Mountainscapes are commonly regarded as the water towers of the planet, but water is all too often conceived as a simple natural resource, without sufficient reflection on the ontological characters of this element in its various states of matter. The inseparable tandem of water and mountainscapes is based on a common history, because water is part of both the geosphere and the biosphere. Their interactions, however, cannot be fully explained by focusing on “nature” alone. Decisive is considering the anthroposphere, converging nature and culture, and understanding the social perceptions of water in mountainscapes. This requires a transdisciplinary approach and global comparison in space and time. While modern societies emphasize the crucial importance of water to meet the needs of growing urban populations around the world, ancient mythologies stress the value of the world of the ancestors and the need to maintain a spiritual relationship with them through the preservation of the sacred world, converging nature and culture in a dynamic way of thinking.

This book, the third volume of the Montology book series by Springer, collects essays on how natural and cultural dimension of water converge in the (1) environmental patterns and processes, (2) social beliefs and attitudes, and (3) human perceptions and uses of mountainscapes.

Chapter "Taming the wild rivers: River regulations in the central part of the Alps between Lake Zurich and Salzach, Ticino and Tagliamento" (Author: Oliver Bender) is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

Alden Mauro Yépez Noboa, Ph.D., is a Full Professor of Archaeology at the Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador (PUCE), Faculty of Law and Society, and Coordinator of the Laboratory of Regional Archaeology of Water and Glaciers (LARAG, for its Spanish acronym). He holds a Ph.D. in Archaeology from the University of Bonn (Germany), an M.Sc. in Archaeology (recognized) from the same institution, and a B.Sc. in Anthropology from PUCE. His academic career includes appointments as Full Professor at PUCE (2012–present), Instructor at the University of Bonn (2007–2010), and multiple research fellowships with Ecuador’s National Institute of Cultural Heritage (INPC) - SENESCYT and PUCE. His work integrates archaeology, montology, landscape hydrodynamics, glacier archaeology, and digital landscape analysis, with extensive field experience in the Andes and Amazonia. He has coordinated and participated in numerous nationally and internationally funded research projects, authored and edited peer-reviewed books and articles with major academic publishers, and serves on editorial boards of scientific journals. Dr. Yépez is a member of several professional societies, including the Society for American Archaeology, the International Geographical Union Commission on Mountain Studies, and the Glacial Society of Archaeology, and is a registered archaeologist with the INPC. His distinctions include the José Mejía Lequerica Honor Commendation awarded by the Metropolitan Council of Quito for contributions to national history.

Andreas Haller, Ph.D., is a Tenured Senior Researcher at the Austrian Academy of Sciences (OeAW), Institute for Interdisciplinary Mountain Research (IGF, for its German acronym). He holds a Ph.D. in Geography, an M.Sc. in Geography: Global Change–Regional Sustainability, and a B.Sc. in Geosciences and Atmospheric Sciences (Major in Geography) from the University of Innsbruck, Austria. In his montological research, he primarily focuses on the verticality of rural–urban development and aims to understand and address issues related to environmental perception and land use in mountain regions. The regional foci of his work are the central South American Andes and the eastern European Alps. Andreas Haller has led individual research projects on Andean rural–urban development supported by the Austrian Science Fund and has participated in joint research projects on Alpine sustainable development supported by the Interreg Alpine Space program. He is a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Mountain Science, Mountain Research and Development, and the Journal of Alpine Research | Revue de géographie alpine. Dr. Haller also serves on the Steering Group of the Commission on Mountain Studies of the International Geographical Union. He has acted as a remote reviewer for the European Research Council’s Starting Grant in the field of “Environment, Space and Population” and regularly reviews manuscripts for international scientific journals in the field of environmental geography and environmental anthropology.