Abstract
The relevance of mountains as “water towers” and ecosystem services for downstream areas makes Mediterranean mountain areas highly vulnerable to climate impacts on hydrology. The intrinsic variability of the Mediterranean climate is enhanced by topography, high altitudes, and complex conditions for precipitation events and vegetation dynamics. The resulting complexity of the spatiotemporal patterns of hydrological signatures in these areas requires a special focus on both the time and spatial scales for both monitoring and modeling the major processes, and their drivers, on their respective significant scales. This chapter presents the key issues to understand mountain processes in Mediterranean areas in a context of change, reviews the state of the art and the currently emerging approaches, with a special emphasis on snow and vegetation on one side, and on remote sensing as data source on the other, and the major uncertainty sources. For this, examples from different sites are summarized together with international initiatives to promote collaboration and development of action to face a warmer future and its impacts on these singular areas in the context of hydrology.