Environmental Water Requirements in Mountainous Areas presents comprehensive and scientifically sound approaches and methodologies for estimating the environmental water requirements and tradeoffs for water allocation by analyzing anthropogenic and natural water needs. The book covers environmental water management issues in mountainous areas, specifically focusing on the Mediterranean region which exhibits significant contrasts in its demographic and hydrologic features. The authors include paradigms and information that will be useful for water resources managers, decision makers, scientists working in the fields of ecology and water resources management, engineers that design hydraulic works, and environmental policymakers. - Offers a complete background screening on theoretical and practical guidelines on estimating environmental water requirements in mountainous areas - Promotes and guides interdisciplinary work with information on policies and best practices in the field of ecological flows and water resources management - Provides examples and case studies on the successful implementation efforts of ecological flows to analyze lessons learned and overcome practical issues and solutions

Mountain Ice and Water: Investigations of the Hydrologic Cycle in Alpine Environments is a new volume of papers reviewed and edited by John Shroder, Emeritus Professor of Geography and Geology at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, USA, and Greg Greenwood, Director of the Mountain Research Initiative from Bern, Switzerland. Chapters in this book were derived from research papers that were delivered at the Perth III Conference on Mountains of our Future Earth in Scotland in October 2015. The conference was established to help develop the knowledge necessary to respond effectively to the risks and opportunities of global environmental change and to support transformations toward global sustainability in the coming decades. To this end, the conference and book have investigated the future situation in mountains from three points of view. (1) Dynamic Planet: Observing, explaining, understanding, and projecting Earth, environmental, and societal system trends, drivers, and processes and their interactions to anticipate global thresholds and risks, (2) Global Sustainable Development: Increasing knowledge for sustainable, secure, and fair stewardship of biodiversity, food, water, health, energy, materials, and other ecosystem services, and (3) Transformations towards Sustainability: Understanding transformation processes and options, assessing how these relate to human values, emerging technologies and social and economic development pathways, and evaluating strategies for governing and managing the global environment across sectors and scales. - Derived from research papers delivered at the Perth III Conference on Mountains of our Future Earth in Scotland in October 2015 - Helps develop the knowledge necessary for responding effectively in coming decades to the risks and opportunities of global environmental change and tactics for global sustainability - Provides the research community working on global change in mountains with a broader framework established by the Future Earth initiative

In mountainous areas, due to the unique geological and topographical conditions, and along with the impact of global climate change, extreme rainfall events often occur and induce natural disasters such as flash floods, debris flows, landslides, dammed lakes and others. These water-related natural disasters (WRNDs) frequently occur around the world, such as the July 29th 1998 debris flow and landslide dam at Capricorn Creek in Mount Meager Volcanic Complex (southern Canada), the flash flood of 20th August 2018 in Raganello Gorge (southern Italy), and the 2007 summer floods in the United Kingdom. WRNDs are more serious in Southeast Asia particularly in Southwest China, where many places suffer from such disasters in the flood season every year, such as the May 20th 2012 flash flood/debris flow among the hit area of Wenchuan earthquake, the June 24th 2017 Xinmo Catastrophic landslide in Mao county and in 2018 the two sequential landslide-dammed lake events at Jinsha River. These WRNDs not only cause heavy casualties and property losses but also destroy the ecological environment. These WRNDs are not only the concern of government managers and engineers, but also deserve more in-depth study from researchers. Formation and evolution mechanisms of WRNDs are very complicated, and influenced by several aspects, such as geological and topographical conditions, hydrometeorological conditions, geomaterial properties, rainfall history and flow condition, and others. Field and laboratory tests can help us to better understand the related mechanism behind the disasters. Theoretical and empirical models, modeling and numerical methods can provide more reasonable evaluation and forecasting results of WRNDs, but a more in-depth understanding is needed. Furthermore, for the risk control and hazard prevention and mitigation, new equipment and technologies have been developed and have achieved some progress in recent years, but the fast and effective emergency treatments for WRNDs need more attention.

Over complex terrain, spatial inhomogeneities of pre-convective atmospheric conditions occur due to convection and mesoscale transport processes. This thesis focuses on the identification of these processes over the mountainous island of Corsica and on the evaluation of their impact on the spatial variability of water vapour, convection-related parameters and the evolution of deep convection by means of observations.