Environmental Change in Mountains and Uplands

1. Auflage 2000
ISBN: 978-0-340-70636-7
Verlag: Routledge

Buch, Englisch, 188 Seiten, Format (B × H): 189 mm x 246 mm, Gewicht: 376 g

Reihe: Key Issues in Environmental Change

Mountain environments are often perceived to be austere, isolated, and inhospitable. In fact, these areas are of immense value to mankind, providing direct life support to close to 10 percent of the world's population and sustaining a wide variety of species - many of which are endemic to this environment.

'Environmental Change in Mountains and Uplands' provides detailed account of the fragile and marginal physical and socio-economic systems which make up the world's mountain regions. Discussing the direct and indirect impacts of human interference on environmental ecosystems, it then turns to the social and economic consequences of such environmental change - both upon the mountain environment itself and upon the populations who depend on mountain resources for their economic sustenance.

This book includes a review of possible implications for adaption and mitigation strategies in a global context. Working within a broad temporal scale, it draws upon paleoenvironmental records to document past changes which have occured in the absence of major anthropogenic influences, as well as utilising modelling as a means to assessing future environmental change.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Beniston, Martin

Fachgebiete

• Geowissenschaften Geographie | Raumplanung Gebirge
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtswissenschaft Allgemein Historische Geographie, Landkarten & Atlanten
• Geowissenschaften Geographie | Raumplanung Humangeographie Historische Geographie
• Naturwissenschaften Biowissenschaften Biowissenschaften Ökologie
• Geowissenschaften Umweltwissenschaften Umweltwissenschaften

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Part 1 - Mountains and uplands an introduction

Mountain regions of the world

Importance of mountain regions to humankind

Current environmental and socio-economic information and statistics

Environmental stresses: the emergence of the human factor

Global environmental change: fundamental issues

Part 2 - Characterization of mountain environments

Climate

Hydrological systems

Cryosphere

Soils

Ecological systems and biodiversity

Human environments

Data for research on mountain environments

Part 3 - Past environmental change in mountains and uplands

Proxy data: reconstructing the past

Environmental change in the distant past

Mountain environments during the last major glaciation

Mountain environments during the Holocene

Climatic change in the 20th century

Part 4 - Modelling approaches to assess environmental change

The significance of modelling

Spatial and temporal scales

Global and regional climate models

Semi-empirical methods and statistical downscaling techniques

Ecosystem models

Integrated assessment models (IAM)

Limits and range of application of models

Part 5 - Natural forcings

The causal mechanisms of anthropogenic pressures on the environment

Environmental pollution

Land-use changes

Climatic change

Part 6 - Impact of environmental change on natural systems

Challenges for impacts assessments

Impacts on hydrology

Impact on mountain cryosphere

Extreme events and their impacts on geomophologic features

Über Autor(innen)

Professor of Geography, University of Fribourg, Switzerland.