ABSTRACT
Coping with environmental changes as a result of the occurrence of natural hazards such as earthquakes, landslides and climatic variability is part of human existence. A mode of explanation and the subject matter of human vulnerability deserve consideration as core elements of a unified discipline of Geography, owing to their interdisciplinary nature, to the influences of the concepts of place, space and environment and to the role of time and process. Unravelling the role of natural hazards in human history has long attracted the attention of academics from a range of disciplinary backgrounds. Unravelling the complexity of interactions between climate change and human society demands an approach that recognizes the importance of human agency and societal structures in shaping vulnerability. The little ice age was the most recent period of global glacier advance when temperatures were on the whole sufficiently low for glaciers to remain enlarged relative to the present.
