Mountains, Climate and Biodiversity: A comprehensive and up-to-date synthesis for students and researchers Mountains are topographically complex formations that play a fundamental role in regional and continental-scale climates. They are also cradles to all major river systems and home to unique, and often highly biodiverse and threatened, ecosystems. But how do all these processes tie together to form the patterns of diversity we see today? Written by leading researchers in the fields of geology, biology, climate, and geography, this book explores the relationship between mountain building and climate change, and how these processes shape biodiversity through time and space. In the first two sections, you will learn about the processes, theory, and methods connecting mountain building and biodiversity In the third section, you will read compelling examples from around the world exploring the links between mountains, climate and biodiversity Throughout the 31 peer-reviewed chapters, a non-technical style and synthetic illustrations make this book accessible to a wide audience A comprehensive glossary summarises the main concepts and terminology Readership: Mountains, Climate and Biodiversity is intended for students and researchers in geosciences, biology and geography. It is specifically compiled for those who are interested in historical biogeography, biodiversity and conservation.

This book is written for general readers with an interest in science, and offers the tools and ideas for understanding how climate change will affect mountains of the American West. A major goal of the book is to provide material that will not become quickly outdated, and it does so by conveying its topics through constants in ecological science that will remain unchanged and scientifically sound. The book is timely in its potential to be a long-term contribution, and is designed to inform the public about climate change in mountains accessibly and intelligibly. The major themes of the book include: 1) mountains of the American West as natural experiments that can distinguish the effects of climate change because they have been relatively free from human-caused changes, 2) mountains as regions with unique sensitivities that may change more rapidly than the Earth as a whole and foreshadow the nature and magnitude of change elsewhere, and 3) different interacting components of ecosystems in the face of a changing climate, including forest growth and mortality, ecological disturbance, and mountain hydrology. Readers will learn how these changes and interactions in mountains illuminate the complexity of ecological changes in other contexts around the world.

Glaciers are considered a key and an iconic indicator of climate change. The World Glacier Monitoring Service has noted that global alpine balance has been negative for 35 consecutive years. This highlights the dire future that alpine glaciers face. The goal of this volume is to tell the story, glacier by glacier, of response to climate change from 1984-2015. Of the 165 glaciers examined in 10 different alpine regions, 162 have retreated significantly. It is evident that the changes are significant, not happening at a "glacial" pace, and are profoundly affecting alpine regions. There is a consistent result that reverberates from mountain range to mountain range, which emphasizes that although regional glacier and climate feedbacks differ, global changes are driving the response. This book considers ten different glaciated regions around the individual glaciers, and offers a different tune to the same chorus of glacier volume loss in the face of climate change.

This open access volume is the first comprehensive assessment of the Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) region. It comprises important scientific research on the social, economic, and environmental pillars of sustainable mountain development and will serve as a basis for evidence-based decision-making to safeguard the environment and advance people’s well-being. The compiled content is based on the collective knowledge of over 300 leading researchers, experts and policymakers, brought together by the Hindu Kush Himalayan Monitoring and Assessment Programme (HIMAP) under the coordination of the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD). This assessment was conducted between 2013 and 2017 as the first of a series of monitoring and assessment reports, under the guidance of the HIMAP Steering Committee: Eklabya Sharma (ICIMOD), Atiq Raman (Bangladesh), Yuba Raj Khatiwada (Nepal), Linxiu Zhang (China), Surendra Pratap Singh (India), Tandong Yao (China) and David Molden (ICIMOD and Chair of the HIMAP SC). This First HKH Assessment Report consists of 16 chapters, which comprehensively assess the current state of knowledge of the HKH region, increase the understanding of various drivers of change and their impacts, address critical data gaps and develop a set of evidence-based and actionable policy solutions and recommendations. These are linked to nine mountain priorities for the mountains and people of the HKH consistent with the Sustainable Development Goals. This book is a must-read for policy makers, academics and students interested in this important region and an essentially important resource for contributors to global assessments such as the IPCC reports.

The changing climate, the warming of the world and acid rain are among the greatest problems facing us at the end of the twentieth century. This book describes, for the first time, the effects of these phenomena on the high mountains and the forests of Europe. Mountains and the frozen regions (the cryosphere) not only play a major part in our climatic system, but are also central to our water supplies. Yet our glaciers are shrinking, our lakes and soils are becoming acidified, our forests are damaged and the whole fragile ecosystem of ranges like the Alps and the Caucasus is threatened. Nilsson and Pitt present the evidence and assess the probable effects of these changes on mountain society, tourism, water, flora and fauna. They also examine the uncertainties. Above all they look, too, at the best possible strategies in response to What is happening and at what the next steps should be. Originally published in 1991

Scientists have been warning for years that human activity is heating up the planet and climate change is under way. We are only just beginning to acknowledge the serious effects this will have on all life on Earth. The federal government is crafting broad-scale strategies to protect wildland ecosystems from the worst effects of climate change. One of the greatest challenges is to get the latest science into the hands of resource managers entrusted with vulnerable wildland ecosystems. This book examines climate and land-use changes in montane environments, assesses the vulnerability of species and ecosystems to these changes, and provides resource managers with collaborative management approaches to mitigate expected impacts. Climate Change in Wildlands proposes a new kind of collaboration between scientists and managers--a science-derived framework and common-sense approaches for keeping parks and protected areas healthy on a rapidly changing planet.

This book compiles available knowledge of the response of mountain ecosystems to recent climate and land use change and intends to bridge the gap between science, policy and the community concerned. The chapters present key concepts, major drivers and key processes of mountain response, providing transdisciplinary orientation to mountain studies incorporating experiences of academics, community leaders and policy-makers from developed and less developed countries. The book chapters are arranged in two sections. The first section concerns the response processes of mountain environments to climate change. This section addresses climate change itself (past, current and future changes of temperature and precipitation) and its impacts on the cryosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, and human-environment systems. The second section focuses on the response processes of mountain environments to land use/land cover change. The case studies address effects of changing agriculture and pastoralism, forest/water resources management and urbanization processes, landscape management, and biodiversity conservation. The book is designed as an interdisciplinary publication which critically evaluates developments in mountains of the world with contributions from both social and natural sciences.

"One of the best books yet published on climate change . . . The best compact history of the science of global warming I have read."—Bill McKibben, The New York Review of Books The world's premier climatologist, Lonnie Thompson has been risking his career and life on the highest and most remote ice caps along the equator, in search of clues to the history of climate change. His most innovative work has taken place on these mountain glaciers, where he collects ice cores that provide detailed information about climate history, reaching back 750,000 years. To gather significant data Thompson has spent more time in the death zone—the environment above eighteen thousand feet—than any man who has ever lived. Scientist and expert climber Mark Bowen joined Thompson's crew on several expeditions; his exciting and brilliantly detailed narrative takes the reader deep inside retreating glaciers from China, across South America, and to Africa to unravel the mysteries of climate. Most important, we learn what Thompson's hard-won data reveals about global warming, the past, and the earth's probable future.

This book gives an overview of the state of research in fields pertaining to the detection, understanding and prediction of global change impacts in mountain regions. More than sixty contributions from paleoclimatology, cryospheric research, hydrology, ecology, and development studies are compiled in this volume, each with an outlook on future research directions. The book will interest meteorologists, geologists, botanists and climatologists.

This contributed volume focuses on the sustainability of mountain ecosystems in the face of a changing climate. Its chapters highlight climate change impacts on the livelihoods of the people and communities that live in mountains and ways that these effects can be mitigated through adaptive measures. The chapters herein address a gamut of topics from use of remote sensing tools to assess changing ecosystems, disaster management in mountains, policymaking between institutions, and more. This book is suitable for students (undergraduate and postgraduates) of ecology and environmental studies/sciences, mountainous agriculture, mountain forestry, teachers, researchers, climate change scientists in academic and research institutions. It will also be useful to environmental management agencies particularly working towards sustainable development in mountainous regions, disaster management authorities, government agencies and policy makers.