Decrease of a natural resource : Evolution of glacier tourism in a context of climate change

• Main Authors: Salim, Emmanuel, Gauchon, Christophe, Ravanel, Ludovic, Deline, Philip
• Other Authors: Environnements, Dynamiques et Territoires de Montagne (EDYTEM), Université Savoie Mont Blanc (USMB Université de Savoie Université de Chambéry )-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Innsbruck University
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2019
• Subjects: Glacier Tourism; Climate Change; Glacier retreat; Motivation; Adaptation; [SHS.GEO]Humanities and Social Sciences/Geography; Ice; permafrost
• Online Access: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-02435180

International audience Mean air temperature is rising faster in the Alps than at a global scale (Einhorn et al., 2015). This generates many issues in mountain areas, especially for the cryosphere (Beniston et al., 2018). In the Mont Blanc massif for instance, permafrost is warming, that increases rocks fall hazard (Magnin et al., 2017; Ravanel et al., 2017). At the same time, glacier shrinkage accelerates (Berger et al., 2017; Zemp et al., 2015). At the Mer de Glace, the largest French glacier, thickness decreased by 166 m from 1890 to 2013 (GLACIOCLIM Data). The Mer de Glace is a major touristic attraction in the French Alps as more than half a million of people comes to see it each year, using the Montenvers cogwheel train. In summer, they do different activities: mostly seeseighting with the panoramic platforms but also mountaineering with five huts reachable from the glacier tongue, visiting the museum about glaciers (the “Glaciorium”) and the ice cave. Nevertheless, the frequentation is decreasing from 1.1 million in 1998 to 770 015 in 2017 (Savoie-Mont-Blanc-Tourisme data, 2017), while access to the glacier becomes more difficult for the alpinists (Mourey and Ravanel, 2017) and aesthetic value decreases. This phenomenon develops all around the world: access to the Tasman, Fox and Franz Joseph glaciers (New Zealand) becomes harder and harder (Espiner and Becken, 2014; Purdie, 2013), the aesthetic value of the landscape around the Baishui glacier in China decreases (Wang et al., 2010), and all those issues are also impacting the European Alps (Moreau, 2010; Garavaglia et al., 2012;). Glacier retreat is thus questioning an important economic resource for glacier-related tourism. In this context, our research aims to understand how glacier tourism is changing according to the evolution of the natural resource and to improve stakeholder resource management in a way of resilience.