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These changes have to be detected and to be measured in time, 
which is often a problem. Many places in the Austrian mountains 
are, due to tourism, frequently indangered by several risks. 
Wintersports cause enormous stress to the natural household. 
This stress begins already at the necessity to build fast and 
safe motorways to reach such places. The desire to find good 
snow conditions until late in the spring and other stressing 
factors may be added. 
In Austria the number of lifts and cablecars has changed 
drastically during the last 15 years. For example in 1960 
'only' 51 millions of tourists have been transported to our 
mountains, 1975 this number increased up to 150 million passengers! 
In addition the way of skiing has changed and has caused a visible 
impact to the nature and finally to the landscape. Instead of using 
natural slopes, wide lanes as an Autobahn have been prepared at 
many places joined with clearcutting woods and smoothening the 
slopes with catapillars. 
The consequences are 
- avalanches 
- wild rivers 
- moovements of slopes etc. 
these again endanger tourists and the population. 
Many million Austrian Schillings have to be spent on repair, saving 
and keeping those ecosystems in balance. 
. National Remote Sensing Activities in Mountain Areas 
Our laboratory has successfully started to utilise Remote Sensing 
methods for monitoring purposes in some potentially endangered moun- 
tain areas. In Austria 1975/76 the countries Salzburg and Tirol 
were explored for the first time using Remote Sensing methods.