1st Edition

Mountains: Physical, Human-Environmental, and Sociocultural Dynamics

Edited By Mark A. Fonstad Copyright 2018
    344 Pages
    by Routledge

    344 Pages
    by Routledge



    Mountains have captured the interests and passions of people for thousands of years. Today, millions of people live within mountain regions, and mountain regions are often areas of accelerated environmental change. This edited volume highlights new understanding of mountain environments and mountain peoples around the world. The understanding of mountain environments and peoples has been a focus of individual researchers for centuries; more recently the interest in mountain regions among researchers has been growing rapidly. The articles contained within are from a wide spectrum of researchers from different parts of the world who address physical, political, theoretical, social, empirical, environmental, methodological, and economic issues focused on the geography of mountains and their inhabitants. The articles in this special issue are organized into three themed sections with very loose boundaries between themes: (1) physical dynamics of mountain environments, (2) coupled human–physical dynamics, and (3) sociocultural dynamics in mountain regions. This book was first published as a special issue of the Annals of the American Association of Geographers.

     

    Introduction Mountains: A Special Issue  Physical Dynamics of Mountain Environments 1. Controls on Mountain Plant Diversity in Northern California: A 14,000-Year Overview   2. The Scientific Discovery of Glaciers in the American West   3. Incorporating Autonomous Sensors and Climate Modeling to Gain Insight into Seasonal Hydrometeorological Processes within a Tropical Glacierized Valley   4. How Rivers Get Across Mountains: Transverse Drainages   5. Geomorphometric Controls on Mountain Glacier Changes since the Little Ice Age in the Eastern Tien Shan, Central Asia 6. Some Perspectives on Avalanche Climatology   7. Characteristics of Precipitating Storms in Glacierized Tropical Andean Cordilleras of Peru and Bolivia   8. On the Production of Climate Information in the High Mountain Forests of Guatemala   9. Retreating Glaciers, Incipient Soils, Emerging Forests: 100 Years of Landscape Change on Mount Baker, Washington, USA Coupled Human-Physical Dynamics  10. Impacts of Glacier Recession and Declining Meltwater on Mountain Societies  11. Agro-environmental Transitions in African Mountains: Recent Land Use and Livelihood Changes amid State-Led Commercialization in Rwanda   12."Water is life": local perceptions of páramo grasslands and land management strategies associated with payment for ecosystem services  13. Natural Hazard Management from a Coevolutionary Perspective: Exposure and Policy Response in the European Alps   14. Bringing the Hydrosocial Cycle into Climate Change Adaptation Planning: Lessons from Two Andean Mountain Water Towers 15. Nanga Parbat Revisited: Evolution and Dynamics of Sociohydrological Interactions in the Northwestern Himalaya   16. Applied Montology using Critical Biogeography in the Andes   17. Snowlines and Treelines in the Tropical Andes   18. Mountain

    Biography

    Mark Fonstad is an Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Oregon, USA. He specializes in studies of riverine and mountain environments. His areas of research are the physical geography of rivers and mountains, the fusion of physical geography with geographic information science, geomorphology, hydrology, and remote sensing.