People in the Mountains - Mountain Geography: Physical and Human Dimensions - page 529

disaster risk. Mountain flood hazard mitigation includes a variety of traditional prac-
tices, such as: restricting construction to safe sites; building diversion channels, flood-
ways, and retention basins; elevation of houses, roads, and trails; building and reinfor-
cing protective dikes and dams; protecting forests; and reforestation. Mitigation relies
on effective and enforced land-use regulation. Additional measures include flood fore-
casting based on expected precipitation, snowmelt, and other relevant variables, and
emergency plans for protection or even evacuation of endangered people.
Biohazards
Biohazards are organisms and conditions or processes in the biological environment
that cause damage to people, settlements, crops, livestock, and infrastructure. They
range from microorganisms such as viruses and bacteria, to predatory and foraging an-
imals such as bears and deer, to insects that attack crops and processes such as wild-
fires. All are present in mountain areas. Here we address two biohazard areas that have
been and remain especially impactful in mountain areas: disease and wildfire.
Of all the hazards affecting mountain areas, infectious diseases have taken the
greatest toll in human lives and on mountain societies, a condition shared by virtually all
places on Earth. Infectious diseases, by their nature, are biological and social phenom-
ena, and illustrate the importance of both understanding and managing the complexit-
ies of these biohazards. Usually their impact arises through social interactions, often in
the context of interrelated factors like poverty, poor nutrition, physical and emotional
stress, lack of access to safe water, and crowded and poorly ventilated housing, many
of which may arise from lack of sustainable livelihoods, as well as economic, social and
political marginalization. It is a complex web of causes and effects. HIV/AIDS has made
its way into mountain communities through sexual activity and injected drug use, and
spans the socioeconomic spectrum from high-end resorts to impoverished families and
communities. Water-borne parasitic diseases such as dysentery, cholera, typhoid, and
giardiasis take a heavy toll, particularly among children. Tuberculosis, including drug-
resistant TB, other respiratory infections like bacterial pneumonia, and eye infections
are common among mountain people living at higher altitudes in crowded quarters. For-
tunately, some infectious diseases that have taken a gruesome toll in mountain areas in
the past, namely smallpox, measles, polio, and some influenzas, have almost been erad-
icated through immunization, a frontline hazard mitigation. Other forms of mitigation,
such as access to prevention and treatment services and access to safe water, often
are lacking in remote, impoverished, and crowded mountain locations. Despite the rel-
atively high prevalence of infectious diseases in mountain areas, the situation is much
improved from some earlier times.
Historical estimates of mountain populations have been made difficult by the fact
that the arrival of Europeans, usually as part of the colonial and commercial expansion
from the sixteenth to the twentieeth centuries, signaled the arrival and introduction
of an array of exotic infectious diseases into mountain and other communities (Mann
2006). The lack of prior exposure, and therefore natural immunities, allowed a rapid and
deadly spread of smallpox, measles, influenzas, and others, killing millions. An epidemic
of sexually transmitted infections followed. This probably started with the Spanish in-
cursions into the Andes in the sixteenth century. By the end of the nineteenth century,