SEE: Glaciation: 2A.11A

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  • 2A.11A: Natural and human threats to glaciated landscapes
    • Natural
      • Avalanches
        • Incidence of avalanches increases as number of skiers increases
        • Avalanches occur when stress exceeds the strength of a mass of snow
        • They kill 200 people a year in the Alps
      • Glacial outburst floods
        • Powerful flood causes by the sudden discharge of a lake dammed by a moraine
        • What causes them?
          • Climate warming causing an ice dam to melt
          • Breakdown of ice dam due to tectonic activity
          • Avalanche into lake causes water to rise over the dam
        • E.g. E-15 eruption in Iceland 2010 caused jokulhlaups
    • Human
      • Leisure and tourism
        • Increase in skiing leads to an increase in avalanches
          • Destroys the ecosystem, the damage done is irreversible as the damaged plants will never recover
        • Rising number of tourists have caused damage to the fragile ecology (due to ski resort facilities, trampling, litter)
        • Tourism in other cold environments is growing e.g. Extreme tourism in Antarctica
          • Antarctica is even more fragile, foreign objects entering it can have catastrophic impacts
            • 2007 MS Explorer Crash
      • Reservoir construction
        • Construction of dams and reservoirs leading to major changes to the landscape and hydrology of areas
      • Urbanisation
        • Deforestation for settlements/resources leading to soil erosion and landslides
          • Deforestation for farming led to the 2015 avalanches in Sagarmatha
        • Increasing air pollution levels are also rising as vehicle numbers (this links to other causes too)
        • Development of ski resorts increases urbanisation
      • Resource exploitation
        • Polar and periglacial environments are rich in minerals and oil, and are exploited
        • Oil exploitation damages via the infrastructure that comes with it, and oil spills
    • Threats to TLD: tourism due to raffic, seasonal jobs, increased housing demand, and climate change causing wetter weather

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