Inter-linkage of mountain specificities

Another feature of mountain specifities is that most of them are interlinked in two ways.

1) Commonality of causative factors:

• The degree of diversity, fragility marginality human adaptation mechanism and inaccessibility are in different measures directly linked to factors such as elevation slope angle and slope exposure and adaptation.
• Similarly climatic factors such as precipitation and micro climate also contribute to the degree of diversity, fragility, marginality and human adaptation.
• Socio-economic factors such as ethnicity, types of economic activities and NRM pattern play a major role in determining the degree of diversity, marginality, etc. of the mountain communities.
• Owing to above relationship any intervention disturbing the underlying common factors will affect other related specifities.

2) Shared consequence of externalities:

• A number of mountain characteristics are invariably influenced by any disturbance or treatment when an inaccessibility is handled by the construction of road in mountain terrain the fragility, due to steep slopes and associated vegetation negatively affected.
• However improved inaccessibility could also integrate the remote marginal areas within mainstream situation and reduce marginality.
• Such negative and positive impacts going beyond the intended purpose are termed as negative or positive externalities.