The cartographic depiction of high mountain areas has always been a challenge to generations of cartographers, surveyers and geographers. The maps resulting from this work contain a wide range of information, which are diffi cult to understand for a non-expert community. Hence the fascination of high mountain areas was up to now mostly reserved to experts and climbers. New techniques in Compute...

O nce you get to Swanton Pacific Ranch in the coastal mountains north of Santa Cruz, it's pretty obvious the 3,200-acre spread offers many things you just won't find at Cal Poly: trees, for one thing. A whole forest full of them 2,100 acres to be exact. They cover steep mountain slopes and march in tall columns down to grassy meadows. A river runs through it: Scott Creek and its tributaries. "T...

Protected areas in mountains are regularly in the focus of international efforts to conserve the environment and enable sustainable development. The following article analyses the current extend of protection in mountainous versus non-mountainous areas, sheds light on the rationales behind the establishment of mountain protected areas, and proposes directions for future endeavours in protecting...

The Kura-Araxes cultural tradition existed in the highlands of the South Caucasus from 3500 to 2450 BCE (before the Christian era). This tradition represented an adaptive regime and a symbolically encoded common identity spread over a broad area of patchy mountain environments. By 3000 BCE, groups bearing this identity had migrated southwest across a wide area from the Taurus Mountains down int...

The Western Hemisphere genus Pseudomorpha Kirby 1825 was last revised by Notman in 1925 based on only a few known species (22) and paltry few specimens (73); other authors have added an additional six species represented by 53 additional specimens since 1925. Baehr (1997) assigned three species from Australia to this genus, albeit in a new subgenus, Austropseudomorpha Baehr 1997. A recent study...

Glacial deposits in the southwestern Ahklun Mountains, southwestern Alaska, record two major glacier advances during the late Pleistocene. The Arolik Lake and Klak Creek glaciations took place during the early and late Wisconsin, respectively. During the Arolik Lake glaciation, outlet glaciers emanated from an ice cap centered over the central portion of the Ahklun Mountains and expanded beyond...

A new Philoscirtus species, P. viridulus n. sp. from forests of the West Usambara Mountains is described and the genus revised. Both species of the genus are known from few localities only. Their habitats are under pressure due to an increasing human population in the East and West Usambara Mountains. Both taxa should be included thus in the IUCN red list of globally threatened taxa to attract ...

Iran is known as the most complex and varied country in southwest Asia, in terms of geography, vegetation, climate and consequently biological diversity. The rather high number of recorded endemic species of Fulgoromorpha in Iran indicates a high potential for speciation in some areas. In this study, in order to identify the endemic zones for Fulgoromorpha of Iran, three main biogeographic regi...

Distant objects like clouds, mountains, and the Sun can appear to have colors that are significantly different from their intrinsic colors: the low Sun is often red, white clouds and snow-capped peaks appear yellow or pink, and dark green or gray mountains can appear blue or purple. The color alteration increases with distance, or alternatively, optical depth. We investigate the perceived color...