EUROPEAN HIGH MOUNTAIN (ALPINE) VEGETATION AND ITS SUITABILITY FOR INDICATING CLIMATE CHANGE IMPACTS

2006 ◽  
Vol 106B (3) ◽  
pp. 335-341
Author(s):  
Laszlo Nagy
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Climate Change Impacts ◽  
High Mountain ◽  
Alpine Vegetation

scholarly journals Vulnerability of Pastoralism: A Case Study from the High Mountainsof Nepal

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (7) ◽  
pp. 2737 ◽  
Author(s):  
Krishna Raj Tiwari ◽  
Bishal Kumar Sitaula ◽  
Roshan Man Bajracharya ◽  
Nani Raut ◽  
Prabin Bhusal ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
National Parks ◽  
Climate Change Impacts ◽  
High Mountain ◽  
Contributing Factors ◽  
Conservation Areas ◽  
Ecological Changes ◽  
Policies And Programs ◽  
And Coping ◽  
Key Participants

Pastoralism in the Himalayan region of Nepal has undergone significant socio-economic and ecological changes. While there are numerous contributing factors behind these changes, the effect of a changing climate has not been thoroughly studied. This paper adds a significant contribution to the knowledge base through analysis from a survey of 186 herder households, interviews with 38 key participants, and four focus group discussions with individuals from three National Parks and Conservation areas in the high-mountain region of Nepal. Additionally, a review of the existing policies and programs on pastoralism was carried out. Results demonstrate several reasons behind the decline of transhumance pastoralism: Policy focus on the establishment of conservation areas, increasing vulnerability to extreme events (avalanches, snowfall, storms, and disappearing water sources), and ineffective government policies and programs. Hardships involved in herding combined with changing social values and the degradation of pasture quality were identified as contributing factors to the growing challenges facing mountain pastoralism. Similarly, the declining interest among herders to continue their profession can be traced to vulnerability associated with escalating climate change impacts. Considerable knowledge gaps regarding threats to high-altitude pastoralism remain, and continued research on pastureland conservation, capacity development, facilitation for climate change adaptation, and coping strategies for herders in the high mountains is urgently needed. Our analysis suggests that non-climatic variables such as policy and globalization were more influential in eroding pastoralism as compared to climate change.

Between high mountain processes and urban needs: implementing lake regulations into a hydrological model to anticipate climate change impacts

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tobias Wechsler ◽  
Andreas Inderwildi ◽  
Bettina Schaefli ◽  
Massimiliano Zappa
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Hydrological Model ◽  
Climate Change Impacts ◽  
Anthropogenic Effects ◽  
Lake Ecosystem ◽  
High Mountain ◽  
Climate Change Scenarios ◽  
Lake Levels ◽  
Daily Streamflow ◽  
The Impact

<p>From snow-covered peaks to urban heat islands, this gradient, in its most concentrated form, is the essence of Alpine regions; it spans not only diverse ecosystems, but also diverse demands on water resources. Continuing climate change modifies the water supply and accentuates the pressure from competing water uses. Large Alpine lakes play hereby a key role, for water resource and natural hazard management, but surprisingly, are often only crudely modelled in available climate change impact studies on hydrology. Indeed, regulation of Alpine lake outlets, where daily specifications for lake level and outflow are defined, are the crux to bringing together diverse stakeholders. Ideally, a common regulation is agreed upon with an annual pattern that both corresponds to natural fluctuations and respects the different needs of the lake ecosystem, its immediate environment and upstream and downstream interests, such as fishery, shipping, energy production, nature conservation and the mitigation of high and low extremes. Surprisingly, a key question that remains open to date is how to incorporate these anthropogenic effects into a hydrological model?</p><p>To estimate climate change impacts, daily streamflow through this century was calculated with the hydrological model PREVAH, using 39 climate model chains in transient simulation from the new Swiss Climate Change Scenarios CH2018, corresponding to the three different CO<sub>2</sub> emission scenarios RCP2.6, RCP4.5 and RCP8.5. PREVAH is based on a 200×200 m grid resolution and consists of several model components covering the hydrological cycle: interception, evapotranspiration, snow, glacier, soil- and groundwater, runoff formation and transfer. In order to implement the anthropogenic effect of lake regulations, we created an interface for the hydrodynamic model MIKE11. In this work, we will present the two hydraulically connected Swiss lakes, Walensee (unregulated) and Zurichsee (regulated), that are located on the gradient between snow-covered peaks and urban environments. This catchment area was already affected by water scarcity in isolated years.</p><p>The hydrological projections at the end of the century show minor changes in mean annual lake levels and outflow for both lakes, but there is a pronounced seasonal redistribution of both level and outflow. The changes intensify over time, especially in the scenario without climate change mitigation measures (RCP8.5). In the winter, mean lake levels rise and outflow increases; in the summer, mean lake levels fall and outflow decreases. Walensee’s (unregulated) level change is significantly higher, with a difference of up to 50 cm under RCP8.5, than Zurichsee’s (regulated), which only changes around 5 cm; the changes in outflow are of the same order of magnitude in both lakes. The extremes show an increased frequency of reaching the drawdown limit, but no clear change in frequency of reaching the flood limit.</p><p>In order to estimate future hydrological developments on lakes and downstream rivers, it is important to use models that include the impact of such regulations. Hydrological models including anthropogenic effects allow a separation of climatic and regulatory impacts. Timely hydrological projections are crucial to allow the necessary time horizon for both lake and downstream interests to adapt.</p>

scholarly journals Climate change impacts on the seasonality and generation processes of floods in catchments with mixed snowmelt/rainfall regimes: projections and uncertainties

2014 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 6273-6309 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. Vormoor ◽  
D. Lawrence ◽  
M. Heistermann ◽  
A. Bronstert
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Production Management ◽  
Climate Change Impacts ◽  
Climate Projections ◽  
High Mountain ◽  
Relative Role ◽  
Design Flood ◽  
Flood Estimation ◽  
Projected Changes ◽  
Rainfall Regimes

Abstract. Climate change is likely to impact the seasonality and generation processes of floods in the Nordic countries, which has direct implications for flood risk assessment, design flood estimation, and hydropower production management. Using a multi-model/multi-parameter approach, we analysed the projected changes in flood seasonality and its underlying generation processes in six catchments with mixed snowmelt/rainfall regimes in Norway. We found that autumn/winter events become more frequent in all catchments considered which leads to an intensification of the current autumn/winter flood regime for the coastal catchments, a reduction of the dominance of spring/summer flood regimes in a high-mountain catchment, and a possible systematic shift in the current flood regimes from spring/summer to autumn/winter in catchments in northern and south-eastern Norway. The changes in flood regimes results from increasing event magnitudes or frequencies, or a combination of both during autumn and winter. Changes towards more dominant autumn/winter events correspond to an increasing relevance of rainfall as a flood generating process (FGP) which is most pronounced in those catchments with the largest shifts in flood seasonality. Here, rainfall replaces snowmelt as the dominant FGP. We further analysed the ensemble components in contributing to overall uncertainty in the projected changes and found that the climate projections and the methods for downscaling or bias-correction tend to be the largest contributors. The relative role of hydrological parameter uncertainty, however, is highest for those catchments showing the largest changes in flood seasonality which confirms the lack of robustness in hydrological model parameterization for simulations under transient hydrometeorological conditions.

scholarly journals Climate-Change Impacts on the Southernmost Mediterranean Arctic-Alpine Plant Populations

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (24) ◽  
pp. 13778
Author(s):  
Konstantinos Kougioumoutzis ◽  
Ioannis P. Kokkoris ◽  
Arne Strid ◽  
Thomas Raus ◽  
Panayotis Dimopoulos
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Climate Change Impacts ◽  
Future Climate ◽  
Ex Situ ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
Future Climate Change ◽  
High Mountain ◽  
Distribution Models ◽  
Seed Collection ◽  
Edge Populations

Human-induced climate- and land-use change have been affecting biogeographical and biodiversity patterns for the past two centuries all over the globe, resulting in increased extinction and biotic homogenization rates. High mountain ecosystems are more sensitive to these changes, which have led to physiological and phenological shifts, as well as to ecosystem processes’ deformation. Glacial relicts, such as arctic-alpine taxa, are sensitive indicators of the effects of global warming and their rear-edge populations could include warm-adapted genotypes that might prove—conservation-wise—useful in an era of unprecedented climate regimes. Despite the ongoing thermophilization in European and Mediterranean summits, it still remains unknown how past and future climate-change might affect the distributional patterns of the glacial relict, arctic-alpine taxa occurring in Greece, their European southernmost distributional limit. Using species distribution models, we investigated the impacts of past and future climate changes on the arctic-alpine taxa occurring in Greece and identified the areas comprising arctic-alpine biodiversity hotspots in Greece. Most of these species will be faced with severe range reductions in the near future, despite their innate resilience to a multitude of threats, while the species richness hotspots will experience both altitudinal and latitudinal shifts. Being long-lived perennials means that there might be an extinction-debt present in these taxa, and a prolonged stability phase could be masking the deleterious effects of climate change on them. Several ex situ conservation measures (e.g., seed collection, population augmentation) should be taken to preserve the southernmost populations of these rare arctic-alpine taxa and a better understanding of their population genetics is urgently needed.

Climate change impacts on crop yields in Ethiopia

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Crop Yields ◽  
Climate Change Impacts
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