People in the Mountains - Mountain Geography: Physical and Human Dimensions - page 510

portant wood. Today, very few mountain areas do not bear some evidence of the human
use of plants, most obviously in the extensive deforestation of mountain regions. We
tend to think of mountain deforestation and alteration as a recent phenomenon. This
may be true for some mountain areas, such as in the Americas, but not elsewhere (Wil-
liams 2006). Mountain areas in the Mediterranean region and the British Isles were
deforested by 500 C.E. Forests in the Alps have been cut and altered for 1,500 years,
although many have been replaced and are sustainably managed today. The extensive
mountain areas of China have been subject to cycles of deforestation beginning 3,000
years ago (Elvin 2004), during the Ming Dynasty (1300-1500 C.E.), and during the past
200 years with population and economic growth and political change. The 1998 floods
on the Yangtze River resulted in, among other things, a prohibition on forest removal
and agricultural use of steep lands, and massive reforestation. Similarly, the “Theory
of Himalayan Environmental Degradation” (Eckholm 1975) attempted to explain dam-
aging floods and erosion/ sedimentation in the Gangetic-Brahmaputra plain as arising
from deforestation by local people in the mountains. Again, we do know that Himalay-
an forests have been exploited since precolonial times (ca. 1750), particularly in what
is now India, but we also know from more recent research that one cannot generalize
about widespread impacts and their effects (e.g., Ives and Messerli 1989; Gardner 2002;
Ives 2004; Hofer and Messerli 2006; Moseley 2006). Forests remain a central compon-
ent of many mountain areas and, while they are continually stressed by human exploit-
ation, diseases, and fire, increasing efforts are made to sustain-ably manage, replace,
restore, and protect them for their economic, ecological, climatic, hydrological, and aes-
thetic benefits (Price and Butt 2000; Fig. 10.13).
Other mountain plants play important roles in the lives of mountain people. These
include nontimber forest products and plants from grassland, meadow, and high-alti-
tude tundra areas. A variety of mushrooms, fungi, and other plants found in the forests
of the Himalaya, southwest China, the North American Cordillera, the Carpathians, the
Alps, and many other ranges have had traditional food and medicinal uses locally and
regionally for generations, and their harvest, export, and sale today generate substan-
tial cash incomes. Forests, meadows, and tundra have yielded plants with medicinal
qualities that are used in traditional and modern medicine or have been synthesized for
commercial use. Their value as a source of income to mountain people has led to the do-
mestication of some species and their rearing in gardens in some mountain areas. Opi-
um poppies, cannabis, and coca, all of which thrive naturally in some mountain areas,
have long been cultivated for their medicinal, spiritual, and recreational value locally
and for export. The naturally occurring grasses, sedges, and other plants of the higher-
altitude meadows and tundra have served as a seasonal food source for livestock. These
uses have served to shape and support pastoral transhumance and nomadic lifestyles
throughout the mountain world.
The diversity of mountain vegetation has made possible, through cultivation and se-
lective breeding, a number of important food products. Maize (corn), potatoes, toma-
toes, wheat, tea, coffee, and quinoa, among others, are derived from plants growing in
mountain or mountain-margin areas (Laws 2010). Many are now grown commercially
in places far removed from the mountains. Though domesticated in specific mountain
areas (e.g., maize and potatoes in the Americas), the adoption of such food plants in
other mountain areas has had profound and generally positive impacts on local popula-