUNT Work Group is to establish a North American GLORIA Chapter and:

1. Promote coordinated and integrated monitoring of alpine floral response to climate change in western North American mountains using the GLORIA multi-summit Target Region approach.

2. Promote research on other aspects of alpine ecology beyond those in the standard GLORIA approach, including additional floral diversity assessments, animal ecology, carbon issues, substrate relationships, etc.