Mountains as "water towers" for humanity: state of knowledge and significance in a changing world

Viviroli, Daniel; Weingartner, Rolf (2005). Mountains as "water towers" for humanity: state of knowledge and significance in a changing world. In: Open science conference on global change in mountain regions (pp. 16-18). Duncow: Sapiens Publishing

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Water is a vital resource that is expected to become scarce on the global scale within the next decade. While water quality will remain an important issue, water quantity problems will be of increasing relevance. Since mountains and highlands provide essential supply of freshwater to the adjacent lowlands, they play an important part as natural "water towers"
(Bandyopadhyay et al. 1997). The provisioning of freshwater for irrigation and food production, for industrial use and for a rapidly growing urban population is a key environmental service of mountain areas.
Despite of their paramount significance, knowledge about mountain water resources in different climatic zones is still fragmentary. Therefore, a data-based approach will serve to quantify the hydrological significance of mountains, using the currently available flow record series.

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