December 11, 2024we celebrate the International Mountain Daywith the theme ‘Mountain-based solutions for a sustainable future: innovation, adaptation and youth’. This day seeks to highlight how mountain communitiesover the centuries, have developed solutions to face challenges such as climate change and biodiversity loss.
Technology and creative solutions, such as climate-smart (organic) agriculture and the digital monitoringson key to protecting these vulnerable ecosystems. The resilience against climate change It is vital, and Strategies based on ecosystems and indigenous knowledge are essential to reduce risks and improve life in the mountains.
The increase in temperatures reached records in the mountains in recent years. Heat waves, heavy rain, decreased snowfall, erosion, landslides. Mountainous areas are the first to suffer the effects of global warming. The impact on nature and human activities is accelerating.
Mountain ranges represent a large percentage of the Earth’s surface.. They include diverse territories with strong particularities due mainly to altitude, relief and climate. A large number of people live in mountainous areas, which have a low population density.
Beyond the images of snow-capped peaks, the mountain implies much more:
- protected forests, natural spaces, national and regional parks and nature reserves.
- a very rich and varied biodiversity.
- tourist sites (ecotourism).
- sustainable livestock farms.
Mountain territories facing climate change
Mountains warm twice as fast as other ecosystems. He climate change It has important consequences on the snow cover of the mountains. In decline since the 1970s, it is really disastrous. And it is predicted that for every degree of warming, meters and meters of snow and ice could disappear.
Estimates predict that snowpack will “reduce to an ephemeral presence” in the mid-mountains and “reduce” at higher altitudes. In the high mountains, the average winter snow cover at low altitudes will likely decrease by 10 to 40% between 2030 and 2050.
- Melting of glaciers y rising permafrost temperature. These two phenomena have consequences on the stability of the slopes. But also about the extension of the glaciers (possibility of floods, landslides and avalanches in sectors that have been saved until now);
- Attacks on biodiversity. Increase in the risk of extinction of species adapted to the cold and appearance of species from warmer climates. In the high mountains, 44 animal species and 186 flora species are threatened.
- Change water management. With the reduction of snow cover (snow stores water during winter, water becomes available in spring when it melts), the question arises of availability of water resources.
- Forest mortality. With drying out of trees and soils, increase in fires, increase in pests and fungi.
Disturbances due to human activities
These phenomena directly disturb human activities. In addition to the modification of the dates and routes of transhumance, climate change, through the reduction of the snow cover, causes more frequent freezing of mountain pastures (they are no longer protected by a layer of snow).
As a result, there is a risk of reduction of pasture resourceswhich calls into question the practice of grazing. Climate change also affects mountain infrastructure, particularly highway network (ground movements, rock falls, landslides, etc.). For this and other reasons, mountains must be a protected ecosystem..