The place

The Alps rise where the African and European plates have pressed together for tens of millions of years, folding and stacking old seabeds and crystalline basement into high ridges. Mont Blanc is the highest summit, at over 4,800 m. Ice has shaped almost everything you see: U-shaped valleys, cirques, moraines and long lakes such as Geneva, Como and Constance. The Great Aletsch Glacier in Switzerland is still about 22 km long, the longest in Europe. Climate shifts sharply with height, from vineyards and chestnut groves on the southern slopes to permafrost on the summits. In summer you hear cowbells, meltwater and the whistle of marmots; in winter, the silence of deep snow.

Illustrated landscape plate: Alps, Europe

History

People followed the retreating ice into the Alps after the last glaciation, hunting ibex and later grazing herds on high meadows. Ötzi, the man found in the ice on the Austrian-Italian border in 1991, lived here some 5,300 years ago. Celtic peoples, then Romans, crossed and settled the passes, and medieval communities developed the system of summer pastures, shared grazing rights and irrigation channels that still shapes many valleys. From the 18th century, scientists, painters and climbers turned the mountains into a symbol of the sublime, and mass tourism, railways and ski resorts followed. Hydropower dams, transit routes and the front lines of the First World War also left deep marks on the range.

Why it matters for the living world

The Alps hold an unusually rich flora for Europe, with many plants found nowhere else, such as edelweiss and several gentians and primulas, adapted to short seasons, strong light and cold. Ibex, chamois, marmots, golden eagles and bearded vultures live on the steep ground, and wolves, lynx and brown bears are slowly returning to parts of the range. The mountains are often called the water tower of Europe: snow and glaciers feed the Rhine, Rhône, Po and tributaries of the Danube, which carry water to millions of people. Forests on the slopes protect villages from avalanches and rockfall, and alpine peat and soils store carbon.

People of the place

Around fourteen million people live in the Alps, speaking German, French, Italian, Slovene and minority languages such as Romansh, Ladin and Franco-Provençal. Mountain farming families still move cattle, sheep and goats up to summer pastures, and cheese making on the high alps is an old craft. Many villages share commons and water rights that go back centuries. Today tourism, hydropower, transit and commuting to the valley cities shape most livelihoods, and some remote valleys are losing young people. The Alpine Convention, signed by the eight Alpine countries and the EU, and civil society networks such as CIPRA work on shared rules for transport, tourism and nature across borders.

What it faces

The Alps are warming roughly twice as fast as the global average, and the glaciers are shrinking quickly; the IUCN names climate change as the main threat to the Jungfrau-Aletsch World Heritage site. Thawing permafrost brings rockfall and unstable slopes, and snow cover is becoming less reliable, which pushes ski resorts higher and toward artificial snow. Road transit across the passes brings noise and air pollution to valleys. New hydropower projects, cable cars and tourist infrastructure put pressure on the last wild areas, and conflicts over returning wolves are sharp in some regions. Responses include protected areas, glacier and permafrost monitoring, rail freight policy and mountain farming support.

Sources

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