High Mountain Conservation in a Changing World

About this book

High Mountain Conservation in a Changing World provides case studies and general views of the main processes involved in the ecosystem shifts occurring in the high mountains and analyses the implications for nature conservation. Case studies from the Pyrenees are preponderant, with a comprehensive set of mountain ranges surrounded by highly populated lowland areas also being considered.

The introductory and closing chapters summarise the main challenges that nature conservation may face in mountain areas under shifting environmental conditions. Further chapters put forward approaches from environmental geography, functional ecology, biogeography, and paleoenvironmental reconstructions. Organisms from microbes to large carnivores, and ecosystems from lakes to forest are considered.

This interdisciplinary book will appeal to researchers in mountain ecosystems, students and nature professionals.

Contents

Introduction

1. Trade-offs in the high-mountain conservation
2. Present phylogeorgraphic patterns in European mountains resulting from past large climatic oscillations
3. The early human occupation of the high mountain
4. Millenial socio-ecological trajectories in high mountain and land use
5. Non-equilibrium in alpine plan assemblages, current shifts in summit floras
6. Diversity assembly in alpine plant communities
7. Regional forest idiosyncrasy and the response to global change
8. Life-history responses to the altitudinal gradient in mountain fauna
9. Towards a microbial conservation perspective in high-mountain lakes
10. On defence of fishless high mountain lakes
11. Atmospheric chemical loadings in the high mountain: current forcing and legacy pollution
12. High soil carbon stocks in mountain grasslands may be compromised by land use changes
13. Why recovering large carnivore populations in high mountains?
14. The role of environmental history in high mountain landscape conservation
15. Conservation lessons from long-term studies of the bearded vulture
16. Monitoring global change in the high mountain
17. Evaluating global change effects on high mountain snow and the impact on water resources
18. A modelling approach to the understanding of past, present and future shifts in vegetation
19. Challenges for conservation in a changing world, perspective from the high mountains

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