The Risks Associated with Climatic Change in Mountain Regions

The Earth’s environment is continuously subjected to various stresses through natural processes and human interference. With the rapid industrialization and population growth that the 20

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century has experienced worldwide, however, humankind has added a new dimension of stress to the global environment in general, and mountain regions in particular. In some instances, environmental degradation is inevitable because of the basic requirements of human populations, particularly where those are growing rapidly; in other cases, environmental damage is a direct result of mismanagement and over-exploitation of natural resources (Beniston 2000). The sensitivity of a given mountain region to changes in environmental conditions depends largely upon the climatic, geological and biological features of the region considered. Changes in these controlling factors, particularly through direct human interference or indirect effects such as climatic change, may have significant impacts upon numerous mountain environments.