Glacial mountain environments are changing rapidly as a result of climate change and the expansion of nature-based recreation. Anticipatory planning to adapt to such changes is a key management challenge. The aim of this study was to explore how adaptation planning for recreation sites in these areas can be supported using participatory scenario planning (PSP). For this purpose, a study area in southeast Iceland was chosen where management is likely to be heavily impacted in the near future. PSP involves local stakeholder workshops in which participants generate maps reflecting plausible glacial land cover and land use in the near future. This process takes place in stages, including the identification of potential drivers of land-use change, development of multiple land-use scenarios, and examination of the potential consequences of these scenarios and options for adapting to them. The study demonstrates that PSP can be a valuable tool to support recreational land-use planning in glacial landscapes, and to improve anticipatory adaptation to potentially undesirable future changes. PSP also has the potential to provide salient and usable knowledge for local stakeholders, stimulate stakeholders to elaborate on long-term changes and associated uncertainties through scenario construction and visualization, provide insight into the adaptive capacity of current recreational planning systems, and reframe stakeholders' guiding assumptions to encourage a more future-oriented mentality. This approach could be valuable in other glaciated mountain areas and in recreation areas where there are multiple significant future changes in landscape attributes, processes, and uses at play simultaneously.

The Alpine region is expected to be considerably affected by climate change and an increase of settlement area exposed to natural hazards. To respond to emerging challenges due to climate change, land-use changes, and sociodemographic and migration issues, an integrated management of natural hazards is needed, including appropriate approaches to risk communication. This study—which included a quantitative street survey, semistructured interviews (Leitfadeninterview), and focus group discussions carried out in 9 Austrian municipalities prone to flooding—found that residents with foreign-born parents and foreign-born residents were underrepresented in local governments and in voluntary organizations related to disaster risk management and therefore often do not participate in decision-making. Nonetheless, ethnicity was often not the prevailing factor that determined vulnerability and modes of coping. Instead, social networks and ownership structures had an important influence on people's ability to recover from past events and prepare for future events. Study participants who had not recently been affected by natural hazards, including floods, generally perceived them as having a low probability of recurrence and ranked them lower than other (daily) risks and struggles. This article aims to contribute to a better understanding of efficient communication as well as target-group–oriented communication channels and contents that foster risk awareness and private adaptation capacity among migrants in rural Austria.

Summer mountain pastures are complex coupled ecological and human systems. They provide vital forage for livestock during summer, and their traditional use is decisive for the maintenance of biodiversity, ecosystem services, and open landscapes, which benefit local populations and tourists. With climate change, the increased intensity and frequency of climatic hazards threaten the sustainable management of these systems. To foster climate adaptation in such complex systems, we developed a tool to assess their climate change–related vulnerability. The tool consists of a 3-step vulnerability analysis: first, of the inherent exposure of mountain pastures to climatic hazards based on their physical features; second, of vegetation sensitivity to climatic hazards and changes in practices; and third, of adaptive capacities that lie in the options for managing mountain pastures together with the farms using them. This work was carried out within the research and development network Sentinel Mountain Pastures, which addresses climate change adaptation issues on mountain pastures across the French Alps. We used a transdisciplinary approach that included participatory work with experts and interviews with stakeholders. We believe this diagnostic tool has high potential for practical application to support adaptation on summer mountain pastures, by allowing a shared integrative understanding of the complexity of mountain pasture systems by stakeholders. We hope this will provide new information for policymaking that enhances the resilience of summer mountain pasture systems.

Irrigated agriculture is crucial for the livelihood security of mountain communities in the northwestern part of the Himalayan arc and adjoining regions of the Karakoram Hindu Kush and Trans-Himalaya. Using meltwater from glaciers, snow, and permafrost, mountain dwellers have developed sophisticated techniques to cope with recurrent water scarcity caused by glacier retreat, glacier thinning, and seasonal snow-cover dynamics. Based on case studies from the Nanga Parbat region, Hunza-Karakoram, and Ladakh, this paper seeks to identify general patterns and site-specific characteristics of agrarian practices and adaptation strategies in the face of climate change. The comparative case study approach reveals differing responses to water scarcity, which depend on local conditions and include the construction of new irrigation channels, installation of pipes, and building of artificial ice reservoirs. The biophysical investigation is supplemented by an exploration of socioeconomic factors and is based on long-term research in the 3 study areas. The methods used include multitemporal remote sensing analysis, mapping of natural water storage components and irrigation infrastructure, and interviews. Taking into consideration social factors such as the expansion of off-farm income opportunities and market integration, we identify key variables that affect the sustainability and resilience of land use systems. Outcomes are diverse, ranging from the intensification and extension of irrigated mountain agriculture to the abandonment of irrigated areas, depending on local sociohydrological settings.

In the semiarid climate of northwestern Mongolia, glaciers are critical contributors to water resources, particularly during the dry summer months. Nevertheless, our knowledge of the contribution of glacier runoff in the Upper Khovd River Basin (UKRB) is limited. This study investigates the impact of glacier recession on the UKRB's hydrology in western Mongolia's Altai Mountains. The analysis included glaciological method measurements, satellite-derived glacier extent records, and a simple ice ablation model. Our modeling used a mass balance gradient of 0.50 meters water equivalent 100 m^–1 for the years 2000, 2010, and 2016 and included a sensitivity analysis that applied lower and upper mass balance gradient values and ±200 m around the equilibrium line altitude (ELA). The glacier contribution to the UKRB's water resources decreased from almost 8% in 2000 to 6.7% in 2016. Hypsometries revealed that glacier areas decreased at all elevations, indicating that only small accumulation zones exist. Therefore, applying a modeled increased ELA better represents glacier contribution to total runoff, at 18.7% in 2000 and 15.4% in 2016. The decreasing glacier runoff contribution indicates that the UKRB glaciers have passed the tipping point of an increased contribution that first follows enhanced melting. The continued glacier recession and uncertain water availability represent challenges for water resource management and future human–water relations in the Mongolian Altai.

This study examined how members of 2 water user associations in high-elevation ecosystems in Colombia and Venezuela perceive water scarcity as well as the relationship between their perception of and adaptation to it. Among study participants, adaptation was guided not only by the perception of climate change (disturbance of the seasons, decrease in precipitation, and more extreme temperatures) but also by the perception of the socioeconomic causes of water scarcity (increase in cultivated area and population, aging irrigation infrastructure, system management problems). Farmers in the Venezuelan study site have adopted new and more efficient irrigation technologies, restored degraded infrastructure, and undertaken various actions to preserve and conserve wetlands. In the Colombian study site, farmers created a new irrigation system that draws water from a nearby lake, creating access to an abundant resource. The study shows how perceptions of water scarcity in a climate change context are critical determinants of farmers' behavior, especially collective adaptation.

Human dimensions of climate change (HDCC) research overwhelmingly presents community perspectives on climate change and its impacts through single epistemic frameworks. This limits the possible platforms that community voices can access within scientific scholarship. Many HDCC interdisciplinary collaborations pursue the goal of data triangulation and attempt to address complex social–ecological problems through analytical integration. This raises questions about the comparative validity of different epistemologies and often leads to unequal power sharing between the different disciplinary practitioners. Our research addresses both of these issues by operationalizing a plural epistemological framework that depends on parallel analysis. This framework consists of a quantitative approach, inspired by hazards theory and land-change science research, and a qualitative approach, from political ecology. We explored perceptions of climate change in rural households in Uttarakhand in the Indian Himalayan region. While the results reveal a high awareness of climate change within the community, most individuals and households do not consider the impacts of climate change to be a significant worry. The results for each approach complement each other. They provide the community with more than one platform to voice their experiences and reveal the complex relationships producing climate change knowledge in the region. Future research should attempt such parallel analysis in other locations to validate its utility in addressing issues of equity and marginalization between research epistemologies, as well as between experts and local communities.

Innovative approaches could enhance scientific insights into how climate change affects mountain ecosystems and livelihoods and enrich climate action. Using an inter- and transdisciplinary approach in a remote tropical dry forest region of the Andes in southern Ecuador, this article combines local knowledge about climate change and adaptation, based on perceptions and experiences, with quantitative climate measurements. Our theoretical framework is based on the concept of vulnerability and sustainable livelihoods perspectives. Methodologically, we draw on the Participatory Rural Appraisal approach. Participatory workshops and qualitative interviews were carried out in the canton of Macará between 2015 and 2017. Local and regional climate data series were analyzed for climate trends and extreme events. Our study improves understanding of the social and physical dimension of climate change. Especially in mountain areas, differing scales of climate data must be considered to capture local climate conditions and changes. Thus, local knowledge could make a major contribution to selecting representative climate datasets, estimating local impacts of climate change, and developing adaptation policies.

It is widely accepted that glaciers are retreating throughout the world and that their decline causes serious impacts on many societies. Knowledge of glacier distribution and quantification of glacier changes is crucial to assessing the impact of glacier shrinkage on the transboundary hydrological cycle and related issues, such as irrigation, energy production, and natural hazard prevention. Therefore, glacier monitoring is vital to the development of sustainable adaptation strategies in regions with glaciated mountains. Baseline documentation is needed to assess the current status of glacier monitoring. The aim of this study is to assess the status of national implementations of the international monitoring strategy developed by the Global Terrestrial Network for Glaciers (GTN-G) to make the data easily accessible to a broader audience, to identify gaps in the monitoring setup, and to guide countries in improving their monitoring schemes. We developed a standardized procedure to evaluate existing glacier data from international data repositories; these freely accessible data on glacier distribution and changes (as of 2015) for all glacierized countries and regions form the basis of this study. The resulting country profiles are analyzed in relation to the existing GTN-G monitoring strategy. Gaps between the current implementation of glacier monitoring and implementation targets are compiled in a solid gap analysis, which allows countries to be categorized as having poorly developed monitoring, needing improvement, or having well-developed monitoring. Three pilot cases (Kyrgyzstan, Bolivia, and Switzerland) are presented in detailed country profiles.

African mountains are home to millions of people and provide a diversity of ecosystem services. Coupled with factors such as population growth and land-use change, climate change is putting more pressure on these mountains, with potential impacts on mountain ecosystems and ecosystem services and, therefore, on mountain people's wellbeing and livelihoods. However, there is limited information on how climate change is affecting African mountains, mountain people, and ecosystems. In this paper, the Albertine Rift Conservation Society uses published work and case studies provided by experts to compile the latest knowledge on climate change trends, impacts, and existing adaptation initiatives in African mountains to provide recommendations on how best to address the impacts of climate change.