The Snowsports Industry: a Critical Analysis

Hi there,

Before you read this, I just ask you to scroll down and have a look at the film trailer I put in my last post. As I mentioned there, today I want to discuss the snowsports industry and climate and environmental change. And this time not what climate change is doing to snow and cold, but how the snowsports industry is doing much to accelerate the process that is so dangerous to its continuation.

Because it's difficult to give world wide examples, I'm going to stick to Austria, but the general conclusions can be extrapolated to the industry in North America and Asia as well, as the results found are similar (Elsasser and Bürki, 2002 and Brown et al., 2006).
In the Tirol in the Austrian Alps, the amount of winter tourists increased with almost 30% over the past 25 years, with a consequent increase in hotels, ski lifts and other types of infrastructure (Statistics Tirol, tourism).

The increased amount of tourists and infrastructure has a multitude of direct and indirect effects, which I have summarized in the figure below.

Figure 1. Interplay between climate change, environmental change, the winter tourism sector and the danger of snow avalanches. The dotted arrows represent indirect effects, the others direct effects. 

Winter tourism has a direct negative effect on vegetation and the ecosystem because of its alterations in order to prepare the area for tourists. The most influential factors here are slope creation, daily slope preparation, usage of the slope, artificial snow creation, terrain alteration through e.g. blowing up of rock formations and clearcutting in mountain woods. (Breitenbach, 2010) 

These factors compact the soil, reduce infiltration capacity, destruct or degrade vegetation cover, intensify surface runoff and increase the development of erosion processes. Ski slopes have notoriously low infiltration rates and water retention capacities, and intensive erosion. (Bjedov et al., 2011). This impairs the original function of these areas as species habitat and endangers the diversity of ecological niches. This especially affects vegetation, which in part includes protected plant species such as the wellknown Austrian Edelweiss (Breitenbach, 2010). 

Other environmental impact occurs because of winter tourism extending to glaciers, where snow cover and snow depth is more consistent due to altitude. Glaciers are important storage basins for drinking water, e.g. the Alpine glaciers for Middle-Europe (Schemel and Erbguth, 2000). 

 Finally, referring back to what I said earlier, the amount of arrivals in the area of Tirol has increased significantly since 1985. The transportation to the Alps, due to emission of toxic gases, impacts the Alpine environment. This environment is already classified with high ecological sensitivity and water and air quality will continue to increasingly suffer (Schemel and Erbguth, 2000).

In conclusion, I want to say three things. First of all: sorry for the incredibly long and maybe boring post, but I needed to get this out there.
Second of all: I am so guilty of all of this too.. so you might call me a hypocrite. In fact, I'm boarding my flight to Austria tomorrow, and I can't wait to be home in the mountains, in beautiful Serfaus.
And finally: this isn't a post to tell everyone to quit skiing. But I ask you to think of HOW you're practicing your sport. If you go for tree runs (best part of snowboarding imo.) be careful in the woods, don't damage trees and check whether it's not wildlife habitat - all ski areas have info on this. Don't litter, if you smoke, don't put your stubs in the snow: this is an important source of drinking water. Go explore your backyard before you decide to board a flight to the Canadian rockies.. Share rides to the mountains: e.g. through the awesome initiative of MOUNTAINRIDESHARE.

So, *switch off preach mode* go enjoy the mountains. Responsibly.