WEEK 11-12

Question 1

How much of the global population lives in mountains today?

Answer 1

• Today about 10-12% of the global population lives in mountains.
  
  • roughly 880 million people, which are largely concentrated in developing and transitional countries:
  • places like Nepal, Peru, India, and China.
  • eg. Kathmandu, Nepal
• Half of world’s mountain population in located in Asia, followed by South and Central America, regions that are presently witnessing some of the highest rates of population growth.
  
  • eg. La Paz, Bolivia
• In developing regions, a significant among of mountain peoples are the rural poor, those who rely on scarce or dwindling resources and opportunities relative to demand.
  
  • These are often resources derived from agriculture, from animal husbandry, forestry, mining and a variety of formal and informal service jobs.
• Much of the global mountain population is unemployed or underemployed and migrate temporarily or permanently to seek employment opportunities at lower altitudes or in cities.

Question 2

What are the mountain regions like in Europe economically?

Answer 2

• In the economically developed mountain regions of Europe and North America, many people now enjoy a relatively high standard of living, although this affluence is relatively recent.
  
  • Prior to the 20th c, rural mountain peoples of the Global North generally experienced conditions of socio-economic underdevelopment.
  • The shift has been attributed in part to the development of roads, railways and air links, which have facilitated new flows of people and capital into mountains, stimulating new opportunities and diversifying livelihoods.

Question 3

What are some of the ways people have traditionally used mountains?

Answer 3

• Early systems often included combinations of gathering, hunting, subsistence agriculture, animal husbandry, using and utilizing the diversity of ecosystems and environments at hand.
• But it’s been primarily over the last 400 years, with industrialization, colonialism, commercialism and tourism that the current diversity of mountain livelihoods developed, though this varies greatly across mountain regions.
• The ecological diversity of mountain areas was ideal for early hunting and gathering.
  
  • Lower mountains forests provided a variety of food types within a relatively short distance.
  • By following migrating wildlife up and down mountains from summer to winter pastures, hunters could find an abundance of prey, which along with the flora provided food throughout the winter.
  • Other advantages included the availability of firewood, shelter, fish and water from mountain streams.
  • To early hunters and gatherers, the resources scattered over a variety of closely connected and diverse ecosystems, with seasonal variability, provided a rich environment to utilize.
  • To take advantage of such environments, many hunting and gathering peoples were also highly mobile, but also very highly systematic and territorial, utilizing both seasonal and permanent settlements.
• Although subsistence hunting and gathering has largely declined as a widespread practice, pockets still exist in some mountain areas.
  
  • In most cases, subsistence use of renewable resource supplements other livelihood practices.
  • Eg. throughout the mountain world, the collection of mushrooms and berries and medicinal and decorative plants for domestic use or sale remain widespread.
  • Hunting of wild game and birds, as well as fishing is common throughout the North America curdillara, for example, as a means of supplementing livelihoods.
• In contrast, the mountain peoples of Kalimantan, Borneo (in Indonesia), remain a more traditional hunting and gathering mountain society.
  
  • However, groups like this continue to feel the pressure from the outside world and its unfluences.
    
    • They face considerable difficulties in protecting their way of life and their environment and in many instances may have sought out alliances with international conservation agencies.
• In most cases though, while hunting and gathering continues widely in mountain areas, it’s much more commonly supplemental to new ways of life.

Question 4

What is the significance of mining in mountain areas?

Answer 4

• Mining has been and remains a common livelihood in many mountain areas around the world.
• Mountains offer ores, coal, stone, gravel and sand, gems, precious stones, and rock and evaporative salt.
• All aspects of mining from exploration to prospecting to extraction, processing, and transport, have occupied mountain residents and many more outsiders since paleolithic times when early peoples tapped mountains for tools and building supplies, ornaments, pigments and salts.
• Alkaline lakes north of the Himalaya and in the Atacama Desert of the Andes have long been sources of evaporative salt, using it to preserve and flavour food since ancient times.
• Industrial scale silver and gold mining in the Andes dates back to the 15th c Incans and continued through the Spanish colonial period and has expanded in the present under multinational corporations for the extraction of industrial minerals like copper, zinc and tin.
• In North America, mining was the principal industrial activity that brought settlers to the Western mountains in the late 19th and early 20th c.
  
  • Starting even earlier, coal mining in Appalachia helped shape and support the unique mountain cultures there.
• Mining industries bring benefits and pitfalls to mountains and to mountain peoples.
  
  • The boom and bust nature of the mining industries throughout the 20th c have left many abandoned settlements, ghost towns, and in some cases devastated in toxic environments.
  • Indigenous mountain peoples in many mineral-rich mountain areas, while benefitting from the employment opportunities, have been grossly exploited and marginalized by corporate interests.
  • The benefits of the industrial mining practice primarily accrue to large transnational corporations and their shareholders, who usually live far away fro the mountains themselves.
• Mining is now an agent of large-scale environmental change.
  
  • In some regions, whole mountains are lowered.
  • The summit of Cerro Rico in Bolivia, for instance, is thought to have been hundreds of metres higher before large-scale silver mining began in the 16th c.
    
    • the mountain is actually shrinking because of mining activities.
  • other mountains have been replaced by deep pits such as the world’s largest copper mines, including Bingham Canyon in Utah.
    
    • Now this pit is over a km deep and nearly 5km wide.
  • In other places like the Appalachians permits fro the mountaintop removal mining of coal extend across 1600 square km.

Question 5

What is the significance of forestry in mountain regions?

Answer 5

• Mountain forests remain key sources of fuel, timbre and paper products globally.
• The harvesting of trees fro these products and others, forestry, has been an important source of livelihoods for millennia.
  
  • first when trees were used for fuel and construction
  • and later when they were harvested for national and global markets seeking wood products and paper.
• Prior to colonial expansion and independence, many mountain people around the world held customary forest use rights.
  
  • These were rights that were established over long periods, but were largely swept aside with new colonial, and in other cases, national land administrations.
  • This was especially the case in the Himalaya and North American Cordillera, where vast mountain forest areas became crown or state-owned land.
  • These issues were highlighted on both continents by protest movements in the second half of the 20th c.
    
    • Chipco in the Garwall Himalaya and the Clackwood Sound in the coast mountains of Vancouver Island.
    • Both these movements have become iconic in helping to draw attention to indigenous rights and the need for co-management of forests and mountains.

Question 6

What is the significance of agriculture in mountain regions?

Answer 6

• Plant domestication originated independently in several mountainous regions around the world.
• For example, the mountains of Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador were important for potatoes, grains like quinoa and several drugs, including cocaine, quinine and tobacco.
• In the foothills of the Zagros Mountains of Iran, archaeobotanical evidence suggests the use of a wide array of plant species, including the progenitors of key crop plants, such as wheat and barley, large-seeded legumes nearly 10,000 years ago.
• Over millennia, mountain farmers have developed specific techniques, institutions and knowledge that enable them to make a living in mountain environments.
• However, traditional agriculture in mountain regions, particularly family farming, is undergoing rapid transformation due to population growth, economic lifestyles as well as the migration of people from alpine areas to urban areas.
• For centuries, family farming in Bolivia as well as Peru and Ecuador, have relied on grains such as quinoa, canua, and amaranth which can survive in harsh conditions, yet have high levels of protein and micronutrients.
  -In recent years, consumers worldwide have paid increased attention to the healthier, nutritional and traditional food products and they have become an important source of income.
• In some South American mountain communities, quinoa now accounts for more than 80% of the family farm’s agriculture income.
• Mountains and highlands in East Africa have tremendous farming potential bc rainfall is higher and more reliable than in the lowlands, and soils are generally fertile.
• Mountain farmers in East Africa have traditionally produced for subsistence, but in late colonial times, and especially after independence in the 1960s, they increasingly began to produce crops such as barely, wheat, coffee and tea.
• SInce the early 1990s, horticultural products such as veggies and flowers are sold on the European market and have increased revenues while also diversifying farm production.
• In Europe, mountain farming including cereal crops, olive trees and grazing pastures still represents 18% of all agricultural enterprises. -> however productivity is usually poor, averaging 40% lower than farms in the lowlands.

Question 7

What is the significance of trade and artisanship in mountain regions?

Answer 7

• Trade and artisanship have long been source of livelihoods in mountain regions.
• Valleys and passes thorough which people and goods have always flowed have often placed mountain peoples as intermediaries between economies in and beyond mountain regions.
  
  • Eg. High passes in the Alps have been trade routes for millenna, connecting the large commercial centres of northern Italy; places like Venice, Florence, and Milan with those of central Europe.
• There are the famous Trans-Himalayan trade routes, which link lowland India and China with Central Asia in the high Tibetan Plateau.
• The geography of mountains, along with its diversity of its resources, has favourable positioned mountain peoples as producers, transporters, and merchants of trade and sale items.
  
  • Trade items often included artisan goods, especially items crafted from wood, metal and wool.
  • The global trade in Pashmina and other wool shawls grew out of the northwest Himalaya, of Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, and Uttarakhand.
  • Beautiful woollen textiles have brought international renown to the Quechua and Amara communities in Peru and Bolivia.
  • Another eg: the traditional watch and clock industry of the Jura Mountains in Switzerland and France.
    
    • Developed over the years from a small cottage industry and is now global

Question 8

What is the significance of tourism in mountain regions?

Answer 8

• Over the 20th c, but especially during the 2nd WW, tourism has become a major force of change in mountains.
• Mountains provided some of the sights of some of the earliest forms of tourism.
  
  • In the 18th c, the alps became an essential stop for English aristocrats when it became fashionable to make the Grand Tour.
  • The canons of landscape aesthetics in the West, as well as in China and Japan, conferred a special value of mountain vistas.
• Not only has this attraction to mountains persisted, but it’s now become global.
  
  • There is no region in the world today where the appealing quality of mountain landscapes aren’t acknowledged.
  • Associated qualities have now become assets, valuable for the development of mountain tourism, snow, with the invention of and spread of alpine skiing, the diversity of local peoples and traditional cultural practices, the abundance of mineral and hot springs.
  • The sacred dimension attributed to many mountain sites and summits, biological and geological diversity reflected in the unique geological formations in plant communities as well as the emblematic animal species such as goats and mountain lions, snow leopards, marmots or grizzly bears.
  • All of these resources will likely take on increasing importance in the coming decades as urbanization exerts a growing impact on our world and lifestyles and the appeal of travel and tourism continues to expand.
• Tourism is today regarded by many governments and communities around the world as vital for economic development and survival.
  
  • Yet its distribution is very uneven within any given mountain region and its benefits tend to be spread very unevenly at every scale, from the national to the local.
• Tourism is not a one-size-fits-all solution, as there are various factors and conditions that need to be considered if tourism development is to be a lasting success.
  
  • These range from favourable weather to reliable transportation infrastructure, from diverse and high quality services too social and political stability
• Tourism also carries the risk of harming ecological goods and services, compromising cultural identities and increasing social inequities.

Question 9

What is amenity migration?

Answer 9

• Associated with tourism
• Phenomenon → ppl who choose to move to mountain communities or the surrounding areas for the environmental and social benefits.
• Like tourists, amenity migrants are often escaping urban environments, but for longer timescales.
• This trend has produced a new form of semi-permanent residence, legions of second-home owners in mountains around the world, but especially in Europe and North America and increasingly in emerging economies of China and India.
• Proponents of this trend argue that it brings affluence, enhanced infrastructure and services and modernization to mountains.
• Opponents, on the other hand, warn of a spectacular real estate market with exhorbantly rising housing prices, of potentially unstable economic growth, of cultural alienation, and of increased environmental stress.
  
  • These tendencies began to manifest themselves in US mountain towns in the 1980s, like Telluride, Park City and Moab, places where past resource economies built up around mining dried up.
  • But they’re also visible in Canadian mountain communities of Squamish, Whistler and Canmore.
  • In Switzerland after a national referendum in 2012, a law imposed a 20% ceiling on the number of second homes in any community. → good !!!!

Question 10

Globally, how much of mountain regions are estimated to be protected?

Answer 10

• Globally, it is estimated that 20% of mountain regions are protected in some way; as parks, as reserves, or as sanctuaries.
• Some areas have been selected for protection because of their local value, but others simply because of their remoteness, their magnificent scenery, and or their limited opportunities for viable economic development.
• Mountain areas have been the principal focus of the protected area movement since the mid-19th century → many of the world’s first national parks were in mountains.
• Regrettably, for much of that early protected area movement, protection often meant that local peoples were largely excluded from national parks.
  
  • In fact, there’s a long global legacy of actually moving Indigenous peoples from park lands.
• Since the 1980s though there has been increasing recognition that protected areas cannot be managed as islands, separate from their surrounding landscape, and that the customary practices of local peoples can be complementary and even enhance conservation goals.

Question 11

How does the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Defines “Protected Areas”

Answer 11

• “An area of land, and or sea, especially dedicated to the protection and maintenance of biological diversity and of natural and associated cultural resources and managed through legal, or other effective means.‘
• Many reasons for the protected area status of mountains includes characteristics that we’ve discussed earlier in the course:
  
  • eg. mountains are the headwaters of valuable surface water resources
  • mountain biota have to cope with considerable environmental stresses at the best of times
  • mountain resources and mountains are particularly vulnerable to climate change.
  • In many places, mountains are the last refuge for rare plants and animals eliminated from the surrounding lowlands.
  • Mountains are also dynamic and changing landscapes, where volcanism, uplift, erosion, glacial outbursts, seismic activity and avalanches all contribute to significant and rapid alterations in topography, vegetation and land-use.
  • In this context, mountains offer great possibilities for research and for monitoring environmental change.
  • People use and often cherish mountain places, and the high concentration of tourism, recreation and movement in confined valley corridors demands a proactive policy and management approach to avoid overcrowding and degradation.
  • In many parts of the world, mountain ranges for national boundaries and offer opportunities for the establishment of international conservation areas, peace parks and cooperative international action.
• This perspective of mountains as transnational boundaries is worth exploring further.
• Ecosystems, species and natural processes don’t stop at state borders and the environmental impacts of human activities in one country inevitably influences others.

Question 12

What is a Transboundary Peace Park?

Answer 12

• The modern concept of a “transboundary peace park” originated in the 1924 Krakow Protocol, which aimed to resolve a lingering post-war boundary dispute between Poland and the former Czechoslovakia.
• The Tatra Range contains the highest peaks in the Carpathian Mountains and is protected by neighbouring national parks in Slovakia and Poland.
• Both Slovak and Polish scientists, writers and artists had long recognized the Tatras as a significant respective national landscape, and that these alpine areas are biologically diverse.
• In 1992, the two parks became a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve under bi-national Polish Slovak management.
• Transboundary cooperation has included issues such as wildlife conservation and tourism.
• Another very early example of a transboundary peace park is Waterton Lakes National Park

Question 13

How does Waterton act as a transboundary peace park?

Answer 13

• Waterton was the 4th national park that was created in the Canadian national park system.
• It was created in 1895, and it was created as a result of advocacy work by local ranchers adjacent to the park.
• Many of the families that still ranch adjacent to the park are the descendants of people who advocated for the park and wanted the park established because they wanted the area conserved but they also wanted a recreational area so it’s interesting history in terms of the establishment of the park.
• There’s a village in Waterton. It’s one of 5 visited villages in national parks and that’s one of the primary draws for the park.
• The park is also famous for wildlife viewing and for hiking and the two lakes that people can boat on and that draws people from all over.
• Waterton has a unique relationship with a sister park across the border in the US Glacier National Park that was created about the same time.
  
  • It was created a couple years later.
  • The two parks make up the world’s first international peace park: Waterton Glacier International Peace Park.
  • The peace park was established as a result of work on both sides of the border by rotary clubs advocating for this designation with their respective governments.
• The peace park designation was established in the 1930s.
  
  • since that time, both bc of the designation but also because of the reality of the two parks being adjacent to each other, the two park services have worked together more and more on shared issued related to the management of the two parks.
• Types of activities where this cooperation and relationship is strong:
  
  • It is the last 20 or 30 years where we’ve really seen sort of that unfold in measurable ways
  • eg work that they’ve done that relates to grizzly bear research:
    
    • they’ve done population studies at the grizzly bear population in this part of the continent.
    • it’s considered a healthy population, and there’s a lot of questions about why that is the case.
  • work they’ve done with other agencies has helped them better understand that.
  • have also worked together recently one dealing with fire issues.
    
    • In 2015, Parks Canada responded to a fire near the Waterton border that occurred in Glacier National Park.
    • The US National Park Services wasn’t able to respond because of other fire demands and we were able to move in and respond to that fire and deal with it.
• So the two parks don’t exist in isolation, they are part of the continent initiative that involve all of the agencies adjacent to the parks as well.
• The two parks are at the core of the crown of the continent ecosystem which is a 70 some thousand km geographic areas and it’s regarded as one of the most ecologically diverse areas within the continent and the two parks are at the centre of it.
• The province of Alberta, the state of Montana and sometimes the province of British Columbia join that group in terms of dealing with initiatives that we all share or objective that we all share.
• The shared border is one of the rich aspects of a visit to the Peace Park.
  
  • The Canadian Park staff often go to the United States and offer interpretive programming for their guests and similarly, US rangers will come to Waterton throughout the busy season and offer programming for Canadian guests.
• One of the most popular guided hikes that they offer is a joint hike led by a Canadian staff member and a US Ranger down Waterton Lakes that goes throughout the summer.
• They work with the Blackfoot Confederacy most closely.
  
  • In Canada we have the Picani and the Kainai and in the US the South Picani or the Blackfeet.
  • Parks Canada works with the Picani and the Kainai.
  • Recently we’ve negotiated agreements where their members can get access to the park and that’s our of respect to the traditional connection they’ve had to the park but we’ve also been working with them in terms of better presenting to the broader visiting public, their connections to their landscape in terms of traditional place names and also how we can enrich the interpretation of the park specifically with regards to their connections to this place.
• The US National Park service has also been advancing those objectives.

Question 14

What is the Importance of Transboundary Mountains Globally?

Answer 14

The increased recognition globally of the importance of transboundary mountains is evidenced by several recent developments.
Eg. The Alpine Convention in the European Alps

• The 1991 Alpine Convention is an international treaty between the groups of countries that border the Alps as well as the European Union for ensuring the sustainable development and protection of the Alps.
• The Alps are the natural, cultural, living, and economic environment for nearly 14 million people.
• The Alps provide essential ecosystem services for much of lowland Europe, including things like water and food.
• The Alps are also a destination for approximately 120 million tourists every year
• The geographic area of the Alpine Convention covers over 190,000 square km.
• Under the convention, member states have adopted specific measures in several thematic areas, including
  
  • population and culture,
  • air pollution,
  • soil conservation
  • water management
  • conservation of nature and the countryside,
  • mountain farming
  • tourism
  • energy
• The Alpine Convention recognized that the Transboundary Alps are one of the largest continual natural spaces in Europe.
• More than 20% of the Alpine area consists of national parks and other protected areas.
• These areas are home to remarkable biodiversity but the preservation of nature in the Alps must also consider cultural landscapes.
• The Alpine Convention provided a commitment from all of Europe to adopt measures to protect, care for and restore ecosystems, as well as to preserve the natural living environments of wild animal and plant species.

Question 15

What was the Alpine Convention?

Answer 15

The Alpine Convention in the European Alps

• The 1991 Alpine Convention is an international treaty between the groups of countries that border the Alps as well as the European Union for ensuring the sustainable development and protection of the Alps.
• The Alps are the natural, cultural, living, and economic environment for nearly 14 million people.
• The Alps provide essential ecosystem services for much of lowland Europe, including things like water and food.
• The Alps are also a destination for approximately 120 million tourists every year
• The geographic area of the Alpine Convention covers over 190,000 square km.
• Under the convention, member states have adopted specific measures in several thematic areas, including
  
  • population and culture,
  • air pollution,
  • soil conservation
  • water management
  • conservation of nature and the countryside,
  • mountain farming
  • tourism
  • energy
• The Alpine Convention recognized that the Transboundary Alps are one of the largest continual natural spaces in Europe.
• More than 20% of the Alpine area consists of national parks and other protected areas.
• These areas are home to remarkable biodiversity but the preservation of nature in the Alps must also consider cultural landscapes.
• The Alpine Convention provided a commitment from all of Europe to adopt measures to protect, care for and restore ecosystems, as well as to preserve the natural living environments of wild animal and plant species.

Question 16

What is the significance of the Albertine Rift Valley in East Africa?

Answer 16

• transboundary mountain
• The Albertine Rift is one of the most biodiverse regions on the African continent.
• With more than half of Africa’s birds, 40% of Africa’s mammals, and about 20% of its amphibians and plants, it contains more vertebrate species than anywhere else on the continent.
• It also conserves more threatened and endemic species than any other region in Africa and as result is a biodiversity hot spot.
• The region is perhaps best known as the home of the mountain gorilla.
• The human population density in the Albertine Rift is very high with over 1000 people per square km is some areas.
  
  • And these are some of the poorest people on the continent.
• It also has been a region of great conflict over the past 40 years, with civil wars in Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
• This combination of high human density, high levels of poverty, conflict, and high biodiversity means that there are many challenges for conservation.
• The Albertine Rift Conservation Program (2000) was established in 2000 by the Wildlife Conservation Society in collaboration with the National Parks and Protected Area Authorities in all 5 countries.
  
  • Uganda
  • Rwanda
  • Burundi,
  • Tanzania,
  • DRC.
• Many other international conservation organizations are involved as well.

Question 17

What is the significance of The Great Altay Transboundary Biosphere Reserve in Asia

Answer 17

• transboundary mountain
• In Asia, mountains have formed boundaries and frontiers between people and states for millennia.
• Eg. the Altay Mountains span the modern borders of four countries—Russia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia and China—and are one of really unique landscapes of Central Asia.
• The area includes steppes, mountain lakes, forests and high peaks.
  
  • It’s an area of international importance for biodiversity, supporting a number of globally threatened species including the Snow Leopard.
• The main challenge to conservation in this region is the unsustainable exploitation of natural resources, the unregulated expansion of tourism, and climate change.
• In 2011, the Kazakh and Russian governments agreed to the designation of a transboundary reserve centred on two existing protected areas, the Katunsky Biosphere Reserve in Russia and the Katon-Karagysky National Park in Kazakhstan.
• There have been several transboundary cooperation initiatives that focus on economic, nature conservation and cultural identity within the Great Altay Transboundary Biosphere Reserve.

Question 18

What is the significance of the St. Elias Mountains in North America?

Answer 18

• The largest internationally protected area on the planet outside of Antarctica.
• The Kluane National Park, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, Glacier Bay National Park, Tatshenshini-Alsek Provincial Park is an international park system located in Canada and the Us at the border of the Yukon, Alaska and British Columbia.
• It was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994 for its spectacular high mountains, its vast glaciated landscape, as well as for the importance of grizzly bear, caribou and doll sheep habitat.
• The total area of the site in over 132,000 square km.
• The entire region is tectonically active, with continuous mountain-building processes occurring, and some of the world’s largest and longest glaciers, several of which stretch to the Pacific Ocean.
• The Tatshenshini and Alsek River valley allow ice-free linkages from the coast to the interior for plant and animal migration, and this is one of the very few places left in the world where human impacts are limited and where ecological and evolutionary processes are shaped mostly by the environment.

Question 19

What are the world’s main transboundary mountains?

Answer 19

• The Alps
• The Albertine Rift Valley in East Africa
• The Great Altay Transboundary Biosphere Reserve in Asia
• St. Elias Mountains in North America

Question 20

How does Parks Canada Manages the Seemingly Dual Mandate of Use and Preservation in Mountains?

Answer 20

• The tensions between use and preservation in protected mountain areas has a long history.
• Indeed, in several of Canada’s mountain national parks, cottage lots and golf courses, commercial activities existed at the point of parks creation and they continue to exist today.
• Canada established the first National Park service in the world in 1911, Parks Canada, the agency responsible for managing national parks and historic sites in Canada has been a world leader in the protection and presentation of natural and cultural places.
• Parks Canada’s Mandate:
  
  • “To protect and present nationally significant examples of Canada’s natural and cultural heritage and foster public understanding, appreciation and enjoyment in ways that ensure their ecological and commemorative integrity for present and future generation.”
• Achieving this mandate requires the careful integration of environmental, economic and social factors by meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability to meet the needs of future generations.
  
  • This is the essence of sustainable development.

Question 21

How many leaseholders are there in Banff and Jasper?

Answer 21

• Within the parks, there exist approximately 500 leaseholders for commercial operations, backcountry facilities, major tourist attractions, commercial ski operations, major highways and railways, and bustling town sites.
• However, in spite of these developmental pressures, 95% of these parks are declared wilderness areas with strong limits on development and use.

Question 22

What are Wicked Problems?

Answer 22

• Wicked Problems → a wicked problem is one that is difficult to solve bc of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that are often difficult to recognize in the present.
  
  • The problems that can have multiple, potential solutions with no obvious best one and the problems that may never completely be resolved.
  • The phrase was first used in the context of social planning, but this is the challenge of managing mountain landscapes around the world.

Question 23

What are some ways to mitigate human and animal issues in the Parks?

Answer 23

• Highways and railways affect wildlife travel within the valley bottoms of mountains.
  
  • These transportation corridors have to be managed for many potential risks, including avalanches and flooding, but also the impacts on wildlife.
  • Large carnivores like grizzly bears, eg, often rely on large home ranges to make their living.
  • These animals need lots of room to move and thrive.
  • Understanding barriers to their movement and maintaining wildlife corridors for successful travel is thus critical, especially in the presence of human development.
• Current grizzly bear research in Banff National Park, a collaboration between Parks Canada, the Canadian Pacific Railway and the University of Alberta, has a goal to identify potential ways to reduce bear mortality on railway tracks.
  
  • The railway company has spent 20 million to retrofit its grain cars, reducing the amount of spillage by 80% since 2006. → good strategy
• In addition to Parks Canada using carefully managed fire to restore habitat and to specifically provide very rich habitat away from the tracks to give the bear some appealing low-risk alternatives.
• Within this research program, other innovative measures a measures are also being considered:
  
  • eg. Parks Canada is working with a railway company to test the effectiveness of electrified mats in combination with fencing for potential application on the railway to exclude bears and other wildlife from accessing those high-risk locations.
  • This combination of electrified mats and fencing has shown promising results.
  • Parks Canada has recently installed electrified mats in Banff and Kootenai National Parks at several openings in the highway fencing to test and gain experience in using these structures in real circumstances.
  • based on the research and data collected, recommendations will be made for the future use and application of this technology in other locations.
• Parks Canada has long committed to finding effective solutions to reduce human-wildlife incidents and ensure landscape connectivity for wildlife.
  
  • Currently there are 44 wildlife crossing structures and over 97 km of fencing along the Trans-Canada Highway and Banff.
  • A variety of crossing structures including large open overpasses, small covered underpasses and culverts, provide passages for species of different sizes.
  • The presence of cross structures has successfully reduced the negative effects of habitat fragmentation on wildlife in the Rocky Mountains.
  • Crossing structures have provided for hundreds of thousands of safe crossings for a whole host of species, including moose and bears, wolves, deer and elk, with untold numbers of amphibians and fish using the installed culverts.
  • The number of wildlife-vehicle collisions has been reduced by 80% across the board for all species and up to 96% for deer and elk.
  • The animal Crossing Structure model developed by Parks Canada has the longest running monitoring program of this type in the world and has been adopted internationally.

Question 24

What is the Healy Underpass designed for?

Answer 24

• Eg. Healy Underpass under Trans-Canada highway
  
  • The Trans-Canada Highway, the 82km that run through Banff National Park have 44 highway-related environmental mitigation for getting wildlife for getting wildlife from one side to the other side of the highway.
  • Healy Underpass is one of 7 different underpass styles called an open span underpass
  • So we see that in combination with the highway mitigation fencing as part of the environment mitigations that went in for twinning and upgrading of the Trans-Canada Highway.
  • Nowhere else on the planet is there this density of both crossing structures and highway fencing so this is a wonderful opportunity for Parks Canada to show leadership in environmental mitigations related to highway development.

Question 25

Which species would be comfortable using the Healy Underpass on the Trans-Canada Highway?

Answer 25

• Grizzly bears, wolves, and moos really like these open, wide-open structures.
• Whereas things like black bear, the deer seem to show less of a preference for the big structures versus some of the smaller structure’s we’ll see later on.
• Did it take animals time to find these crossing structures and learn how to use them?
  
  • Yes.
  • There was a bunch of studies done beforehand: we knew where the mortality spots were along the highway just from monitoring road kills.
  • Plus, looking at the landscape, there are certain sort of environmental elements that would suggest a good location for a crossing structure:
  • they’re often tied into whether it’s an existing river and they use existing structures on the highway of course (it just makes sense if they already exist and do some minor enhancements so they can become effective crossing structures)
  • so a combination of environmental and structural elements were considered in some of the instances, to put in a variety of structures for them.

Question 26

What is Red Earth overpass and how does it mitigate the threat of the Trans-Canada Highway to animals?

Answer 26

• Red Earth Overpass in middle of Trans-Canada Higway
  
  • Is one one 6 overpasses we have in Banff National Park.
  • These are all built at 50 metres width.
  • The last 3 to go in were built at 60 metres wide and the big difference to note here
  • Got a wide-open viewscape for animals but you can notice there’s vegetation across the entire top of the overpass structure and what we found is that as soon as the overpasses were constructed and construction was complete, the wildlife movement across the highway shifted from the underpasses to the overpasses so again suggesting that they are a very important highway wildlife mitigation for crossings for the Trans-Canada highway and Banff National Park.

Question 27

What is the Red Earth Underpass?

Answer 27

• Red Earth Underpass
  
  • One of the 7 different types of structures we’ve used on the Trans-Canada Highway and is a 2.4 by 3 metre precast concrete structure.
  • It’s a long, narrow, dark corridor
  • So obviously different wildlife would approach and respond differently to this kind of structure versus an overpass or an open span underpass.
  • We see a structure like this being favoured most by cougars and black bears.
• These fences along the highway to keep the wildlife from going on to the road.
  
  • work well
  • latest version of the fencing is called buried apron so it’s about 60 or so cm of mesh fencing that goes into the ground bc we found that in the first phase, one and two of the construction project, without the apron, animals especially some of the smaller carnivores like coyotes etc were digging under the fence and getting access to the highway corridor.
• Also a camera on the fence post
  
  • used for monitoring wildlife
  • there are 55 that monitor the 44 structures we have in Banff National Park
  • they run 24 hours a day everyday
  • provide a wealth of information for us both so we can see animals that are using the underpass, but also those that approach a structure and might, for whatever reason be deterred from actually passing through it.

Question 28

What are the crossing structures used by Parks Canada to keep wildlife safe in crossing the Trans-Canada Highway?

Answer 28

• Healy Underpass under Trans-Canada highway
• Red Earth Overpass in middle of Trans-Canada Highway
• Red Earth Underpass
• Fences, especially the buried apron (latest version of the fencing is called buried apron so it’s about 60 or so cm of mesh fencing that goes into the ground bc we found that in the first phase, one and two of the construction project, without the apron, animals especially some of the smaller carnivores like coyotes etc were digging under the fence and getting access to the highway corridor).
• cameras on fence posts

Question 29

What are Mountain Huts for?

Answer 29

• n many mountain places around the world, beyond the traffic valley and corridors, human movement in the backcountry is supported by a network of very simple shelter and huts.
  
  • these are typically places only accessible by foot, intended to provide shelter to hikers and climbers and other backcountry enthusiasts.
  • eg. Alpine Club of Canada Abbot Pass Hut National Historic Site
  • The tradition of mountain huts is an old one.
  • Prior to the arrival of tourism in many mountain regions, simple huts and shelters were first built largely for individuals who managed animals: shepherds or boundary keepers and drovers.
  • This is certainly the case in New Zealand: → there are now over 1500 backcountry huts throughout the Southern Alps of New Zealand, 300 odd in the North Island and 1200 or more in the south.
  • There, the Department of Conservation owns 950 and the rest are scattered among recreational clubs, charitable trusts, and high country farmers.

Question 30

In North America, who owns the largest network of backcountry mountain huts?

Answer 30

• In North America, the largest network of backcountry mountain huts is owned and operated by The Alpine Club of Canada → it’s a tradition and responsibility that the Canadian club takes seriously.
  
  • For the ACC, the purpose of their hut system is to facilitate safe and comfortable visits to the backcountry.
  • But underpinning it all is an explicit recognition and celebration of the unique ecological sensitivity of the high mountains.
  • Eg. their newest facility, the Louise and Richard Guy Hut, was opened in the spring of 2016.
    
    • located high above the treeline in Yoho National Park, on the western side of the Wapta Ice Field, the small hut incorporates many state-of-the-art technologies intended to reduce it’s carbon footprint and increase the longevity of the facility.
    • The walls and ceiling of the hut are constructed of structurally insulated panels, which provide excellent insulation and reduce interior condensation.
    • The hut runs on solar, wind and propane.
    • The solar and wind energy is stored in a bank of batteries that powers the lighting, the fans, and the control room.
    • The hut’s electrical systems can even be monitored remotely from the ACC’s national office in Canmore.
    • There are no power outlets in the hut for charging your personal devices and usage is presently restricted to only the winter months.
  • Just south of the Guyhut is sensitive habitat for grizzly bears.
  • In partnership with Parks Canada, and to avoid pressuring the bear habitat, the Guyhut is closed annually between May and November.

Question 31

Did the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janiero stop unsustainable development in mountains?

Answer 31

no.
- Although a global framework for sustainable mountain development was adopted in 1992 at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janiero, the development of mountain areas is still often shaped by decisions taken in political and economic centres in the lowland areas, far away form the mountains.
- the interests behind these decisions are often short-term, rather than long-term.
- Ending political and economic marginalization requires that mountain areas need to be recognized as equal partners in development.
- Strategies to achieve this goal include:
- decentralization, local institution building, recognition of local rights to natural resources, and establishment of platforms and collaborative networks to give mountain populations a voice

Question 32

What was the Mountain Agenda?

Answer 32

• The Mountain Agenda was prepared for the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg.
  
  • It identified the following 7 key principles for mountain policy development.
    1. Recognize mountain areas as important and specific areas of development
    2. Compensate for environmental services and goods provided to lowlands
    3. Diversify into other livelihood options that could provide benefits to communities.
    4. Take advantage of local potential for innovation
    5. Preserve cultural change without loss of identity
    6. Conserve mountain ecosystems and its early warning functions
    7. Institutionalize sustainable development of mountain areas.

Question 33

What are the 7 key principles for mountain policy development laid out by The Mountain Agenda?

Answer 33

1. Recognize mountain areas as important and specific areas of development
2. Compensate for environmental services and goods provided to lowlands
3. Diversify into other livelihood options that could provide benefits to communities.
4. Take advantage of local potential for innovation
5. Preserve cultural change without loss of identity
6. Conserve mountain ecosystems and its early warning functions
7. Institutionalize sustainable development of mountain areas.
   - These principles of sustainable development can be incorporated into policies, but to achieve tangible results, they have to be implemented at national levels.
   - International partnerships are also required to support national initiatives to promote the exchange of ideas and experiences, and to initiate concrete programs for mountain development.

Question 34

Why are our ethics important for participating in mountain activities?

Answer 34

• as adventurers, we are guests of both the mountains and the plants and animals that call those areas home.
• If we think of nature as a home, it may be easier to understand why we must treat it with care and respect.
• Our ethics shape the way we act in a given place → consider how unique the ecosystems of the mountain environments are.
• Fostering a positive relationship between humans and the environment is essential to the long-term survival of mountain environments across the globe.
• All environmental guides to ethics agree that we must encourage people to have little to no impact on the natural environment.
• If we minimize our impact, we can explore the mountains for centuries to come.

Question 35

What can we do as adventurers to reduce our environmental impact?

Answer 35

1. Respect for all living things
   
   • when you’re in the mountains, you are a guest in sb else’s home
   • don’t approach or feed wildlife, don’t leave food unattended, store food in proper containers or hang it, and leave your pets at home.
2. Pack it in, pack it out.
   
   • Do your best to pack in as little as possible and remember to take home whatever you bring with you to the mountains. → includes things like human waste, toilet paper, food waste, scraps and wrappers.
   • If you’re planning a multi-day trip into the mountains, travel with wag bags or a waste case as an effective and relatively pleasant method of dealing with calls of nature while in nature.
   • Our mountains and mountain parks aren’t landfills, so let’s work together to keep them clean.
3. Stick to durable surfaces.
   
   • When it comes to mountain travel, we are mostly hiking and climbing on rock, snow or ice, but it’s important to keep in mind the fragile high-altitude vegetation that grows in many mountain regions.
   • Choose hard surfaces for breaks and campsites.
   • Should also stay on the trail as much as possible, even in the mud.
   • When travelling in pristine environments or where there are no trails, spread out and do not walk in a single file line. → this way you disperse your impact rather than rise compacting soil and vegetation, plus you’ll have a better view rather than just your travel mate’s backpack.
4. Take only photos, leave only footprints.
   
   • Idea is that everything in the natural environment is there for a reason.
   • The rotting dead wood, the beautiful wildflowers, even the rocks and dirt we walk on is a part of a larger ecosystem.
   • Don’t disturb the natural life cycle of a place by taking things as mementos.
   • Use a camera to take a snapshot, or better yet, take a mental picture and share the memory with family and friends.
5. Be fire wise
   
   • Campfires can be nice and sometimes essential for warmth, but they can also be extremely dangerous in many mountain environments.
   • Consider the potential for damage or risks before having a fire.
   • This includes: the weather conditions, time of year, administrative restrictions, such as fire bans, alpine growing conditions, and the ability for trees to replenish in a timely manner.
   • Also consider your own skills for building low-impact campfires.
   • Even better, bring a lightweight camping stove for cooking and skip the campfire entirely.

Question 36

What does David Whitson suggest in “Nature as Playground.”

Answer 36

• suggests that over the postwar decades, nature has become, for most Americans and Canadians, primarily a playground.
• As a result, sites for these activities have burgeoned across the North American landscape, wherever suitable terrain and improved accessibility make weekend recreation feasible.
  
  • In the lake country north of Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal, demand for recreational real estate drove up property prices, and recreational uses supplanted mixed farming on land that had usually been marginal for agricultural purposes.
• It represents a significant departure from our past as a nation of agriculture and resource extraction if most Canadians now relate to nature primarily as a place of leisure and if many rural regions are now more valuable as “recreation resources” than for the farming and forestry once associated with them.
• Wilson suggests that this transformation has its roots in the postwar urbanization of North America and the prosperity and rising living standards that accompanied it.
  
  • Before this rural recreations was relatively casual and uncommercialized.
  • It was a response by burgeoning urban and suburban populations to the circumstances of their new postwar lives.
• Along with urbanization, postwar trends that contributed to the boom in outdoor recreation included rising levels of disposable income among both the middle and skilled working classes, and the growth of leisure as a democratic social expectation.
• When more leisure time was accompanied by rises in real incomes sufficient to finance recreational equipment and travel, weekends and vacations in the countryside became normal routines in the lives of more and more Canadian families.
• At the same time, urban money chasing recreational property would steadily push up rural land prices in the more attractive and accessible areas, and this would combine with the costs of new lesiure commodities and lifestyle expectations to make cottaging a more expensive proposition.

Question 37

According to “Nature as a Playground” what was cottage life like immediately in the post war period?

Answer 37

• In the early postwar period cottages exemplified the possibilities of non-commodified fun: berry-picking, canoeing, swimming and fishing.
• Over the 1960s and 1970s → change in the characteristics of recreational homes and the lifestyles associated with them.
  
  • Newly built ones tended to be bigger and to include electricity, running water and indoor plumbing, and better heating and insulation
  • soon ppl’s cottages resembled all the amenities they had back home.
• Water-skiing, golf and skiing all illustrate the new tendencies in postwar family recreation.
  
  • require purchasing equipment and often lessons too.
• The interconnections between product innovation, fashion, and marketing were familiar in other consumer goods industries of course; but since the 1970s, they have been skillfully deployed by brands like Patagonia, Salomon, and The North Face, normalizing levels and styles of consumerism not previously associated with outdoor recreation.
• Ski hills and golf courses were at first local ventures.
• These would begin to materialize in the early 1980s, in direct relationships to booms in the economies of metro Toronto, Vancouver, and Calgary and Edmonton during these years.
  
  • Large investors developed resorts that competed to serve this demand with better, higher value-added facilities.
  • eg. expanding the skiing to include a greater variety of runs and on-site restaurant and ski facilities.
  • meant real estate development on a scale that would ultimately transform regions.
• Three aspects of lifestyle-oriented property developments:1st → most importantly, these are developments aimed at “incomers”: primarily business and professional ppl from nearby metropolitan centres who are attracted to an area for its holiday possibilities.
  • The result is that new developments are often priced beyond what people working in the local economy, or at least the old local economy, can afford.
• 2nd → another corollary of gentrification can be seen in the kinds of suburban sprawl that now characterize communities like Kelowna and Canmore, and the kinds of commercial services that spring up to cater to the new residents.
  
  • eg. malls with franchises create price competition for longtime local merchants.
  • shops that originally supplied household needs supplanted by boutqiues selling “value-added” goods and services: eg brew pubs, art galleries, etc.
  • began to manifest in 1980s.
• Gentrification, proposedly, inevitably involves adding value to property and changing the character of communities, whether in urban neighbourhoods or rural towns.
  
  • Also produce personal and cultural dislocations.
  • Leads to competitions for space and for public resources, competitions in which affluent newcomers enjoy significant advantages.
  • eg. in Canmore, accommodation costs have risen so steeply that people working in the new service industries often struggle to make ends meet.

Question 38

In “Nature as Playground” what big changes did the 1990s see in how alpine landscapes were used?

Answer 38

• All these tendencies—the commodification of outdoor recreation, growth fuelled by outside money, suburbanization and gentrification—are presented in sharpened forms by 1990s developments that favour well-capitalized, corporate-operated resorts.
• The driving forces here are globalization and the emergence of transnational resort corporations whose business is precisely the production of recreational destinations for tourists, homeowners, and investors—a business that has been facilitated by the removal of obstacles to foreign property in many places, including Canada.
• The scale of capital investment and the specialist expertise now required to build “world-class” ski hills and golf courses have led to corporate consolidation in these industries.
  
  • Small operators were driven out of business or taken over by corporate investors with the capital to finance expansion.
  • Eg. Intrawest Corp. of Vancouver, developers of Blackcomb Resort near Whistler, take over Panorama in BC interior, Mont tremblant in the Laurentians, Whistler itself, and several American mountain resorts.
    
    • makes TSE-listed Intrawest the 2nd-largest ski resort operator in North America.
• Another version of this has seen Japanese company, Nippon Cable take over the former Tod Mountain near Kamloops and invest heavily in bringing that formerly location operation up to “world-class” standards.
• Dimensions worth noting:
  
  • The basic requirement is the capital necessary to enhance the skiing: by developing more runs on the mountain and by improving speed, comfort, and capacity of the lift system.
  • Investment in the non-ski facilities that contribute to the total “mountain resort experience” requires considerable capital.
• Trying to get ppl to stay there for like 12 months requires two mutually reinforcing strategies:
  
  • developing alternative off-season recreational attractions and developing more home units.
• In Canadian destinations, the development of “soft adventure” products—white water canoeing, mountain biking, guided walks, and nature photography—has been an important focused, especially in valleys like Sun Peaks and Fernie where the narrow mountain valleys limit the development of golf.
• But real estate remains the most important single thing.
  
  • It is also important bc homeowners (and their family and friends) increase the mid-week customer base for the resort, and for other business in the community.
• Any resort that wants to attract high-spending people—whether for conventions or sales meetings, on vacations, or in retirement—must offer challenging and well-kept gold courses.
  
  • Eg. More recently, local and provincial environmental groups have been joined by Canmore Town COuncil in opposing a major golf and ski development proposed by Genesis Land Development for the Spray lakes.
  • But the project was still approved.
• Golf is now almost essential to the economics of any Canadian ski resort…
• Even as the beginnings of such “lifestyle communities” as property developments anchored by golf courses or marina are often called, should alert us to the social segregation that follows almost inevitably from the price structure of these developments.
  
  • Golf too is become corporatized, as stand-alone courses find it difficult to upgrade their playing and clubhouse facilities to the standards that today’s patrons expect.
• What is illustrated in the success of both Intrawest and ClubLink is just how big an industry the production of “world-class” skiing and golfing has become, and how the production of upscale sporting destinations in changing both the land-scape and the demographic makeup of rural Canadian communities that have the right kinds of space and scenery.
  
  • These activities require large tracts of land and require that the land be reshaped and groomed in ways that can have significant environmental effects.
  • reduces the stock of relatively “wild” places in which free outdoor pastimes can be enjoyed by Canadians.

Question 39

What was the Demographic Change that came out of the 1990s shift in how people used alpine landscapes?

Answer 39

• As far as demographic change is concerned, the basic issue is that “world-class” developments and the kinds of tourists and residents they are designed to attract inevitably alter the social and commercial makeup of the communities where the are situated.
• One effect of this gentrification of commerce can be to leave some “old-time” residents feeling like strangers in their own communities; and indeed towns like Canmore and Kelowna have now grown and changed so much that they have become, effectively, different communities.
• Kamloops in the post-war period was just a major spot for a pulp mill.
  
  • Now, Kamloops is being “discovered” by others who might once have dismissed it as a blue-collar town…
• The long-term trends of this paper—the commodification of recreational land, the growth of global tourism, and the spending power of newcomers—are often displacing the rural working class who have historically called these places home.
• At the same time, we need to recognize that places like the Okanagan and Canmore are much more affluent and easier to make a living in, than they were a generation ago.
• 1st → as traditional rural industries struggle and community leaders search for ways to diversify their economies, it is important to remember that strategies cannot focus soley on holding onto the landscapes and economies of the past.
• other areas are also experiencing dramatic demographic and cultural changes today, and it hard to imagine that rural communities can remain as they were simply by putting up obstacles to the kinds of development outlined here.
• Once crucial struggle in mountain communities must be for creative community planning mechanisms whcih assist local people in developing their own plans for different futures, rather than having those futures determined by outside interests, as has happened so often in the past across rural Canada.
• If the “mobility rights” popularly associated with globalization also imply any right to remain “in place”, it is important that rural working people have choices and are not simply pushed to the margins when people who have choices want to turn the places that have been the source of their traditional livelihoods into spaces of leisure and “lifestyle”.

Question 40

Why are mountains so significant?

Answer 40

• Mountains → defined by their steep topography, localized weather systems, and strong climatic gradients.
• They’re the water towers of the world, providing fresh water to at least half the world’s people for domestic use, irrigation, industry and hydropower.
• Mountains are also high-risk environments where avalanches, landslides, volcanic eruptions and glacial lake outburst floods threaten life in mountain regions and surroudning areas.
  
  • Fragile soils and vegetation cover make mountain areas vulnerable to environmental degradation.
• Mountains are also places that inspire imagination and are revered the world over.
• Mountains are also places facing unprecedented change in the face of a warming climate.

Question 41

What is Climate Change?

Answer 41

• Climate change - refers to any significant change in the measures of climate lasting for an extended period of time.
  
  • includes changes in temperature, precipitation, or wind patterns among other effects that occur over several decades or longer.
• The physical properties of gases in the atmosphere allow us to accurately calculate the amount of energy that CO2 absorbs and emits.
• A doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentration from pre-industrial levels of 280 parts per million up to about 560 parts per million would be sufficient to cause average global temperatures to increase between one to two and a half degrees Celsius and even more over the longer term.
• Current atmospheric concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere are now over 400 parts per million.

Question 42

What other factors influence temperature too, in terms of climate change?

Answer 42

• The challenge in determining the exact relationships between a given carbon dioxide level and a specific temperature is that the overall climate system in more complex → other factors influence temperature too, including:
  
  • atmospheric dust
  • volcanic eruptions
  • the area of forests and grasslands
  • variation in solar radiation.
• Warming leads to further feedback effects that either amplify or diminish the initial warming.
  
  • The most important feedbacks involve various forms of water.
  • A warmer atmosphere generally contains more water vapour - a potent greenhouse gas, but it has a very short lifetime in the atmosphere.
    
    • Consequently, it keeps the increase mostly in step with warming.
    • Thus, water vapour is treated as an amplifier and not as a driver of climate change.
• The relative influence of other feedback processes is less certain but much longer lasting.
  
  • Eg. another important feedback concerns changes in clouds.
  • Warming and increases in water vapour may cause cloud cover to increase or decrease, which can either amplify or dampen temperature change, depending on the extent, altitude, and properties of clouds.
  • The latest evidence suggests that changes in clouds at a global scale are likely to amplify warming.

Question 43

The average temperatures, rainfall, and their extremes are also strongly affected by ___________________.

Answer 43

local patterns of winds.
- Surface temperatures and precipitation in most regions will vary greatly from the global average because of geographical location, in particular latitude and continental position.
- As well, the ocean is a high heat reservoir and tends to moderate climate change.
- Recent observations of warming of both surface and deep ocean waters will contribute to amplification if climate change in coming decades.

Question 44

How has climate change occurred?

Answer 44

• Over the past century, human activities have released large amounts of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
  
  • the majority of greenhouse gases come from burning fossil fuels to produce energy.
  • However, other human activities such as deforestation, industrial processes and some agricultural practices, also emit gases into the atmosphere.
• Here, greenhouse gases act like a blanket around the Earth, trapping energy in the atmosphere and causing it to warm.
  
  • This phenomena is called the greenhouse effect, and it’s natural and necessary to support life on Earth.
  • However, the buildup of greenhouse gases will change Earth’s climate, endangering human health and welfare and both natural and managed ecosystems.

Question 45

What is The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)

Answer 45

• The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the leading international advisory body comprised of over 800 leading scientists. They released their 5th assessment report in March 2014, including that scientific evidence for warming of the climate system is unequivocal.
• Our lives are connected to the climate.
  
  • Human societies have adapted to the relatively stable climate we’ve enjoyed since the last ice age, which ended several thousand years ago.
  • A warming climate will bring changes that can affect water supplies, agriculture, power and transportation systems, the natural environment and even our own health and safety.
• Every major scientific agency representing every country in the world, over 200 organizations, all agree that human-made climate change is real and that it’s happening now.
• To curb this change, will take global participation and cooperation.

Question 46

So What is Being Done About Climate Change?

Answer 46

• The 21st United Nations Climate Change Conference was held in Paris France in December 2015.
• The conference negotiated the Paris Agreement, a global agreement on the reduction of climate change, the text of which represented the consensus of the representative of 196 countries.
  
  • The agreement calls fro zero net anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions to be reached during the 2nd half of the 21st century.
  • In the adopted version of the Paris Agreement, the parties will also pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
  • This 1.5 degree Celsius goal will require achieving zero emissions by 2050.

Question 47

What was the Paris Agreement?

Answer 47

• Paris Agreement, a global agreement on the reduction of climate change, the text of which represented the consensus of the representative of 196 countries.
  
  • The agreement calls fro zero net anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions to be reached during the 2nd half of the 21st century.
  • In the adopted version of the Paris Agreement, the parties will also pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
  • This 1.5 degree Celsius goal will require achieving zero emissions by 2050.

Question 48

What is the Relationship between Warming and Elevation?

Answer 48

• There is growing evidence that the rate of warming is amplified with elevation.
• High mountain environments experience more rapid changes in temperature than environments at lower elevations.
• Elevation-dependent warming - can accelerate the rate of change in mountain ecosystems, cryospheric systems, hydrological regimes, and biodiversity.
  
  • Mechanisms that contribute to elevation-dependent warming include
    
    • snow albedo
    • surface-based feedbacks
    • water vapour changes
    • latent heat release
    • surface heat loss
    • temperature change
    • aerosols
  • All of these processes lead to enhanced warming with elevation and it’s believed that combinations of these mechanisms may account for contrasting regional patterns.
• For the highest peaks in Australia, the predicted changes in climate include a decrease in the duration of snow cover and an even more dramatic reduction in maximum snow depth, from over 2 meters to under 50 cm.
  
  • In this scenario, a 2.9 degrees Celsius temperature increase is the equivalent of a 377 metre upward shift in snow line.
  • Therefore, under the worst case scenario, in less than 50 years, conditions equivalent to the current treeline, which is at about 1850metres in the snowy mountains, would be found a metre above the top of continental Australia’s highest mountain, Mount Kosciusko.
• Many scientists believe that the changes occurring in mountain ecosystems may provide an early glimpse of what could come to pass in lowland environments.
  
  • As the world heats up, mountain glaciers are melting at unprecedented rates, while rare plants and animals struggle to survive over ever-diminishing areas.
  • And mountain peoples, already among the world’s poorest citizens, face even greater hardships.

Question 49

What is Elevation-dependent warming?

Answer 49

• Elevation-dependent warming - can accelerate the rate of change in mountain ecosystems, cryospheric systems, hydrological regimes, and biodiversity.
  
  • Mechanisms that contribute to elevation-dependent warming include
    
    • snow albedo
    • surface-based feedbacks
    • water vapour changes
    • latent heat release
    • surface heat loss
    • temperature change
    • aerosols
  • All of these processes lead to enhanced warming with elevation and it’s believed that combinations of these mechanisms may account for contrasting regional patterns.
• For the highest peaks in Australia, the predicted changes in climate include a decrease in the duration of snow cover and an even more dramatic reduction in maximum snow depth, from over 2 meters to under 50 cm.
  
  • In this scenario, a 2.9 degrees Celsius temperature increase is the equivalent of a 377 metre upward shift in snow line.
  • Therefore, under the worst case scenario, in less than 50 years, conditions equivalent to the current treeline, which is at about 1850metres in the snowy mountains, would be found a metre above the top of continental Australia’s highest mountain, Mount Kosciusko.

Question 50

How does warming effect mountain glaciers?

Answer 50

• Changes in the volume of mountain glaciers and in their seasonal melting patterns have an impact on water resources in many parts of the world.
  
  • Changes in water availability due to climate change are taking place at a time and pressure that water resource for irrigation and food production, industrialization and urbanization are increasing.
  • Understanding how climate change affects mountains is vital as governments and international organizations develop strategies to reverse current global warming trends.
• In addition, local community empowerment can be an essential step towards building climate change resilience in mountain regions.

Question 51

How do Glaciers work and why do they matter?

Answer 51

• Ordinarily, if you make climate a little bit warmer, glaciers will shrink a little bit.
• If the climate is a little bit colder, then glaciers will grow a little bit.
• These two things oscillate to create a balance or equilibrium.
• If things get too warm, glaciers won’t respond just a little bit. Instead, the volume drops by a large amount → equilibrium is lost and you cross a tipping point. → it is then irreversible. → it just keeps going
• Glaciers matter.
  
  • They give us tangible, visible evidence of the immediacy of climate change.
  • Can think of them as the leading indicator of climate change in mountains.
  • Glaciers are where you can see climate change happening before your eyes.

Question 52

What does Glaciologist Mike Demuth note on Glaciers of Rockies over 30 Years?

Answer 52

• Plato Glacier in the Canadian Rockies has changed dramatically → it’s a shadow of its former self, in fact, it’s hardly recognizable as a glacier today.
• When he first started working there it was approximately 12 square km of ice on the northern extent of the Whapta Ice Field and it’s now dwindled to some 7 square km and has lost about 200m of thickness and about 1km of length.
• Says his earliest measurements there compared to the ones they are taking now and reporting to the World Glacier Monitoring service show that this is part of a pattern for mountain glaciers all around the world.
• → these really accelerated changes in their length and their thickness and their mass.

Question 53

How could climate change be if there are glaciers in the world that are getting bigger and advancing? How could that be a response to a global warming signal?

Answer 53

What glaciologists have learned in the Yukon territory in Canada, where they looked at change in glacial areas from 1958 to 2008, is that of the 1400 glaciers surveyed in 1958,
- 4 have gotten bigger after 50 years
- over 300 have disappeared completely
- and almost all the rest have gotten smaller
- Yes, there is a component of natural variability in the climate change that they observed, but it’s not enough to explain the full signal.
- The warming of the Earth’s climate system, caused by increasing greenhouse gases, accounts for the rapid change that’s being observed here and in mountains around the world.

Question 54

What are other ways that glaciers indicate change?

Answer 54

• The history of ancient climate is embedded in ice, quite literally.
• Glaciers preserve climate records very much like tree rings, for example.
  
  • Eg how glaciers are formed: snow is added, over top, and over time it’s compressed and turned into ice.
  • Ice core scientists can then drill holes and pull out a core and examine what’s there.
• Glaciologist Martin Sharp → works to archive Canada’s ice core collection which will soon by housed by the University of Alberta and become an accessible scientific resource for generations to come.

Question 55

What are Ice Cores? according to Martin Sharp, what can they tell us?

Answer 55

• Ice cores are, if you look at the situation globally, one of the best repositories of information about past climates and past environments.
• They certainly give records at much higher resolution than deep sea sediments for instance, which is the other place that people usually go for these kinds of records.
• The other thing is that because of climate warming, those records are being eroded and are disappearing.
• There is a collection there that has been assembled over 40-odd years. → was a risk that it was just going to get thrown out.
• Wanted to make sure that wasn’t going to happen bc the techniques that are available for analyzing ice cores and the range of information that can be extracted from them now are radically different from what existed at the time when the cores were collected.
  
  • we also want to be able to develop the capability to generate new core to look at a new generation of problems.

Question 56

What does Ice Cores and Ice Chemistry tell us?

Answer 56

• By looking at the chemistry of the ice, we can learn about past temperatures.
  
  • And by looking at the trapped air, we can actually measure past carbon dioxide concentrations.
• One of the things that ice core scientists have learned is that past temperatures and carbon dioxide vary together.
  
  • They go up together and they go down together.
  • And over the past 800,000 years or so, atmospheric carbon dioxide was never higher than about 280 parts per million
  • Until the industrial revolution, when we started adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.
  • Today we are at about 400 parts per million.
    
    • That’s 40% higher than it was when carbon dioxide was varying for only natural reasons.
  • Unfortunately, it appears that we’re now heading for 500 parts per million or more.
• That pace of change, we’ve learned from the ice, is 100 to 1000x greater than the pace at which things have changed by themselves naturally.
  
  • The change may seem slight.
  • It’s translated today to an increase of only 0.8 degrees Celsius since the mid 1850s.
  • But even that slight change, a rate of change that is projected to accelerate this century, is already having extraordinary consequences.

Question 57

What is weather?

Answer 57

Weather is what the conditions of the atmosphere are over a short period of time.

Question 58

what is climate?

Answer 58

Climate is how the atmosphere behaves over a relatively long period of time.

Question 59

Why is knowing the difference between weather and climate important?

Answer 59

• Even though we may have an extremely cold day or even a cold winter season for that matter, this doesn’t mean that the planet as a whole is not significantly warming over an extended period of time.
• Many places are seeing changes in rainfall, resulting in more floods and drought or intense rain, as well as more frequent and severe heat waves.
• As these and other changes become more pronounced in the coming decades, they’ll increasingly present challenges to our society and to our environment.

Question 60

What Does Climate Change Means For Mountains: Dr. John Clague?

Answer 60

• Mountains are very sensitive to climate change.
  
  • They’re typically glacier ice, a lot of snow and a lot of ice, and over time, over a period of years and decades, that snow and ice is diminishing.
• So it is setting up some conditions that are quite hazardous.
  
  • We’re seeing that lakes that have been dammed by glaciers or by moraines are beginning to burst.
    
    • the lakes are emptying out from their dams and causing severe downstream flooding.
  • we’re seeing more landslides in mountains because as it warms up, the permafrost that exists in the rock slopes is thawing, and we’re getting collapses of mountains.
• We have one thing going for us in our mountains: high mountains are not inhabited like, for example, the Andes or the Alps or the Himalayas, where the same processes are operating and are causing quite a lot of damage and injury as well.
• But as we increasingly move into our higher alpine zone, we can expect these same problems, all induced by climate change.

Question 61

What is Climate Change doing economically and how will it affect people?

Answer 61

• The rising probability of catastrophic events is forcing insurance companies to adjust their financial models as they take on more risk.
• The reality is that, for most mountain peoples, particularly the disadvantaged and marginalized groups, insurance isn’t even an option.
  
  • Catstrophic disasters in mountains have always hit te more vulnerable, isolated mountain populations harder than anyone else.
  • The increasing frequency and severity of non-seismic catastrophic events in the mountains will only exacerbate the poverty in many of the world’s mountain areas.
  • The consequences for the billions of ppl downstream of major mountain areas, who depend on critical environmental resources provided by mountains like water and biodiversity, hydrological processes, will be equally severe.

Question 62

Studying the responses of alpine plants to recent changes requires what?

Answer 62

• Studying the responses of alpine plants to recent changes requires reliable historical records and then repeated observations over time using consistent field methods and taxonomy.
• These sort of resampling studies have been most commonly conducted on mountains in the European Alps and in Scandinavia.

Question 63

What is the Global Observation Research Initiative in Alpine Environments (GLORIA)?

Answer 63

• In 2001, the Global Observation Research Initiative in Alpine Environments (GLORIA) established an international long-term monitoring program and site-based network for monitoring high mountain vegetation and its biological diversity.
  
  • The program has grown to more than 120 sites around the world, distributed from the poles to the tropics.
• One general pattern that’s been observed in the past decade is that species richness on mountain summits has increased, and that species, including grasses, dwarf shrubs, and low shrubs, are moving up slope.
• On all mountains surveyed, nearly 70% of the species that show a detectable change in their upper altitude range limits between surveys have shifted their range limits upwards.
• In view of projected climate change, these observed shifts in species distribution suggest a progressive decline of cold mountain habitats and their biota.
• These floristic changes detected in mountains appear to be a response to the combined effects of changes in precipitation and temperature, causing changes in the extent and duration of snow cover on summit areas.
  
  • Mountains that have experienced the largest increase in summer precipitation have the lowest proportion of species moving upwards,
  • and many species associated with long-lasting snow in spring are ascending.
• The rates of change can be quite dramatic.
  
  • eg. in the mountains of the southwest Yukon, measured rates of increased shrub cover are about 5% per decade, suggesting a fairly rapid shrub advance over the next 50 years, especially if growing conditions remain suitable.
• These observations suggest that climate change is affecting the elevational ranges of alpine plants, but the linnk between rain shifts and climate change is more complex than a simple response to temperature increase alone.
• Although alpine habitats are often thought of as natural or pristine, they’re being increasingly subjected to environmental stressors, depending on their location and environmental history.

Question 64

Factors that Influence the Rates and Trajectory of Change of Alpine Habitats

Answer 64

• Nitrogen deposition
• Land use
• Introduced invasive species
• Ski development
• Overexploitation leading to erosion and landscape degradation.

→ Given these direct human impacts and projected impacts of climate change, the long-term future of alpine plant communities remains very uncertain.

• Uncertainty is something we have to live with, but long-term observations are leading to some very consistent conclusions about increases in trees and shrubs at higher elevations in many mountain environments.

Question 65

What does Dr. Greg Henry note on Alpine Systems and Climate Change?

Answer 65

• For alpine tundra systems, the way they are predicted to change, bc these are cold systems, if they warm up they’re going to change.
• But the change is going to depend on where that system is and kinds of initial conditions that those systems have → which again depends on where exactly they are in relation to their position on the planet and how much energy they receive.
• Eg. tropical mountains versus Arctic mountains, for example
  
  • they’re going to change and one of the major changes in sort of the plant communities of our Arctic, or alpine systems, would be the increase in tree growth.
  • And in areas where we would say there’s alpine tundra, and you find those areas all over the world, in all the mountains that are high enough, higher of course than as you get closer to the equator, lower as you get closer to the poles. → where we have woody vegetation, that’s the main prediction:
    
    • is that more woody vegetation, be it trees or shrubs, will be found further up the slopes and into what is now tundra.

Question 66

etermining how rapidly mountain environments are changing and why is obviously a big challenge: what is Eric Higgs approach?

Answer 66

• One approach has been pioneered by Eric Higgs at UofVic and involves the systematic analysis of mountain landscapes by comparing historical and contemporary photographs.
• The Mountain Legacy Project is a long-term study of landscape, ecological and cultural change in the mountainous regions of western Canada.

Eric Higgs on the Mountain Legacy Project and What they Are Learning

• The Mountain Legacy Project is based on an extensive collection of historical survey images that were conducted throughout the mountainous regions of Canada.
• It’s the world’s largest systematic comprehensive collection of historical mountain images.
• There are exquisite images bc they were done to survey standards to create the first topographic maps of the mountainous areas of Canada.
• We’ve been going back since 1998 and repeating some of those images from exactly the same locations as the original surveyors stood.
• We can learn so much from time series images.
  
  • We can understand the dynamics of landscape change over the last century.
  • Most of the historical images date from the late 19th and early 20th century, so there’s lots that we can study.
• The limitation perhaps is that we only have two points in time, at least so far, but there’s a lot that you can tease out in inferring the nature of change.
• But it’s not just the time series that matters.
  
  • We can go back to the historical images and we can infer what’s happened in the landscape prior to, say, the 20th c.
• So they’re really powerful in lots of ways.
• The other temporal dimension is that we can use the past, the present, and infer what’s going to happen in the future, too.
  
  • So we can model out the future based on what we know of the past.
• Example of the interdisciplinary work Higgs and his team are doing:
  
  • survey images from early 20th c ad well as their recently repeated counterparts.
  • eg the changes in Jasper National Park
  • Can tell us things about changes in vegetation, composition and distribution.
  • Using a quantitative approach for assessing relative vegetation change, research in this area found a shift towards late successional vegetation types and an increase in canopy closure and coniferous forests.

Question 67

Grasslands and open forests have decreased in extent largely due to what?

Answer 67

• These changes in vegetation patterns can be largely attributed to shifts in the forest fire regime.
  
  • Today we have more trees and they’re thicker trees and this has come about in large measure due to the repression of forest fires over a century of land-use practices.
  • For a very long time, fire was seen as a bad thing. → as a blight on the landscape
  • Over the long-term fire suppression has left us with what may seem perhaps like a beautiful and healthy forest but in reality, forest fire suppression has placed these forests at risk.
  • The implications of these changes include:
    
    • decreased habitat diversity
    • increased possibility of insect outbreaks
    • potential for future high-intensity fire events.

Fire

• Fire is a natural disturbance agent that has helped create the landscapes we see in many mountainous areas.
• Fire produces a mosaic of plant communities of different ages and species composition on the landscape.
• Areas where the forests are completely consumed by fire are interspersed by patches of unburned and lightly burned forest.
• Periodic fire reduces the amount of accumulated fuel on the forest floor, such as woody debris, dead trees, and forest floor litter.
• These lower intensity fires reduce the potential for extremely large hot fires, which can damage soil and result in increased erosion and the loss of soil fertility.
• Some montane habitats, like grasslands, have been subject to frequent fires over many centuries and are considered fire dependent.
  
  • these ecosystems require fire in order to restore and maintain ecological integrity.

Question 68

How does Fire Affect Animals?

Answer 68

• The effect of fire on wildlife varies accordingly to intensity and duration of the fire, season of burning, and the ecosystem that is burned.
• In general, fire increases the abundance of shrubs and grasses that herbivores such as elk and deer feed on.
• Fire also results in increased availability of berries that form an important part of the diet for grizzly and black bears.
• Parks Canada is a world leader in the use of fire as a method of restoring a natural process to the landscape, supporting ecosystem biodiversity and health.
  
  • Their prescribed burning program is designed to reduce wildfire risk and improve park ecosystems.

Question 69

What does Dave Smith say on Parks Canada’s Prescribed Fire Program?

Answer 69

• Wildfires are a natural part of the environment in places like Jasper National Park.
• Of course, bc there’s so many ppl in places like the Athabasca Valley we can’t just allow wildfires to happen.
• however, we still want to put fire back on the landscape.
• So for that reason, we have prescribed fires.
• Prescribed fire - when we actually burn the forest.
  
  • to do this, we have to make sure that we’re in a situation where the forest is going to burn the way we want and need it to so that we can keep some control of how big the flames are and how much the forest burns.
• Fire is a good thing:
  
  • when we burn, we burn using a whole variety of techniques.
  • The one we use in order to burn large ares is the heli-torch.
    
    • In heli-torch, basically what we do is fly over and drop gelatinized fuel on the forest floor to create a mosaic of burned forest.
  • Fire is a natural process that is very important to the maintenance of forest health in Jasper National Park.
  • If we look back into the past, we see there’s always been fire on the landscape here.
• As we go into the future, we have to maintain fire.
• The best way for us to maintain fire in many parts of this park is through the use of prescribed burns and we plan to do that well into the future.

Question 70

What is Prescribed Fire?

Answer 70

• Prescribed fire - when we actually burn the forest.
  
  • to do this, we have to make sure that we’re in a situation where the forest is going to burn the way we want and need it to so that we can keep some control of how big the flames are and how much the forest burns.
• Fire is a good thing:
  
  • when we burn, we burn using a whole variety of techniques.
  • The one we use in order to burn large ares is the heli-torch.
    
    • In heli-torch, basically what we do is fly over and drop gelatinized fuel on the forest floor to create a mosaic of burned forest.
  • Fire is a natural process that is very important to the maintenance of forest health in Jasper National Park.
  • If we look back into the past, we see there’s always been fire on the landscape here.
• As we go into the future, we have to maintain fire.
• The best way for us to maintain fire in many parts of this park is through the use of prescribed burns and we plan to do that well into the future.

Question 71

What is the Strategy for Protecting Biodiversity of Reintroduction of Species

Answer 71

• Reintroduction of species to places where they’ve disappeared.
• Eg. Plains Bison have been absent from Banff National Park since before its creation in 1885.
  
  • The planned reintroduction of a small herd on the park’s eastern slopes, a remote wilderness area that provides a suitable habitat, will contribute to conservation and recovery efforts, as well as reconnect Canadians to this iconic species.
• Several successful conservation initiatives over the past few decades have laid the groundwork for the bison reintroduction.
  
  • These efforts have included a prescribed burn program to restore productive grassland habitats
    
    • maintaining healthy populations of natural predators, wolves and grizzly bears
    • and recent success in reducing the elk population to closer to historic levels, thereby reducing the potential for competition between elk and bison for food.
• As well, the construction of wildlife fencing and crossing structures along the Trans-Canada Highway, has greatly reduced the risk of wildlife vehicle collisions.

Question 72

What has Kasten Heuer noted on Bison Reintroduction in Banff National Park?

Answer 72

• Would have been well over a hundred years since you would have seen a Bison in Banff → probably back in the 1870s
• They disappeared for the same reason they disappeared from the plains → they were over-hunted.
• Challenges of reintroducing bison back into Banff National Park
  
  • Bison are migratory animals → like to move, you we’re having to try to reintroduce them only to a section of Banff National Park and also make sure they don’t leave the national park.
    
    • so have to put up things like some drift fencing (that’s supposed to be permeable to wildlife but still able to discourage Bison from leaving)
  • On the social side, bison haven’t been here for over 100 years and people aren’t used to the idea of them being around.
    
    • we all coexist with grizzly bears and elk and bison aren’t going to be any more challenging, but it’s just the notion of this is sth I don’t know. → don’t know how to act around it.
    • there is a mental shift that ppl have to have. → they have to give up a sense of control.
    • so that’s going to take time.
• The best habitat for bison in Banff national park is Vermillion Lakes in the Bow Valley and this is actually where the most archealogical finds have been made of Bison bone and skulls.
  
  • We start in a place with the reintroduction of bison that has as good habitat, but it doesn’t have as many people → 40km north of Bow Valley, in the Panther River Valley.
  • It’s about a two day walk from the nearest trailhead to get in there and is very grassy.
• they’ll start with about 30 and it’ll allow us some time to get used to them and them to get used to their new home, potentially many years down the road it may come down and get to the Bow Valley again.
• Their predator situation:
  
  • Unlike a lot of places where Plains Bison have been brought back, here they actually still have their predators.
  • Wolves, cougars, grizzly bears will definitely go after some of their calves,
  • Then we have the whole range of scavengers as, you know, wolverines right down to crows and ravens and magpies.
  • But it’s super important that they have that pressure, that tension in their lives, that constantly has them looking around and running.
    
    • Aldo Leopold said it really well: “where would the deer be without the wolf to have whittled it’s leg?”
    • In order for the Bison to be robust and continuing to evolve, they need that natural selection pressure that predators provide.
    • And that really is one of the unique thins about Banff National Park and bringing them back here is we can contribute wild bison back into the global conservation population.
• What has the Stoney Dakota and Sitseka FN people’s role bee in this project?
  
  • They’ve been involved from the start and they’re very keen on this project.
  • This summer parks is going to be helping them conduct a ceremony that will welcome the Bisons back.
    
    • We’re going to take them out to that exact place where the hooves will first hit the ground again in January and will do it in the fall when the weather’s a bit nicer and to prepare spiritually the place for return of the bison.
  • And then down the road, there’ll be employment opportunities and maybe opportunities for First Nations to actually harvest and take some of the meat and other things on the bison that they use.

Question 73

What have researchers recently discovered about Yellowstone National Park?

Answer 73

• In recent years, researchers have discovered that the Yellowstone National Park Supervolcano is 2.5x larger than previously thought and it could erupt with 2000x the force of Mount St. Helens.
  
  • A blast this size would devastate western North America and have global consequences for decades.
  • Sulphur entering the upper atmosphere would turn to sulphur dioxide, encircling the Earth and spurring a drop in temperature, worldwide famine would likely ensure.
  • Researchers have calculated what the blast would look like based on smaller eruptions but human kind has never seen anything matching Yellowstone’s potential destructive force.
  • The last documented supervolcano eruption was roughly 74,000 years ago in the present-day Lake Toba in Indonesia.

Question 74

According to Martin Unsworth what is a Supervolcano?

Answer 74

• A supervolcano is a volcano that when it erupts it erupts more than 1,000 cubic kilometres of rock, which is a really large volume.
• This doesn’t happen very often in the geological record, in fact, there hasn’t been during recorded human history.
• Yellowstone is a supervolcano because we’ve seen 3x there has been an eruption in the last 2 million years, which has ejected a very large amount of rock and ash.
  
  • And there’s good evidence that these eruptions have occurred about every 600,000 years and the last one was about 600,000 years ago.
• There is some evidence that Yellowstone is perhaps reaching a point where we might expect to see in the next period of time another eruption.
• One of the really interesting things about supervolcanoes is the magma chambers that feed them.
  
  • Magma is liquid rock, partially molten rock, which sits in the Earth’s crust.
  • Sometimes these grow to a certain size and then they erupt, for example, like Mount Mazama that formed Crater Lake, that magma chamber no longer existed, erupted and blew the mountain to pieces.
  • But magma chambers like the one below yellowstone, they can often persist for hundred of thousands of years, and often the actually burrow horizontally like a tumour almost in a human body.
  • They eventually will fail when the lid collapses, and that exposes all of this magma which is often rich in gases, suddenly the pressure drops and that causes the eruption.
• So a lot of research is going into how these magma chambers develop and how long they can live, and what actually gives that final trigger for the eruption.
• But Yellowstoone is very carefully monitored.
  
  • Sometimes volcanic eruptions take us by surprise, sometime’s there’s only hours or even minutes warming that something’s going to happen.
• But with something like Yellowstone, the molten rock, the eruption, will come from a large magma chamber which is sitting right below the volcano.
  
  • And that is monitored very carefully.
  • For example, if the magma begins to move toward the surface, it will cause small earthquakes.
  • And they will be measured by the instruments at the surface.
• There’s also levelling and survey instruments which measure up and down movements of a few millimetres of the surface.
• So Yellowstone is active → all these things are varied
  
  • there are small earthquakes, there are vertical motions.
  • But before a large eruption, we would expect to see this increase many times in intensity.
• If Yellowstone was to erupt, everything depends on the wind direction.
  
  • We could see probably anything from one to 5 to perhaps 10cm of volcanic ash close to the volcano, which is enough to have a pretty big impact on agriculture.

Question 75

There are Many Future Challenges for Mountain Places and People We Can Prepare For (or mitigate). What are they?

Answer 75

• Internationally, mountains have never had so much attention as they do right now and there are many organizations around the world focused on increasing public and private sector attention, commitment, engagement and investments in sustainable mountain development.
• The umbrella organizations for these efforts is the Mountain Partnership, a United Nations voluntary alliance of partners dedicated to improving the lives of mountain peoples and protecting mountain environments around the world.
  
  • Founded in 2002, the Mountain Partnership addresses the challenges facing mountain regions by tapping the diversity of resources, knowledge, information and expertise of its members.
  • The Mountain Partnership has been able to stimulate concrete initiatives at all levels that improve quality of life and environments in the world’s mountain regions.
  • Currently, more than 250 governments, intergovernmental organizations, NGO, civil society, private sector organizations, and subnational authorities are members.
  • Each year, on December 11, members of the Mountain Partnership observe International Mountain Day, with a different theme relevant to sustainable mountain development each year, International Mountain day is an opportunity to create awareness about the importance of mountains to life and to highlight the opportunities and constraints in mountain development.

Question 76

What an example of mountains also featured in some of Canada’s most artistic creations?

Answer 76

• eg. Lauren Harris, member os the famous group of 7 artists from the 1920s by the curatorial team of the recent Harris exhibition.
  
  • The idea of North, the paintings of Lauren Harris, was co-organized in 2014 by the Art gallery of Ontario in Toronto and the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles.
  • Harris has taken it another level to instead of just telling the story of landscape, telling the metaphysics of landscape.
  • Harris is one of Canada’s most revered artists but I guess not America
  • It seemed like Harris’s work was always there growing up in Canada
  • He’s an artist whose work has appeared over the decades, not just in art museums, but on stamps, on reproductions in schools, in books.
  • Here is somebody that was on par with and was as engaged with the artistic ideas of his times and was deeply accomplished artist as well.
  • Think of him as a modernist → you look at them, and some you think “that’s a real place” and yet it’s surreal, and it’s made iconic.

Question 77

Do we need to continue to foster appreciation for the mountains?

Answer 77

YES.
- It’s easy to assume that all Canadian’s have an innate connection to our mountain wilderness places, but despite widespread adoration of mountains, it’s something that needs to be continually fostered.
- With a growing numbers of Canadians having immigrated from other countries and cultures, and young Canadians living in urban environments the connection to national parks and wild spaces is waiting.
- Parks Canada is working to ensure all Canadians connect with these special places, and their hope is that Canadian youth and new Canadians, all Canadians are able to share a passion and appreciation for mountain places, and that through personal connection, they can develop a sense of place and belonging, a sense of stewardship and responsibility for mountains, for nature and for our shared future.

Question 78

From Parks Canada’s perspective, what does the future of mountains look like?

Answer 78

• Parks Canada was the first Parks service in the world, the foresight of our early Canadian government to know that these places, starting here in the Canadian Rockies, needed to be protected, to facilitate Canadians coming to these places being able to refresh their souls, to challenge minds and bodies and to be renewed and rejuvenated by nature.
• That mandate, those concepts are enshrined in our mandate to protect these places for the enjoyment and education of current and future generations.
• So that won’t change.
• The landscape that we are working in may change, the way we work in the landscape may change.
• Our goal to connecting people to these places remains absolutely solid.
• There is that segment of the Canadian population where the connection is very real and very alive.
• There are others, young Canadians, urban Canadians, new Canadians, where we are working to find the ways to facilitate connections for people that might not naturally be drawn to these places.
• When you come and experience you build a connection and when you have a connection, you become a steward and stewards will guard these places in the future for their generations of the ones to follow them.