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Mountains are fragile ecosystems with global importance, providing key ecosystems services within mountainous areas but also for the lowlands. However, mountain regions are prone to natural disasters and exposed to multiple hazards. In this chapter, we present four disaster databases (EM-DAT, NatCatSERVICE, DesInventar, Dartmouth) that store information about spatiotemporal occurrence and impacts of natural disasters in mountain areas. Quality and completeness of the four databases are compared and analyzed regarding reliability for weather- and climate-related natural disasters. The analysis identifies the numbers of fatalities as the most reliable loss parameters, whereby the number of people affected and the economic loss are less trustworthy and highly dependent on the purposes of each database. Main limitations regarding sustainable mountain development are the inhomogeneity in database definitions, spatial resolutions, database purposes and lack of data registration for human and economic losses. While some individual disasters such as the Kedarnath flood in northern India in 2013 have been robustly linked to changes in climate, there is generally insufficient evidence to attribute any overall increasing disaster frequency to climate change. Damage due to hazard in mountain regions will increase irrespective of global warming, in regions where populations are growing and infrastructure is developed at exposed locations.

Glacier area and length changes were measured in the central Trans Alai of the northeastern Pamir, including the entire catchment of Lake Karakul. Annual shrinkage determined from Landsat 7 ETM+ imagery accounted for −0.8 ± 0.4 % a⁻¹ , corresponding to −8.8 ± 4.8 % from 1455 ± 51 km² in 2000 to 1327 ± 48 km² in 2011. Several glaciers could be mapped back to 1973 based on a KH-9 Hexagon reconnaissance image. Measured glacier extents of 550 ± 10 km² in 1973, 540 ± 9 km² in 2000, and 521 ± 9 km² in 2011 indicate accelerated shrinkage for the last decade in the Trans Alai. Glaciers retreated on average by −4.3 ± 0.5 m a⁻¹ before 2000 and subsequently advanced by +6.1 ± 1.0 m a⁻¹ until 2011. Geodetic mass balances of four selected glaciers were determined from a Digital Elevation Model extracted from a 2010 ALOS-PRISM tri-stereo image and the February 2000 SRTM-3 elevation dataset (1999). Its difference image reveals highly variable glacier elevation changes. While three glaciers showed probably a minor loss (−0.16 ± 0.68 m w.e. a⁻¹ to −0.06 ± 0.68 m w.e. a⁻¹), a more pronounced mass loss was observed for Ujsuu Glacier (−0.50 ± 0.68 m w.e. a⁻¹). This study reveals significant glacier variations and numerous indications of surges in the Trans Alai, a well-known phenomenon in the Pamir.