Remote areas devoid of roads and tourist transport infrastructure are increasingly appreciated in urbanized countries because they provide the opportunity to experience tranquillity, solitude, and pristine nature, which are recreational qualities that contrast with the stress of urban life. In Switzerland as a whole, larger roadless areas are rare, but they are still common in southern Switzerland as the “inventory of remote areas,” which was established in this study, shows. A crucial dilemma for tourism development in remote areas is the paradoxical situation that the installation of tourism facilities and services can reduce the experiential qualities of these areas that attracted the tourists in the first place. This study seeks possible solutions for this dilemma by analyzing the attitudes of 230 visitors to 2 remote areas of southern Switzerland with a questionnaire-based survey. The case study areas represented one “moderately remote” area (Val Cama) and one “extremely remote” area (Val di Lodrino). The respondents were divided into 3 different visitor types along the “purism scale”: purists, neutralists, and nonpurists. The percentage of purists was 45% in the “extremely remote” Val di Lodrino versus 24% in the “moderately remote” Val Cama. There was a consensus among all visitor types that the existing traditional cultural landscape and the path network should be preserved and that the construction of new road or cable-car access should be avoided. The development of new huts, paths, and services was found to be controversial. A major policy recommendation of the study is to gear tourism supply in remote areas to the needs of different visitor types by carefully assessing the impact of measures on remoteness and concentrating new facilities and services in the more accessible parts of a remote area, while preserving more remote conditions in the other zones.

Mountain summits present a unique challenge to manage sustainably: they are ecologically important and, in many circumstances, under high demand for recreation and tourism activities. This article presents recent advances in the assessment of resource conditions and visitor disturbance in mountain summit environments, by drawing on examples from a multiyear, interdisciplinary study of summits in the northeastern United States. Primary impact issues as a consequence of visitor use, such as informal trail formation, vegetation disturbance, and soil loss, were addressed via the adaption of protocols from recreation ecology studies to summit environments. In addition, new methodologies were developed that provide measurement sensitivity to change previously unavailable through standard recreation monitoring protocols. Although currently limited in application to the northeastern US summit environments, the methods presented show promise for widespread application wherever summits are in demand for visitor activities.

The Andes of Ecuador are one of the world's hotspots of vascular plants. These hotspot characteristics apply particularly to the divergence zone of the study site situated in the Cordillera Real near the Estación Científica San Francisco (ECSF) in the northernmost part of Podocarpus National Park (3°58′S; 79°04′W). Here, family and species numbers vary considerably between primary mountain forest stands and anthropogenic sites at similar altitudes. The highest family as well as species numbers (95 and 491, respectively, at 2000–2100 m; 68 and 296 at 2400–2500 m, with sample areas of 400 m² each) document the extraordinarily high plant diversity of primary mountain forest stands. Comparatively, on anthropogenic sites, the analogous numbers are much smaller, with only 64 families/186 species at the lower altitudinal level and 54 families/155 species at the higher altitudinal level.

Sustainable management of rare medicinal plants is becoming a major conservation issue in the Himalaya, and the need to consider population status and life history strategies for sustainable management of these plants has been expressed. We sampled Aconitum naviculare, an endemic Himalayan medicinal plant, to study life history strategies and abundance across 6 sampling sites in Manang Valley, central Nepal. The relationship among environmental variables, life history traits, and abundance was analyzed by using regressions. Seed germination, growth characters, reproductive output, and population density varied significantly across the sites; most of these were lowest at Khangsar, a site located at the highest elevation. Growth characters were largely governed by life forms of associated species. Plant height and petiole length were higher in individuals growing within juniper scrub, whereas tuber mass, flowers/plant, and seed/follicle were higher in open areas. Reproductive outputs were determined by the growth vigor of individual plants and associated species, and not by population size. Stem mass and above-ground biomass declined with elevation, whereas density increased with relative radiation index. Soil attributes could not explain the variation in life history traits and abundance. Associated shrubs reduced the pressure of human collection and destructive effects of animal grazing. In conclusion, a plant's life history and responses to different natural environments can explain the variation in abundance of rare species such as A. naviculare.

Forest management plans in Bhutan are implemented under the premise that species diversity is not significantly altered while providing forest products and services to local communities. This study examines the impact on local communities of government-management logging operations in national forests near their villages and the impact of the single-tree selection system on species diversity in 4 forest management units with mixed conifer forests in western Bhutan. Household interviews were conducted using semistructured questionnaires to assess the availability of forest products and the accessibility of forests for grazing and identifying constraints and opportunities. Moreover, single-tree selection forests and old-growth uncut forests were sampled for comparing species diversity. Forest product availability and accessibility of forests to rural communities for grazing varies between forest management units (FMUs). Currently, at Chamgang and Gidakom FMUs, lesser quantities of timber and other wood products such as beams, planks, scaffoldings, poles, fuelwood, and leaf litter were available to rural communities compared with 10 years before the implementation of logging operations. At Chamgang and Gidakom FMUs, logging followed by plantation and fencing and retention of coarse woody debris constituted barriers to cattle herding. Notwithstanding, forest roads provided access to forest resources. The government-managed national forests, however, provide limited accessibility to rural communities for extracting timber and other wood products. The single-tree selection system did not alter species composition and was not detrimental to forest species diversity in national forests.

An analysis of the patterns of technology adoption by upland rice farmers in southern Yunnan and of the impact of technologies was conducted using farm–household data collected during 2005. The technologies considered were improved upland rice varieties and terraces. The results indicate that these technologies are now spreading in upland areas. Farmers who have adopted both technology components have been able to increase the upland rice yield substantially. Income from rice production was similarly found to be higher for adopters than for nonadopters. In addition, there was evidence that increased rice yield helped reduce the pressure from intensifying food production in these fragile uplands because farmers were able to meet their food needs from smaller areas. Implications of these findings for sustainable development of uplands in Yunnan and in countries in the region are drawn.

Increasing human and livestock populations in Ethiopia are leading to a growing demand for food and feed. Cereal cropping is highly prioritized at the cost of the livestock subsector and the environment. Grazing land is decreasing, leading to overstocking and overgrazing of pastures, thus fueling conflicts over scarce resources and exacerbating further land degradation. Two independent surveys were carried out in 4 areas in the Ethiopian Highlands, using questionnaires to investigate livestock husbandry as well as farmers' perceptions and attitudes regarding the relationship among cropping, livestock, and natural resources, in the context of broader reflection on what could help support Ethiopia's human, animal, and environmental needs in a sustainable way. In total, 684 farmers were interviewed in 75 villages. The majority of animals were said to be fed on natural pasture and crop residues; only 1.3% of the respondents purchased supplementary feed. Overall, cropland had increased in the study area at the cost of grazing land, and overstocking of pastures was seen as a major problem. Decreasing grazing land was also considered to be due to drought in Woldia and increased human population in Gurage. No pasture management system was in place at community level in our study sites. Less than 2% of the respondents perceived and understood land degradation and subsequent reduced land fertility to be a constraint for sustainable feed production. Measures and priorities for future livelihoods were perceived differently by farmers from different regions. We discuss strategies for de-stocking cattle herds, the nature of which is intrinsically tied to cereal cropping. This study highlights the lack of understanding amongst farmers of the causes and effects of land degradation and the lack of community-based strategies for conservation agriculture.

The installation of a radio communication antenna on a sacred mountain, Mount Quimal, led to an interaction between a mining corporation and Atacameño people in northern Chile. The present article focuses on how language games that involve “over- and undercommunication” of information in this transactional event reflect the distribution of power in society. Specifically, it looks into the “impression management” (Goffman 1959, 1971) that took place in the interactions and negotiations between the corporation and the communities, within the context of a sustainable development discourse adopted by the corporate world.

Glaciers are the largest reservoir of freshwater on Earth, supporting one third of the world's population. The Himalaya possess one of the largest resources of snow and ice, which act as a freshwater reservoir for more than 1.3 billion people. This article describes a new project called HIMALA, which focuses on utilizing satellite-based products for better understanding of hydrological processes of the river basins of the region. With support from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), together with its partners and member countries, has been working on the application of satellite-based rainfall estimates for flood prediction. The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) partners are working with ICIMOD to incorporate snowmelt and glacier melt into a widely used hydrological model. Thus, through improved modeling of the contribution of snow and ice meltwater to river flow in the region, the HIMALA project will improve the ability of ICIMOD and its partners to understand the impact of weather and climate on floods, droughts, and other water- and climate-induced natural hazards in the Himalayan region in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Myanmar, Nepal, and Pakistan.