Tackling Holocene Transitions in Two Alpine Valleys as a Basis for Sustainable Development: Similarities and Differences in Geo- and Biosystems

Abstract:

Rising temperatures and shifting precipitation patterns already force those living in the worlds mountain regions to change their cultural practices. A future sustainable development must be based on scientific findings, stressing the need for a better understanding the mountain systems and their interactions. Interdisciplinary case studies allow to hypothesize triggers and forcings governing development, and, most important, to define potential bifurcations with the potential for management. The Holocene climate and settlement history of two Eastern Alpine valleys, Stubai and Paznaun allows a first glimpse on the variety of past evolutions. Global change, with increasingly rapid changes in the fields of mobility and the economic settings, can be described as external forcing or intrinsic dynamic property of the regional mountain system itself. Being located at the main Alpine ridge, both of the valleys are located at historical and prehistorical trading routes, with global change imprinted in the landscape by the infrastructure of physical exchange between the Northern and the southern part of Europe. Apart from geoscientific findings, historical documents make the legacies visible, which allow to transcribe the physical concept of hysteresis so societal systems.