As the 21st centurey begins, mountain scholars and development specialists can congratulate themselves for having finally brought mountaing issues to a global level of awareness. Through the efforts of a small number of dedicated individuals and institutions, the neglected mountain ecosystems and native peoples of the world were finally given offical recognition at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit through Chapter 13 of Agenda 21 and again in 1998 by the UN General Assembly, which declared 2002 as the “International Year of Mountains.” Today, the professional international mountain circuits, both the scholarly and development kinds, are buzing with conferencing, e-conferencing, report writing and publishing, public awareness raising, and a host of other activities that could convince us that conditions have nerer been better for the mountain cause. While we should all applaud this much-needed progress at the political level, some very important unfinished business remains on the mountain agenda.

The Mount Kenya region offers a great deal of beautiful scenery and attracts tourists from all over the world. What these tourists may not see, however, is the crucial function of Mount Kenya as a water tower for its footzones and adjoining lowland areas. This function is becoming ever more crucial, as populations in these areas are growing at a rapid pace and new land use systems require far more water. These developments have set the stage for increasing conflicts over water resources; to make things worse, water is becoming ever scarcer, especially in the dry areas of the Laikipia Plateau and the Samburu Plains to the north and west of the mountain. This article summarizes the complex ecological and socioeconomic dynamics prevailing in the highland-Blowland system of Mount Kenya—the Ewaso Ng'iro North Basin—and presents a multilevel strategy for mitigating the emerging conflicts over water resources.

In the winter of 1911, a massive earthquake-induced landslide in the Pamir Mountains of eastern Tajikistan completely blocked the valley of the Bartang (Murgab) River, a headwater tributary to the Amu Darya River basin. A lake began to grow behind this natural dam and has now reached a length of 60 km. In a worst-case scenario that assumes collapse of the dam, a catastrophic outburst flood from Lake Sarez would destroy the villages and infrastructure in the Amu Darya basin between the lake and the Aral Sea, affecting an area inhabited by more than five million people across a distance of over 2000 km. But local populations in the mountain valleys face further, more immediate and pressing hazards; the annual cycle of rockfalls, debris flows, avalanches, and flooding constantly impinges on human activities. Development assistance is thus needed on a small, participatory scale in the form of enhancing existing local emergency response infrastructure. Moreover, monitoring Lake Sarez and designing an early warning system seem more appropriate measures than extremely costly engineering solutions to stabilize the dam, especially since collapse of the dam was assumed to be extremely unlikely.

People have long been attracted to the beauty and grandeur of the Rocky Mountains. Until very recently, however, the Rocky Mountain region was sparsely populated and its use mostly extractive. Commodities removed in massive quantities included first beaver, then precious metals, timber, energy, and finally water. There has been a fundamental change in migration patterns since the 1980s. Populations are expanding not only in urban areas; many rural areas are also growing faster. In an affluent and mobile society, Americans are moving to the West for aesthetic reasons, often based on perceptions that have little to do with regional roots, family ties, or economic opportunities.

Wallace Stegner described the West into the 1980s as a colony for the rest of the nation. “It seems to be almost like a continuous repetitive act of God that the western resources should be mined …, that populations should rush in and have to rush out again, or trickle out again…. Get in, get rich, get out….Every boom and bust leaves the West physically a little poorer, a little worse damaged” (Stegner 1996).

In an article about actor and director Robert Redford, writer Richard Raynor talks about unexpected side effects Redford's movies have had on American behavior. “A River Runs Through It dangerously swelled the banks of American rivers with novice fishermen. It seems likely that Redford's loving rendition of ranch life in The Horse Whisperer … will have a similar effect on western Montana, filling it with even more people in a nostalgic search for American rapture and simplicity” (1998).

The Arctic is a region of spectacular and diverse mountain environments. One example is the Svalbard Archipelago in the Norwegian high arctic. Despite its remote location in the Arctic Ocean, Svalbard has an astonishingly diverse economy based on coal mining, arctic research, and the island's geostrategic importance. In recent years, tourism has become increasingly important, with more than a fourfold increase in tourists from the 1970s to the 1990s. This development poses serious threats to the island's highly vulnerable arctic–alpine environment. A management plan for tourism and outdoor recreation has been prepared in recent years, with a view to safeguarding the unique environment and keeping tourism development within environmentally sustainable and commercially acceptable boundaries.

Slash-and-burn for pluvial rice cultivation (Tavy) is a predominant component in the land use system on the Eastern Escarpment of Madagascar. It causes ecological degradation and subsequent aggravation of rural poverty. After conducting multidisciplinary research resulting in an in-depth diagnosis of the area's agroecological system, the BEMA (Bilans écologiques à Madagascar) project now aims to propose improvements and alternatives to the land use system. The objective of contributing relevant knowledge to stakeholder discussions and enhancing the choice of development priorities has called for a method allowing aggregation of existing knowledge, in order to constitute an integrated overall picture of the local level. The present article illustrates the application of a sensitivity analysis. This method allows exploitation of existing knowledge with a view to setting priorities among key factors with regard to a postulated development objective and discussion of possible strategies for development activities. For this study, intensification and stabilization, which are common concerns among the region's stakeholders, were chosen as development objectives to be analyzed by example. Analysis of the local land use system has revealed that actions aiming to retard degradation caused by the slash-and-burn technique, as well as to promote self-sufficiency of Tavy, have hindered intensification and stabilization. This paper concludes that the key factors in promoting more sustainable development are the intensification and the spatial concentration of permanent crops (irrigated rice and home gardens), cash cropping, and animal husbandry on the valley floors. Interventions at the socio-organizational level (collective conventions, improved access to land, etc.) and efforts to improve the dynamics of the local market are the most important factors in inducing and perpetuating such changes.

This paper evaluates changes in land use/land cover (hereafter land cover) in a specific area in Kalu District, Southern Wello, Ethiopia, by comparing two aerial photographs from 1958 and 1986. An attempt is also made to discuss possible implications of these land cover changes for land degradation. By applying Geographic Information Systems (GIS), two maps of the study area (for the years 1958 and 1986) were produced. The maps show a decrease in coverage by shrublands, riverine vegetation and forests, and an increase in remaining open areas, settlements, floodplains, and a water body. The areal extension of nine categories of land cover was calculated and, by overlaying the two maps, the percentage of each type of land cover that was converted into other categories was computed. Land cover changes were most noticeable for shrublands, with a decrease of 15.5 km² (–51%), and for remaining open areas (ie, excluding cultivated areas and settlements), with an increase of 14.3 km² ( 333%). Areas under cultivation remained more or less unchanged. By and large, land cover changes observed in this study were the result of clearing of vegetation for fuelwood, grazing lands, new cultivation areas, etc., thus contributing to the current problem of land degradation in the country. If coordinated efforts are not made to rehabilitate degraded hillslopes, further deterioration of shrublands, forests, and riverine vegetation into areas with little or no plant cover will adversely affect the hillslopes and eventually those areas that are currently used for crop production.

As part of The Mountain Institute's monitoring and evaluation program, historic landscape photographs from 10 photopoints of the 1936 and 1939 German/Austrian climbing and cartographic expeditions to the Cordillera Blanca (Huascarán National Park) were replicated in 1997 and 1998. Comparisons revealed contemporary changes in native forest cover, nonnative forest cover, glacial recession, grazing impacts, and urban expansion. Results indicated an apparent stability and/or increase in native Polylepis forest cover, significant regional increases in nonnative Eucalyptus and Pinus forest cover, improved pasture conditions in some areas, widespread glacial recession, and increases in regional urbanization. Important management-related questions in need of further study are identified, such as the impacts of cattle on Polylepis regeneration, correlations between road construction and forest loss, long-term impacts of nonnative forests, and strategies for the reintroduction of native forest species. Increasing the photographic, quantitative, and oral databases for the Huascarán National Park and buffer zone will continue to provide important insights regarding contemporary landscape change processes, human versus natural impacts, and future management and restoration options.

In the High Andes of Bolivia, sectoral fallow systems are a common form of land use. Fields in the study area (Japo, Department of Cochabamba) are cultivated for 3 years with potatoes as the first crop and then lie fallow for 9 years. Despite the low nutrient content of the soil and the high elevation of the area (between 4000 and 4500 m above sea level), farmers achieve relatively high yields. This is explained by traditional knowledge about soil fertility management. The study focuses on nutrient dynamics over a 12-year cycle. A participatory research approach was applied to obtain information about indigenous knowledge. Soil nutrient content, phytomass, and yields were measured in 72 fields together with the farmers. Subterranean phytomass was identified as the key factor in nutrient storage during the fallow period. A multiple linear regression model shows three main factors that determine potato yields on cultivated fields. Farmers know about the nutrient dynamics of the fields; hence, cultivation measures show an impressive rationality. New elements such as mineral fertilizer have been incorporated in the system in a sustainable way. Participatory research intensifies these processes, stimulating farmers to reflect about their own land use system.

Old developed systems of agricultural terraces are found in settled areas with high relief in different parts of the world. The present trend to abandon many of these terraced areas constitutes a process that increases erosion and sediment yield values following the collapse of supporting walls. This paper addresses the problem of changing human activities in the fragile environment of the historical terraces in the Central Andean mountains of Peru. The study is based on field experiments. Eight small plots were installed in the Santa Eulalia basin at altitudes of 2800 m and up to 3650 m. Annual run-off coefficient values were less than 5% and sediment yield values less than 1 g/m² on the experimental plots. Daily rainfall intensity does not exceed 10 mm/d on most rainy days. Simulation of rainstorms by sprinklers was performed on terraces with different physiographic characteristics, lithology, soil, exposure, slope, altitude, degree of abandonment, and vegetation cover. Rainfall simulation tests revealed that run-off is high on steep, nonvegetated slopes and very low on grass-covered, low-angle slope terraces. A morphometric analysis was conducted on about 300 terraces with the same physiographic parameters. The average terrace area was 170 m², and most terraces surveyed were in a semiabandoned stage. Terrace degradation was noticeable by wall swelling, collapse, and deterioration of wall and terrace structure. Terrace degradation is a function of physical, economic, and social processes, which are linked and irreversible.

The improved process-based equilibrium terrestrial biosphere model (BIOME3China) was run under the present climate to model the potential biomes on the Tibetan Plateau on a 109 grid. The simulated biome was basically in good agreement with a potential natural vegetation map based on a numerical comparison between two maps using the ΔV statistic (ΔV = 0.38). A coupled ocean-atmosphere general circulation model including sulfate aerosols was used to drive a double greenhouse gas scenario to the end of the next century. The simulated vegetation under changed climate with a CO₂ concentration of 500 ppmv and a baseline biome map were also compared using the ΔV statistic (ΔV = 0.4). The climate change would cause a large reduction in the temperate desert, alpine steppe, desert, and ice/polar desert, a large increase in the cold-temperate conifer forest, temperate shrubland/meadow, and temperate steppe, and a general northwestward shift of all vegetation zones. In addition to simulation of biome distribution, BIOME3China also predicted net primary production (NPP) of each grid cell. Comparisons between predicted annual NPP and 160 forest NPP measurements show an agreement between them with a linear regression, despite many problems, such as the quality of the field data. The pattern of predicted annual NPP in the scenario with enhanced CO₂ concentration was the same as that under the present climate; however, the NPP of each biome would increase significantly. Present permafrost simulated using the air frost index was quite similar to the actual frozen ground distribution on the Tibetan Plateau. After the change in climate, the boundary between continuous and discontinuous permafrost would shift toward the north of the plateau by about 1–2° in latitude. The continuous permafrost would mostly disappear, whereas the no-permafrost area would greatly increase. The movement of permafrost would take place with the shift of vegetation zones to the north. The disappearance of permafrost and the expansion of no-permafrost areas would accelerate the desertification of the Tibetan Plateau.