Abstracts
Summary
Recreational activities and increasingresource development in the highestparts of the Canadian Cordillera willresult in permanent high-density settle-ments along the flanks of hithertosecluded mountain valleys. In this envir-onment the possibility of damage tohuman works, such as transportationroutes and towns, by debris flows orlarge-scale slope failure has to beappraised, preferably prior to the onset ofmajor construction activity. Two millen-nia of documented adjustments of set-tlement pattern to a variety of slope con-ditions in the densely populatedEuropean Alps offer a number of alterna-tives in approaching this problem byactive (technical) or passive (zoning)measures and by the recognition of theresidual risk- For areas of proposed per-manent housing, mass movements with aprojected rate of recurrence of more thanone event in 100 to 300 years should beassessed seriously. In precipitous moun-tain valleys there are very few areas forwhich risk can be assumed to be nil - par-ticularly if projected time intervals are inexcess of 500 years. A certain amount ofresidual risk thus has to be accepted bythose inhabiting or moving through highmountain terrain. Quality of sloping ter-rain will also figure increasingly in com-prehensive resource management(forests, tourism, fishing, andtransportation).
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