Climate change impacts on livelihoods in the Eastern Hindu Kush: integrating local perceptions and biophysical data

Titelangaben

Khan, Saeed Akhtar ; Zandler, Harald ; Sass, Oliver:
Climate change impacts on livelihoods in the Eastern Hindu Kush: integrating local perceptions and biophysical data.
In: Regional Environmental Change. Bd. 25 (2025) . - 114.
ISSN 1436-378X
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-025-02414-9

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Abstract

Climate change affects mountain communities through its adverse impacts on both natural and human systems. Additionally, the livelihoods are exposed to the severe and interconnected impacts of multiple hazards and associated extreme events. This study integrates local perceptions of climate change and natural hazards with biophysical data, focusing on the connected impacts in vulnerable mountain regions like the Eastern Hindu Kush. Local livelihoods in these regions depend heavily on the ecosystem services that are sensitive to cryospheric and climatic changes. Addressing a significant gap in the assessment of climate change and natural hazards’ impacts on local livelihoods, this study employs an interdisciplinary approach and proposes a framework to link local perceptions with empirical data in Lotkuh Valley of Pakistan. The framework bridges bottom-up methods (household surveys, interviews, and focus groups) with top-down analyses (ERA5-Land climate trends, MODIS snow trends, and Landsat-based Modified Soil Adjusted Vegetation Index [MSAVI] analyzed with Breaks For Additive Season and Trend [BFAST]). Findings reveal that most respondents perceived changes in temperature and precipitation and their impacts on local livelihoods. These perceptions are influenced by education, access to agricultural land, and experience of extreme events. Extreme events severely impact local livelihoods with floods emerging as the major hazard in the area and have connected impacts with landslides and avalanches. The proposed framework provides fresh insights by comparative analysis of local perceptions and biophysical data, uncovering areas of convergence (e.g., alignment of flood perceptions with observed changes) and divergence (e.g., misalignment in rainfall variability). Its interdisciplinary approach captures the complexity of mountain vulnerabilities by integrating diverse sources and methods. The findings highlight the compound hazards and their cascading impacts in the area, providing critical insights into the interplay of biophysical and social dimensions of climate change, a nuanced understanding of the impacts of climate change and natural hazards on local livelihoods. The study significantly contributes to the understanding of mountain vulnerabilities in the Eastern Hindu Kush and offers practical implications for policy and adaptation strategies in the region and similar mountain areas.