Remote Sensing of the Water Cycle in Mountain Regions
A special issue of Remote Sensing (ISSN 2072-4292). This special issue belongs to the section "Remote Sensing in Geology, Geomorphology and Hydrology".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 January 2022) | Viewed by 14972
Special Issue Editors
Interests: climate variability and change in mountain regions; elevation-dependent warming; precipitation; climate extremes; climate model evaluation/validation
Interests: sustainable development; climate change; numerical modeling; remote sensing; environment; spatial analysis; satellite image analysis; mapping; biodiversity; geographic information system
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Mountains exist in many regions of the world and are home to a significant fraction of the world population and to half of global biodiversity hotspots. They safeguard essential nature contributions to people (NCPs). Most important is their role as “water towers” for lowland regions, providing freshwater for domestic use, irrigation, hydropower, or industry. They also harbor unique flora and fauna, critical habitat for rare, endemic, and endangered species, wood, snow-based recreation, and other essential ecosystem services. However, mountains are also particularly vulnerable to climate change, where impacts are already extensive and observable, the implications of which go far beyond mountain regions themselves. Monitoring and understanding climate and environmental changes in mountain regions is therefore essential.
There is growing evidence of elevation-dependent warming (Pepin et al., 2015) and climate change, which has important implications for the mass balance of the high-altitude cryosphere and associated runoff, for mountain hydrological cycles, for ecosystems and farming communities, and for species residing in restricted altitudinal ranges (Dainese et al. 2017, Immerzeel et al. 2020). However, because of the sparseness or even the lack of high-elevation observations, there is a high likelihood that we cannot monitor some of the most vulnerable regions threatened by climate and environmental change. Satellite Earth observation (EO) data can be considered as an appropriate source to complement scattered in situ measurements, even in mountain regions, and to validate or evaluate climate and hydrological model simulations.
Only by increasing integrated observational (in situ, remote sensing and modeling) efforts in mountains can efficient adaptation and mitigation measures for sustainable development strategies under environmental changes be developed.
Given the global relevance of mountain regions, the proposed Special Issue intends to compile remote sensing studies aiming at a better understanding by quantifying the ongoing changes in mountain environments, particularly in the water cycle and its components. Furthermore, papers dealing with the impacts of these changes on ecosystems, biodiversity, and downstream areas are welcome, too. Further, we encourage the submission of papers discussing future needs to increase the knowledge of the mountain water cycle and the mechanisms of change through satellite-based remote sensing.
Dr. Elisa Palazzi
Prof. Dr. Joerg Bendix
Guest Editors
Related References:
Pepin, N., Bradley, R.S., Diaz, H.F., Baraer, M., Caceres, E.B., Forsythe, N., Fowler, H., Greenwood, G., Hashmi, M.Z., Liu, X.D., Miller, J.R., Ning, L., Ohmura, A., Palazzi, E., Rangwala, I., Schöner, W., Severskiy, I., Shahgedanova, M., Wang, M.B., Williamson, S.N., Yang, D.Q., Elevation- dependent warming in mountain regions of the world (2015) Nature Climate Change, 5 (5), pp. 424-430. DOI: 10.1038/nclimate2563, 2015.
Dainese, M., Aikio, S., Hulme, P. E., Bertolli, A., Prosser, F., & Marini, L. (2017). Human disturbance and upward expansion of plants in a warming climate. Nature Climate Change, 7(8), 577-580.
Immerzeel, W. W. et al. (2020). Importance and vulnerability of the world’s water towers. Nature, 577(7790), 364-369.
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Keywords
- Water cycle
- Remote sensing
- Elevation dependent warming
- Cloud and rainfall changes in mountains
- Elevation dependent climate change, including extremes
- Mountain ecosystems
- Biodiversity loss
- Ecosystem services, nature contributions to people (NCP)
