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Mountains 101 These “Course Notes” are not a substitute for the video
lectures. They are intended to be a supplemental resource.
Lesson 1: Why Mountains
They summarize the respective lesson’s main points, but
Matter
do not include all the lesson’s content.
Course Notes

Part 2 Why Do Mountains Matter

Mountains are of critical importance to people in nearly every country on the planet. They comprise a
quarter of the world’s land surface. Over a quarter of the world’s human population lives within, or near
to, mountainous areas. But the impacts are everywhere.

(a) Ecosystem Services:
- Almost all of the world’s major rivers have their headwaters in mountains. More than half of the
world’s population relies on the fresh water that collects in mountain regions (for drinking, domestic
use, irrigation, industry, transportation, etc.).
- Hydropower from mountain watersheds makes up nearly twenty percent of the world’s entire
electricity supply.
- Mountain forests provide millions of people with timber and other products. Mountain forests also
play a vital role in capturing and storing rainfall and moisture, maintaining water quality, regulating river
flow, and reducing erosion and downstream sedimentation.
- Mountains host vast assemblages of minerals. Mountain mines are a major source of the world’s ores
and precious metals.

(b) Hotspots for Biodiversity:
- Mountains provide habitats that support and sustain a huge variety of different species. With
increasing altitude, changes in temperature, moisture, and soils can create a dense juxtaposition of
differing ecological communities. Habitats can change radically (from jungles to glaciers) within just a
few kilometers.
- Mountains can be thought of as “islands,” with many plants and animals being “endemic” to these
regions (having evolved in isolation to inhabit specialized alpine environments).
- Mountain ranges can also be biological corridors, connecting isolated habitats or protected areas and
allowing species the space needed to migrate and thrive. (E.g. Grizzly bears in the Canadian Rockies).
- Mountains can provide sanctuaries for plants and animals long since displaced from the more
transformed lowlands. (E.g. The Virunga Mountains in East Africa, where the world’s last mountain
gorillas can still be found).

(c) Cultural Diversity:
- Mountains have hosted an incredible diversity of human cultures and communities (E.g. Of the 1,000+
languages spoken in New Guinea, 700+ originate in the New Guinea Highlands, which cover only thirty
percent of the island).
- Mountains are home to many indigenous peoples around the world (the long-time inhabitants of a
place before the arrival of other peoples in more recent times). Some of the world’s most important
food staples (e.g. potatoes, wheat, corn, and beans) were domesticated in mountains. Industrious
mountain peoples, long ago, developed elaborate agricultural production systems and strategies based
on altitudinal and ecological zonation. Many of these systems are still in use today.

(d) Tourism:
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- Mountains are a major draw for global tourism (one the world’s largest and fastest-growing industries)
- Influx of mtn visitors can have positive economic benefits for mtn communities (E.g. promoting
sustainable development, or balancing human needs with the preservation of the environment).
- Potential for negative environmental and cultural consequences, too (E.g. the impacts of large
numbers of people on fragile mountain eco-systems, and/or the loss of traditional cultural values).

(e) Cultural Significance:
- Mountains have extraordinary cultural significance to many different cultures around the world.
- They can be places of national embodiments; places to be saved and protected; they’ve imagined as
testing grounds, arenas for sport; places to feared; they are places of salvation, embodiments of divine
serenity or Godly wrath; they have served as sites of redemption, places of restorative health. For many,
they are home. For others, they are “destinations” to visit.
- Mountains have been focal points for world religions; they have been the subject of literature and art
for centures.
- Mountains can be all of these different things to different people, making them landscapes of
extraordinary possibility.

(f) Sites of exclusion:
- Mountains can also be places of debilitating poverty; places on societies’ margins, where
communications are poor and infrastructure, jobs, and services are lacking.
- The complex topography and frequency of natural hazards (avalanches, landslides, floods, and
earthquakes, etc.) compound issues related to poverty.
- Conversely, mountains can be places for only the global rich; gentrified playgrounds for urban holiday
goers, where locals increasingly find themselves unable live in the very places where they grew up,
which have become unaffordable and almost unrecognizable due to foreign investment and hyper-
development.

Part 3 Defining a “Mountain”

What makes a landform a “mountain”? Is it the size? It’s elevation? If so, how big or how high must a
landform be? What about other terrain factors (E.g. steepness of slope, vegetation, or prominence)?
Here is a breakdown of some of the various criteria to consider:

(a) Individuality?
- Some believe mtns should have individuality; they should be impressive and enter into the imagination
of the people who live in their shadows. An individual mtn may be hardly more than a hill, but if it’s
distinctive, or plays a symbolic role in the lives of people, those who live near it might well consider it a
mountain.
- Subjective criteria always tricky for the purposes of a definition…

(b) Elevation?
- A more objective basis for defining mountains might be elevation (its height above sea level). But what
height is required to qualify? There are many landforms that are high (e.g. plateaus) that wouldn’t
generally classify as “mountains”… And so elevation on its own doesn’t quite do the trick….

(c) Local relief?
- Local relief = the difference in elevation between the highest and lowest points in a given area.
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- Several early geographers believed that for an area to be truly mountainous there should be about 900
meters of local relief. If we applied this standard around the world…, only the major mountain ranges
(e.g. the European Alps, say, or the South American Andes) would qualify. Other smaller but clearly
mountainous regions (e.g. the Appalachians Mountains in eastern North America) wouldn’t. And then
there’s the spectacular relief displayed on a plateau when incised by steep valleys (e.g. the Grand
Canyon on the Colorado Plateau).
- Taken alone, local relief, like elevation, remains an incomplete measure of mountains….
- We usually think of mountains, then, as both elevated and dissected landscapes, with steeper slopes
than are typically found in lowlands. How much steeply-inclined land an area contains depends on its
geological history, which varies greatly around the globe (E.g. Serrated features are dominant Himalaya,
whereas broad and gentle summit uplands fill out and define much of the American Rockies).
- And so ‘local relief’ can mean very different things across different ranges….

(d) Geology:
- Mountains can also be defined by their composition and structure. These characteristics usually
indicate the processes by which they were built up and constructed.
- But mountainous terrain also results from destructive processes (by constant erosion, forces of wear
and tear, which beat down, carve out, and make smooth the surface of the Earth).

(e) Climatic and Vegetational Characteristics
- Here is another way we define mtns (E.g. different climates at successive levels or zones are one way
we might differentiate a mountain from, say, a hill).
- Climatic variation is typically reflected in the vegetation. Plant communities, or “bioclimatic belts,”
change as we move from bottom to top. One of the most distinctive characteristics of mountains, in
addition to high relief and steepness of slope, is the great environmental contrast within a relatively
short distance.

Defining what a “mountain” is is thus not easy!

All of the various ways we define mountains today rely on one or more factors. Here’s one good
definition from Alton C. Beyers, Larry W. Price, and Martin F. Price in Mountain Geography: Physical and
Human Dimensions (2013) that perhaps gets us the closest:

“A mountain can be defined as a conspicuous, elevated landform of high relative relief. Much
of its surface has steep slopes, and it displays distinct variations in climate and vegetation
zones from its base to its summit. A high mountain landscape is an area above the climatic
timberline where glaciation, frost action, and mass wasting are dominant processes.
Additionally, a landform is considered a mountain when local people rate it as such because it
plays an important role in their cultural, spiritual, and working lives.”1

Finally, there is often some confusion surrounding the three English words commonly used to describe
the vertical dimension of mountains: “elevation,” “altitude,” and “height”:

- “Elevation” is the vertical distance between a point on the land surface and a reference point (usually
the mean sea level).
- “Altitude” is the vertical distance between an object (e.g. an aircraft or cloud) and a reference point,
where the object is not in direct contact with the reference point. The reference point can often be the
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mean sea level (commercial airlines refer to altitude in this fashion). Altitude can also be the land
surface, which is usually used as a reference when describing the altitude of clouds, for instance.
- “Height” is the vertical distance between the top of an object, such as a tree, building, or person, and
the land surface, where the object is in direct contact with the ground. It is measure of how far
something protrudes above the land surface.

While the differences in the definitions of elevation, altitude, and height may appear subtle, such
differences are an important part of the framework of scientific communication.


Geographic places to locate on the Map from Lesson 1:

The European Alps
The South American Andes
The New Guinea Highlands
Mount Etna
Mount Fuji
The Appalachians
The Canadian Rockies
The Virunga Mountains


Recommended Readings

Alton C. Beyers, Larry W. Price, and Martin F. Price, “Chapter One: An Introduction to Mountains,” in
Mountain Geography: Physical and Human Dimensions, (Eds) Martin F. Price, Alton C. Beyers, Donald A.
Friend, Thomas Kohler, and Larry W. Price. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013.

T.R. McVicar and C. Körner. “On the use of elevation, altitude, and height in the ecological and
climatological literature,” Oecologia 171 (2013): 335-337. doi:10.1007/s00442-012-2416-7


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Alton C. Beyers, Larry W. Price, and Martin F. Price, “Chapter One: An Introduction to Mountains,” in Mountain
Geography: Physical and Human Dimensions, (Eds) Martin F. Price, Alton C. Beyers, Donald A. Friend, Thomas
Kohler, and Larry W. Price (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013), 6.