Mountains: Sources of Water, Sources of Knowledge

This book addresses the major challenges in assuring globally sustainable water use. It examines critical contemporary and global issues through the lens of global change processes and with a focus on mountain regions. In doing so, it aims to bring state-of-the-art science from numerous disciplines to bear on important environmental and policy questions related to water resources. The volume will be a boon to a range of readers, from environmental scientists to hydrologists.This book addresses the major challenges in assuring globally sustainable water use. Paradoxically, water resources have been identified both as too plentiful, producing major disasters, and increasingly vulnerable to shortages. Addressing both of these aspects requires attention to physical hydrological processes as well as human activities that affect water supply and demand. Mountains regions are the sources of many great water systems and often have long traditions of effective water management and therefore provide special insights into general problems of water use, including upstream-downstream and transboundry relations as well as natural hazard management. This volume will address critical contemporary and global issues through the lens of global change processes and with a focus on mountain regions to bring state of the art science from numerous disciplines to examine important environmental and policy questions related to water resources