Land, Life, and Environmental Change in Mountains

Abstract

One of the greatest challenges facing mountain scholars is to separate environmental change caused by human activities from change that would have occurred without human interference. Linking cause and effect is especially difficult in mountain regions where physical processes can operate at ferocious rates and ecosystems are sensitive to rapid degradation by climate change and resource development. In addition, highland inhabitants are more vulnerable to natural hazards and political-economic marginalization than populations elsewhere. This address focuses on the Nanga Parbat massif in the Himalaya Range of Pakistan, Garhwal Himalaya of northwest India, and Manaslu-Ganesh Himals of central Nepal. I have highlighted three special insights that geographers offer to increase understanding of human impacts on the stability of mountain landscapes. First, the mixed methods and theories we employ—quantitative and qualitative, postpositivist science and social theory, muddy-boots fieldwork linked with GIScience—together position geographers to resolve the debate over human-triggered changes in the physical landscape in mountains and explain the frequent disconnect between mountain science, policymaking, and resource management. Second, academic scholars and policymakers have come to realize that most problems require training, experience, and expertise in understanding physical and human systems. Third, modern techniques of measuring rates of geomorphic change help place the human factor in perspective and explain spatial variability of natural hazards. Forecasting environmental change remains elusive in “the perfect landscape” of mountains.