Natural Disasters Occurrence Reduction And Restoration In Mountain Regions

Mountain regions are critical because of their diverse geological conditions, dynamic changes, and the multiple natural hazards that often occur. Mountains are high-risk environments that can experience a variety of natural hazards, since initiated hazards often trigger secondary, cascading hazards, having a significant impact not only on the area of occurrence but often also on up- and downstream regions. High economic losses and human casualties are caused by geophysical (rockfalls, earthquakes, and volcanic activities), hydrological (floods, avalanches, and dammed-lake outbursts), and sediment-related hazards (landslides, driftwood, debris/mud flows, and surface erosion). Under the impacts of global warming and climate change, the spatiotemporal patterns of rainfall and other weather events have become more unevenly distributed, often with a more extreme magnitude and/or intensity of events. The complexity of mountainous regions, in addition to the continued changes in climate and land use, have made it more challenging to predict mountainous hazards and their impacts on communities. Based on the countless efforts made worldwide on natural hazards in mountain regions, tight international collaboration is strongly required to answer questions related to the causes of disasters, the monitoring of hazardous phenomena, predicting disasters, and the effective reduction of hazardous consequences.

The Hindu Kush Himalayan (HKH) region is highly vulnerable to earthquakes and water-induced disasters. This fragile mountain region is under tremendous stress from climate change and land-use degradation that has accelerated flash floods, river-line floods, erosion, and wet mass movements during the monsoon period and drought in the non-monsoon period. Against the backdrop of intensifying disasters and in the absence of a focused documentation of disaster risk reduction issues in the HKH region, this volume presents a comprehensive body of knowledge. The main purpose and objective of this publication is to connect existing data, research, conceptual work, and practical cases on risk, resilience, and risk reduction from the HKH region under a common analytical umbrella. The result is a contribution to advancing disaster resilience and risk reduction in the HKH region. The book will be of special interest to policy makers, donors, and researchers concerned with the disaster issues in the region.

Within the past five years, the international community has recognized that it may be possible, through programs of systematic study, to devise means to reduce and mitigate the occurrence of a variety of devastating natural hazards. Among these disasters are earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, floods, and landslides. The importance of these studies is underscored by the fact that within fifty years, more than a third of the world’s population will live in seismically and volcanically active zones. The International Council of Scientific Unions, together with UNESCO and the World Bank, have therefore endorsed the 1990s as the International Decade of Natural Disaster Reduction (IDNDR), and are planning a variety of programs to address problems related to the predictability and mitigation of these disasters, particularly in third-world countries. Parallel programs have begun in a number of U.S. agencies.

Natural disasters destroy more property and kill more people with each passing year. Volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunamis, floods, landslides, fires and other natural events are becoming more frequent and their consequences more devastating. Del Moral and Walker provide a comprehensive summary of the diverse ways in which natural disasters disrupt humanity and how humans cope. Burgeoning human numbers, shrinking resources and intensification of the consequences of natural disasters have produced a crisis of unparalleled proportions. Through this detailed study, the authors provide a template for improving restoration to show how relatively simple approaches can enhance both human well-being and that of the other species on the planet. This book will appeal to ecologists, land managers as well as anyone curious about the natural world and natural disasters.

Mountain regions encompass nearly 24 percent of the total land surface of the earth and are home to approximately 12 percent of the world's population. Their ecosystems play a critical role in sustaining human life both in the highlands and the lowlands. During recent years, resource use in high mountain areas has changed mainly in response to the

Environment, mountain biodiversity, ecological changes.

This book is a part of ICL new book series “ICL Contribution to Landslide Disaster Risk Reduction” founded in 2019. Peer-reviewed papers submitted to the Fifth World Landslide Forum were published in six volumes of this book series. This book contains the following parts: • Impact of Large Ground Deformations near Seismic Faults on Critically Important Civil Infrastructures• Recent Progress in the Landslide Initiating Science• Earth Observation and Machine Learning in Landslide Science• General Landslide Studies Professor Željko Arbanas is the Vice President of International Consortium on Landslides. He is a Professor of Faculty of Civil Engineering, University of Rijeka, Croatia. He is the Assistant Editor-in-Chief of International Journal Landslides. Professor Peter Bobrowsky is the President of International Consortium on Landslides. He is a Senior Scientist of Geological Survey of Canada, Ottawa, Canada. Professor Kazuo Konagai is Professor Emeritus at the University of Tokyo and Principal Researcher at the ICL Headquarters. He serves as the Secretary-General of the Fifth World Landslide Forum. Professor Kyoji Sassa is the Founding President and the Secretary-General of the International Consortium on Landslides (ICL). He has been the Editor-in-Chief of International Journal Landslides since its foundation in 2004. Professor Kaoru Takara is the Executive Director of International Consortium on Landslides. He is a Professor and Dean of Graduate School of Advanced Integrated Studies (GSAIS) in Human Survivability (Shishu-Kan), Kyoto University.

Most countries have not yet adopted mountain-specific laws, preferring to protect mountains through existing sectoral legislation. However, countries such as France, Georgia, Italy, Russian Federation (North Ossetia-Alania), Switzerland and Ukraine, have enacted legal instruments dealing specifically with mountains, and other countries are developing similar legislation. This publication broadly describes the main elements of international and national mountain-specific legal texts, and also includes national case studies.

The term 'natural disaster' is often used to refer to natural events such as earthquakes, hurricanes or floods. However, the phrase 'natural disaster' suggests an uncritical acceptance of a deeply engrained ideological and cultural myth. At Risk questions this myth and argues that extreme natural events are not disasters until a vulnerable group of people is exposed. The updated new edition confronts a further ten years of ever more expensive and deadly disasters and discusses disaster not as an aberration, but as a signal failure of mainstream 'development'. Two analytical models are provided as tools for understanding vulnerability. One links remote and distant 'root causes' to 'unsafe conditions' in a 'progression of vulnerability'. The other uses the concepts of 'access' and 'livelihood' to understand why some households are more vulnerable than others. Examining key natural events and incorporating strategies to create a safer world, this revised edition is an important resource for those involved in the fields of environment and development studies.