Mountain hazard risk dynamics beyond climate change
The EMERGENCE project team will co-host the Lightning Session LS 26.101 at the Regional Mountain Conference 2026 in Obergurgl, Austria. Join us on Tuesday, 07 July 2026, 10:30–12:00 to learn more about key risk drivers that affect the dynamics of hazards, exposure and vulnerabilities.
Full session description:
Mountain regions worldwide are experiencing rising losses from natural hazards. While climate change intensifies many hazard processes, shifting exposure, evolving land use, and changing vulnerability patterns are equally powerful - and often underexamined - drivers of risk. At the same time, competing land uses and socio-economic transformations are reshaping mountain socio-ecological systems, creating new constellations of systemic and cascading risks. This session brings together research that advances a comprehensive understanding of mountain risk dynamics by linking hazard processes, land use change, exposure and vulnerability evolution, and impact-based modelling approaches.
We invite interdisciplinary contributions that address one or more of the following themes:
- Evolving exposure and vulnerability across spatial and temporal scales, including improved datasets, empirical validation, and integration of institutional and socio-economic dimensions.
- Land use competition, trade-offs and conflicts (e.g., tourism, hydropower, agriculture, forestry, settlement expansion) and their role in generating, redistributing, or transforming natural hazard risk.
- Systemic and cascading risks in mountain socio-ecological systems, including cross-sectoral and cross-scale interactions.
- Impact-based and integrative modelling approaches, linking hydro-meteorological drivers, terrain and land cover, exposure, vulnerability, and runout dynamics to deliver spatially explicit risk assessments and scenario-based analyses.
- Warning value chains and decision support, including threshold evaluation, uncertainty communication, true/false alarm trade-offs, and risk-oriented early warning.
- Scenario tools and forward-looking approaches, such as SSP-aligned assessments, agent-based models, participatory methods, and nature-based solutions to support adaptive governance.
- Empirical analyses of loss trends, disentangling the roles of climate change, exposure dynamics, land use decisions, and mitigation measures.
We particularly encourage contributions that bridge natural and social sciences, and that connect process understanding with decision-making and policy relevance. Comparative case studies from Alpine and other mountain regions are welcome. The session aims to foster dialogue between scientists, practitioners, and policymakers to support adaptive, impact-oriented risk management.
Image Credit: RMC