Humans and the cryosphere: Navigating complex change in the Anthropocene

Human beings in the Arctic and in high-mountain regions have successfully adapted to environments dominated by snow and ice through cultural, social and technological arrangements. However, the resilience of cryospheric cultures is now threatened by increasingly rapid environmental and social change. Coping with climatic change and other developments calls for collaboration between researchers, policy makers and local communities, to ensure inclusion of indigeneous knowledge based on historical and contemporary experience with the realities of life in cold conditions. This topic broadly addresses the interplay of social and environmental systems in cryospheric settings past, present and future.