Mountain Research and Development

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The independent, not-for-profit international scientific journal specifically devoted to sustainable development in the world’s mountains. 👉🏽 https://www.mrd-journal.org Published by the International Mountain Society. Hosted at @CDEunibe.bsky.social.

Image showing a burned forest landscape in the left half and a snow-covered, frozen forest landscape in the right half, each with a stream running toward us. Mountains are visible in the background. In the left half of the image, fires are blazing on forested slopes, with thick black smoke rising into the sky. In the right half of the image, high mountains are covered in snow and ice, and the sky is mostly overcast. The image, generated by Ivo Baselt using the Midjourney image generator with a custom scientific prompt, illustrates that postfire surface runoff following wildfire disturbance and frozen soil surface runoff during snowmelt and rain-on-snow conditions can occur within the same catchment and may interact under changing climate conditions.

Cover of Mountain Research and Development Volume 46 Number 2, with a photo by Ana L. Dip Yordanoff showing around twenty white and beige goats facing the camera in the golden evening sun. They are inside a corral built against a stone wall from logs, wooden beams, and coarse wire netting. Trees and a plastic tarp placed across some of the beams provide some shade. A single goat is grazing outside the corral, closer to the camera, in a yard that is no longer sunlit. Above the trees, a dry-looking, rocky mountain range stretches beneath a blue sky with white clouds. Photo caption: Goats in a corral in the High Monte of Northwest Argentina. The animals graze during the day and are returned to the corral at sunset to prevent predation. Rural outmigration in the region is coupled with a marked reduction in livestock herd sizes, as an article in this issue shows.

Photo © Ankit Mishra. Caption: Alpine meadow in Gnathang Valley, East Sikkim, Eastern Himalaya, at approximately 3800 m elevation, with flowering herbs and cushion plants typical of high-elevation micro-endemic communities that lie outside existing transboundary conservation monitoring frameworks.
Description: Wide-angle photograph of a lush alpine meadow. Dense green grass and low-growing yellow wildflowers cover the valley floor and lower slopes. Scattered granite boulders and rocky terrain are visible in the foreground. The bare ridgeline rises steeply in the background against a partly cloudy blue sky.

Photo by Rongkun Liu. Caption: A participant in the digital mapping intervention shows a nonparticipating fellow villager the smartphone app, the digital map, and its functions during a social gathering. Photo description: Two are men standing in a yard next to the porch of a building, bent over a smartphone that one of them is holding. He is pointing at something on the phone screen and explaining, the other man is looking at the phone and listening. Behind them is a leafy green hedge, with mountains across the valley showing above it.

Photo © Heber Sosa Fabre. Lina Rodriguez, coauthor of this article, as well as a woman from the local community and another from Wetlands International are standing in a small fenced area around a solar panel mounted on a post, engaged in conversation. The younger woman is holding the lid of a water well. The well and panel are located in a vast, sparsely vegetated plain. Fences are visible in the distance. The plain is surrounded by distant mountains.

Carciofo di Malegno (Cynara cardunculus L subsp scolymus (L) Hayek)—the only Italian landrace of artichoke currently known that is cultivated in a mountain area—is used by a local distillery to make a unique liqueur. The photo by Davide Pedrali shows a close-up of an artichoke plant from the side, with a rock and a fence in the near background and clouded, forested mountains in the distance.

The two book covers are shown side by side against a gray background. Both covers are taken up entirely by photos of landscapes in the regions covered, with the titles and the author name printed across the photos.

Photo by Ana L. Dip Yordanoff showing the view from a vantage point across a small valley with a river. Across the river there are vineyards, surrounded by trees. A large, lone house sits on top of the ridge, against the background of another ridge and, further in the hazy distance, high mountains. The photo shows the expansion of viticulture in the valleys of northwest Argentina’s High Monte. The vineyard area is managed as a key tourist service, overlooked by the boutique winery, situated above the cultivation zone. This illustrates how new services are being established in the valley areas, shifting land use patterns and transforming local labor dynamics.

Cover of the book. It is taken up entirely by a photo that shows four women from behind, standing side by side in the grass, dressed in warm, mostly traditional clothes, facing Huayana Potosi mountain during a Challa ceremony. The title and authors are printed at the top, across the sky, and the logos of the publishers, UNESCO and IRD Éditions, are placed at the bottom, across the grass.

Photo by Menale Wondie showing focus group discussions in Tara Gedam watershed in 2013. Three groups of men in local clothing are sitting in a harvested field, some discussing, some looking at printed-out materials and thinking, some taking notes. One man in a red T-shirt is squatting next to a collection of materials, also taking notes. A tree grows in the far corner of the field. A donkey is grazing in the background, and further in the background, hills are visible in the haze.

Minami Furano, a small, municipally owned ski area with little outside tourism. The photo by Shumpei Kurosawa shows a gentle mountain slope at dusk, with a rope-tow ski lift and a piste on either side of it, each lined by forest, and the lift station in the foreground. It is past closing time, so there are no skiers. A man stands next to the lift station.

Head-and-shoulder portraits of Biraj Adhikari, Sunetra Ghatak, H. Ricardo Grau, and Denis Samyn.

Cover of Mountain Research and Development, Vol 46, No 1. The cover photo, taken by Jean Miczka, shows the view down a rocky slope toward the Mer de Glace glacier, with numerous people walking on metal stairs and bridges connecting our vantage point to the glacier. This infrastructure is needed to keep the glacier accessible to tourists as it melts and exposes more and more steep rock.

"Climate change adaptation should not be a journey into the unknown": The photo by Michele Maggi shows a view from a chairlift taking us and other tourists uphill into the fog. On one side of the lift, the slope is forested; the few deciduous trees among the evergreens have yellowed. On the other side of the lift, the slope is used as pasture, with a few cows grazing in the yellowed grass. A water tub for the cows, a fence, and three parked trucks are visible at the lower end of the pasture.

Small-scale farming in the hills of Makueni County, Kenya. A hilly landscape fades away in the haze. The clearly visible, gently sloping hill in the foreground is covered in a mosaic of terraced fields of maize and patches of shrubby woodlands, interspersed with a few houses. Photo by Theresa Tribaldos

A highly diverse flowering mountain meadow in sunny weather. A single tree and a distant mountain are visible in the background. Photo by Marlène Thibault

This ski lift and the adjacent piste in Vall de Núria, photographed in summer, each cut through the mountain forest, influencing ecosystem connectivity. They exemplify the complex interactions between human activity and nature in ski and mountain resorts. Photo by Joan Rabassa-Juvanteny.

Herders graze sheep and goats on an alpine pasture in the Eastern Hindu Kush. Vegetation is fairly sparse, and a ravine and a steep mountainside are visible in the background. Photo by Zahir Ahmad

Traffic stops on the National Highway in Kinnaur, Western Himalaya, as a landslide happening around the bend fills the air with dust. The Highway is carved into a very steep, rocky slope. Four vehicles are standing still, a few people are standing outside of them, waiting. Photo © Aghaghia Rahimzadeh

A wooden cross with a bench and a small wooden shrine with a statue of the Virgin Mary mark Niederl, a mountain pass on the Stubaier Höhenweg trail in the Austrian Alps. It leads across a fairly steep, rocky and partly grassy ridge with a rocky summit next to it. Another, parallel mountain range is visible in the background. Hot summer temperatures could make hiking here more taxing. Photo by Laura Barraclough.

Saleinaz Mountain Hut in the Swiss Alps is perched high above a steep slope, facing the cliffs and glaciers of Mont Dolent. The hut is small and built of stone, with a metal roof and two wooden extensions attached. Next to it is a small terrace with two tables and a few chairs. Photo by Jean Miczka.

The Bow Falls area of Banff National Park reflects the intersection of climate change, tourism, and guiding practice. As landscapes shift and visitor pressures evolve, guides and institutions face complex questions of adaptation, resilience, and policy response in Canada’s most visited mountain destinations. The photo by Katherine Hanly shows a vast glaciated and snow-covered landscape in the background, with a waterfall running into a turquoise lake enclosed by rocky cliffs, from which another waterfall runs into a partly forested valley below.

Cover page of Mountain Research and Development, Volume 45, Number 4. The cover photo by Dipak Raj Rai shows countless pieces of chhurpi—a hard cheese made from yak buttermilk—stored on overhead racks in a dark room with an earthen floor, stone walls, and a black wooden ceiling. The room also contains a wooden chair, baskets, and various other utensils. The chhurpi was produced by a private dairy in Gatlang, Nepal. While the state-supported marketization of yak products has boosted some households’ income, it is simultaneously eroding traditional sustainable herding practices and causing environmental degradation, as shown in the article by Indra Mani Rai and colleagues in this issue.

University students engage in a landscape assessment during a field excursion in the Dedoplistskaro Biosphere Reserve, Georgia, guided by a local ranger. They are standing in a circle in a green meadow on a gently sloping ridge, listening to the ranger’s explanations. A wide and flat valley stretches out in the background, lined by another green mountain ridge on its far side. Photo by Alexander Mitrofanenko.

Where relief is dominant: Switzerland’s Lauterbrunnen is an example of a settlement in a topographically challenging environment. The summer scene photographed by Markus Lambracht shows part of the village, including its church, and the vertical cliffs, hundreds of meters high, towering over the narrow valley on both sides. The snowy peaks of the high alps are visible above the cliffs.

Cover of the book entitled Anima: A Wild Pastoral, written by Kapka Kassabova. It shows a photo of a herd of sheep in steep mountain terrain against a background of mountains and valleys fading into the distance.

A sunlit brook at the center of Mount Mabu forest, the largest rainforest in Southern Africa, with mossy rocks emerging from the water and lush trees and ferns surrounding it. Photo by Julian Bayliss.

Innovative adaptive practices in mountain communities often emerge from local resource constraints and community needs, as highlighted by Zhou and He in their contribution to this issue. In Guangming village, Yunnan, China, farmer cooperatives have succeeded in enhancing creation of value added in the local walnut trade by establishing processing facilities, such as this drying facility, in the village. The photo by Weijia Zhou shows a man shoveling walnuts in the drying room. The nuts lie in heaps on an aerated wire mesh floor resting on evenly spaced-out wooden beams; some nuts are packed in mesh bags. The room has light gray walls and a ceiling made of wooden beams.

Cover of Mountain Research and Development Vol 45, No 3, with a photo by Gusztáv Nemes showing a henhouse made of mud, wood, straw, and stones to keep the animals cool, warm, and safe. It is fitted with a solar-panel-driven door that closes automatically at sunset to keep foxes out. This is an example of hybrid innovation—merging old and new technology—found in a mountain product value chain in Hungary that was among the many mountain product value chains analyzed in one of the articles in the issue.

View of Valle d’Aosta from Bard Fortress. Photo by Dario Musolino.
The flat valley floor with green fields, some trees, and small towns has a powerline, a highway, the river Dora Baltea, and a road running along it. It is nested between steep mountains consisting partly of forested slopes and partly of bare cliffs and rock faces. The stone roof of the fortress is visible in the foreground.

A snowy, sunny winter scenery, with the upper station of a ski lift and some skiers the foreground and several hills with numerous wind turbines in the background. These are the wind farms of Pretul, Steinriegel, and Hochpürtschling in Styria, Austria. A total of 48 wind turbines produce 115 MW, providing approximately 75,000 households with electricity. © Schindelegger 2020

A herder takes chauri (female yaks) up a dirt road to the designated pasture for day herding in the village of Gatlang. Photo by Dipak Raj Rai

Ansgar Fellendorf of UNEP presenting the PRIMA project.

MRD associate editor Susanne Wymann von Dach shares useful tips with a diverse audience of mountain researchers on how to get their papers published in a peer-reviewed journal.

Two photos, the top one showing a researcher interviewing a villager in Nepal (photo by Lilian Trechsel, CDE) and the bottom one showing people networking (photo by Thriday on Unsplash). The photos illustrate the contents of the events announced in the post.

Photo showing shared presentation table of the journal Mountain Research and Development and its publisher, the International Mountain Society, with flyers laid out, posters on the wall behind, and two people standing and talking next to it.

People networking in a casual setting, with refreshments. Photo by Thriday on Unsplash

Cover of book entitled The Canadian Mountain Assessment: Walking Together to Enhance Understanding of Mountains in Canada

This harvested cereal field is a site of agricultural innovation in Grisons, Switzerland: In one of the 455 value chains analyzed, a cooperative of organic cereal producers revived cereal production at high elevations up to 1600 masl by leveraging a diversity of cereal breeds, ancestral techniques, and modern standards. Photo by Emilia Schmitt

Cover of Mountain Research and Development, Volume 45, Number 2 | May 2025. The cover photo, taken by Tom Perreault, shows the Andean peatlands, or bofedales, in the community of Caripe in Sajama National Park, with snow-capped Sajama peak in the background. Bofedales provide vital pasture for llamas and alpacas. An article in this issue of Mountain Research and Development shows that community-based land tenure arrangements in these areas can support adaptive livelihoods among pastoralists by incentivizing labor migrants to return occasionally to their home communities to maintain land and animals according to customary practices.

Panoramic view of an Alpine interface area, taken from above Garmisch-Partenkirchen, looking towards Munich. Photo by Elias Günther

People chatting and networking. Photo by Thriday on Unsplash

Call for papers: Collaborative Research for Sustainable Mountain Futures—Special Issue from the International Mountain Conference 2025. Send us your notice of ntent by 15 June 2025 and submit your paper by 15 October 2025! With photo by Wolfgang Gurgiser of Huaraz and surroundings in the Peruvian Andes—one of the world’s many mountain regions facing unprecedented change. And with logos of Mountain Research and Development and the International Mountain Conference in Innsbruck, 2025.

The sacred walnut tree and temple in Guangming Village meet local spiritual needs and have now also become one of the village’s tourist attractions. Photo by Weijia Zhou

Participants of ForumAlpinum 2024 “The Alps—a Refuge of Bio- and Geodiversity!?” in Kranjska Gora. Photo by Permanent Secretariat of the Alpine Convention

Image of a mountain village surrounded by fields and forest. Articles in this focus issue of Mountain Research and Development reflect the growing role of restoration efforts in woodland resurgence. People in this village in Gandaki Province, Nepal, contributed their ecological knowledge in one of the successful reforestation projects assessed in this issue. Photo by Takuya Soma

Cover of Mountain Research and Development, Vol 45, No 1. The cover photo shows a terraced landscape in the Moroccan High Atlas Mountains, with fields interspersed with various trees. More rugged, forested mountains are visible in the background. Caption: The roles of trees differ across landscapes. In Morocco’s High Atlas Mountains, farm trees are of great cultural importance to the local Amazigh communities. (Photo by Tobias Plieninger @plienigerlab.bsky.social)

Seedlings in a tree nursery established as part of the reforestation project assessed in this study. Photo by Takuya Soma

Bear tracks along a running trail: the majority of Romania’s trail running events take place in wilderness areas with exceptional biodiversity. Photo by Cristian V. Maloș