The regional land use system in northern Pakistan is based on irrigated crop cultivation on valley floors, combined with animal husbandry and forest utilisation in the upper altitudinal belts. Local communities subsist on this agropastoral economy to a considerable extent. Environmental conditions and the ecological risks of resource utilisation are intimately linked in this high mountain region. Rapid population growth, a corresponding increase in pressure on natural resources, and the consequent danger of environmental degradation raise questions about sustainable resource management in relation to contemporary land use and land cover change. The present study investigates vegetation changes and the development of land use patterns in the Nanga Parbat region (Northwest Himalaya) using matched pairs of photographs. A comprehensive collection of historical landscape photographs, taken by members of the German Himalaya expeditions of 1934 and 1937, forms a valuable baseline data set for the area. Recent fieldwork made it possible to reproduce a number of these photographs from viewpoints identical to the earlier ones. Direct comparisons illustrate change and persistence in the cultural landscape over a span of 60 years. The development of the cultural landscape is characterized by the enlargement of settlements and the expansion of cultivated areas in most valleys. On a local scale, intensified irrigation has led to an increase of groundwater-dependent thickets along the water channels and below the cultivated terraces. The montane coniferous forests are characterised by gradual decline, though change is drastic in some places due to local overexploitation. The submontane Pinus gerardiana and Juniperus semiglobosa forests in the vicinity of the villages and near the lower timberline have been seriously degraded.
