Rapid glacier retreat, changes in snow and rain patterns and an intensifying water cycle are driving profound shifts in mountain hydrology, communities and ecology. Yet, substantial uncertainty remains about how these shifts affect water security in mountain and downstream regions and how they locally depend on exposure, vulnerability and adaptive capacity of social-ecological systems. In many mountain regions worldwide, hydrological changes have accelerated in past decades, raising the urgent questions: which threats to mountain water security can already be observed today, and what are early examples of successful adaptation? Can we learn from explicit cases of maladaptation leading to increasing risk of water insecurity to adapt in ways that strengthen resilience in both mountain ecosystems and communities?
This session brings together work on mountain water security and its potential future pathways. We ask: Are current environmental changes putting mountain water security increasingly at risk, and how can we adapt in ways that strengthen resilience in both ecosystem and communities? We welcome contributions from both natural and social sciences that assess past, present, and future trajectories of mountain water security and related impacts that help us better understand, plan, and test effective long-term adaptation strategies.
Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
1. Advances in understanding the impact of climatic, cryosphere and hydrological changes on mountain water security across diverse human–natural systems.
2. Methods (e.g. models, field data, remote sensing, surveys, expert insights) that quantify and capture the consequences of changing water security.
3. Reconstruction of long-term time series to evaluate hydro-ecological dynamics and assess potential tipping-points in water security shifts.
4. Quantifying the effect of peak water on water security.
5. Assessment of nature-based solutions and/or traditional mountain water management systems that can enhance resilience.
6. Responses of mountain communities and water governance regimes to increasing risks of water inesecurity