An Introduction to Mountains - Mountain Geography: Physical and Human Dimensions - page 4

benign and sacred, a symbol of peace and strength. Etna, on the other hand, is a devil,
continually sending out boiling lava and fire to destroy farms and villages.
To a large extent, then, a mountain is a mountain because of the part it plays in the
popular imagination. It may be hardly more than a hill, but if it has distinct individual-
ity, or plays a symbolic role to the people, it is likely to be rated a mountain by those
who live around its base (Peattie 1936). For similar symbolic reasons, mountains can
come and go. For instance, the initial explorers who mapped the area around the Gulf
of St. Lawrence in the seventeenth century identified the Wotchish Mountains, which
presented a barrier to westward travel. As the region became more accessible, these
low mountains, with summits just over 500 m, became recognized as just one part of
the immense Labrador plateau (Debarbieux 2000).
It is difficult to include such intangibles in a workable definition. A more objective
basis for defining mountains is elevation. For instance, a landform must attain at least
a certain altitude (e.g., 300 m) to qualify. Although this is an important criterion, by it-
self it is still insufficient. The Great Plains of North America are over 1,500 m (5,000 ft)
high, and the Tibetan Plateau reaches an elevation of 5,000 m (16,500 ft), but neither
would generally be classified as mountainous. In Bolivia, the Potosi railway line reaches
an elevation of 4,800 m (15,750 ft) near the station of El Condor, high enough to make
your nose bleed, but it is situated in fairly level country with only occasional promon-
tories exceeding 5,000 m (16,500 ft) (Troll 1972: 2). By contrast, western Spitsbergen
in Norway, situated only a few hundred meters above sea level, has the appearance of a
high mountain landscape, with its glaciers, frost debris, and tundra vegetation.
In addition to elevation, an objective definition of mountainous terrain should include
local relief, steepness of slope, and the amount of land in slope. Local relief is the el-
evational distance between the highest and lowest points in an area. Its application
depends upon the context in which it is applied. When compiling a global database of
mountain protected areas (such as national parks), the United Nations Environmental
Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre, working with the World Conserva-
tion Union (IUCN), recognized only those that had at least 1,500 m (5,000 ft) of relief
(Thorsell 1997). Several early European geographers believed that for an area to be
truly mountainous there should be at least 900 m (3,000 ft) of local relief. If this stand-
ard is used, only the major ranges such as the Alps, Pyrenees, Caucasus, Himalayas,
Andes, Rockies, Cascades, and Sierra Nevada qualify. Even the Appalachians would fail
under this approach. On the other hand, American geographers working in the eastern
and midwestern United States have thought that 300 m (1,000 ft) of local relief is suf-
ficient to qualify as mountainous. Various landform classifications have been proposed
with specifications ranging between these figures (Hammond 1964).
Local relief by itself is, like elevation, an incomplete measure of mountains. A plateau
may display spectacular relief when incised by deep valleys (e.g., the Grand Canyon).
Such features are, essentially, inverted mountains, but we are accustomed to looking
up at mountains, not down. (On the other hand, if one is at the bottom of the Grand
Canyon looking up, the landscape can appear mountainous.) Still, this particular area
of high local relief is of relatively limited extent and is surrounded on either side by
primarily flat-lying surfaces. An opposite but comparable landscape is that of the Basin
and Range Province in the western United States. Most of the area is in plains, but oc-
casional ridges protrude 1,500 m (5,000 ft) above their surroundings. Such landscapes