Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
beginning with impacts and risks of global changes on mountains, followed
by drivers for change in mountains, adaptation frameworks, governance
and legal issues in mountains followed by a few case studies to highlight
the impacts of changes on mountains.
The prelude by Jack Ives gives an excellent introduction to the topic
and to the mountains, “They are certainly special regions, but they are
places where communities live and have lived for centuries, and where
environmental sustainability is a matter of survival not just to those who
live there but for the many millions more for whom they are just a hazy
blue line on the horizon.”
DRIVERS FOR CHANGE AND IMPACT OF GLOBAL
CHANGES ON HIGH MOUNTAINS
The only chapter in this section by Borsdorf et al. examines the impact of
global changes on high mountains. As discussed by the authors, climate
change and globalization meet complex man-environment systems
in mountain regions. Whereas the chapter by Jack Ives serves a good
introduction to majestic mountains, the chapter by Borsdorf et al gives good
introduction to impacts and risks. The authors discuss the impact of climate
change such as glacier—and permafrost retreat, water scarcity, soil erosion,
as well as loss of biodiversity. Climate change thus impacts on ecosystem
services for both the inhabitants of the mountain region as well as people
living in the adjacent lowlands. Globalization processes also exert an ever
faster impact on ecosystems, cultural landscape, agriculture, population
structure, mobility, as well as the urbanization and marginalization of
peripheral mountain regions. Societies are affected in socio-economic,
political and institutional terms and require decision making at the regional
and local level. Both subsystems interact in the sphere of land use and land
management.
Global climate change and globalization have triggered dramatic
changes in the Alps that are visible using the indicators discussed in the
chapter. In the cultural landscape, persistent structures used to be at work
for a long time, but the process that has its roots in the beginnings of
industrialization is forcing accelerating dynamics onto them, speeded up
further in recent decades as a result of globalization. Within the cultural
space of the Alps, social and economic impact factors may dominate, but
with each 'warm' year it becomes clearer that climate factors are gaining
in signifi cance. Climate change determines tourism just as much as the
growth options for settlements and commercial areas, what is and is not a
secure road and the routing of new roads and rail tracks. We may not yet
Search WWH ::




Custom Search