Ain't No Mountain High Enough.

AuthorKelly, Morgan
PositionTHE ENVIRONMENT

PEOPLE COMMONLY perceive mountain ranges as jumbles of pyramid-shaped masses that narrow steadily as they slope upward. While that certainly is how they appear from a ground-level human viewpoint, a Princeton University and University of Connecticut study shows that pyramid-shaped mountains not only are a minority in nature, but that most ranges actually increase in area at higher elevations. Besides reshaping the mountains in our mind's eye, the findings could lead scientists to reconsider conservation strategies--which often are based on misconceptions about mountain terrain--for mountain animal species threatened by climate change.

The researchers found that the classic triangular form in which land area uniformly decreases as elevation increases only applies to roughly one-third of the world's mountain ranges. The 182 mountain ranges studied take on four principal shapes: diamond, pyramid, inverted pyramid, and hourglass. The researchers analyzed high-resolution topography maps for every mountain range to determine land area by elevation. They found that, for all the range shapes except pyramid, land availability can be greater at higher elevations than it is farther down the mountainside.

Diamond-shaped ranges, such as the Rocky Mountains, increase in land area from the bottom until mid elevation before contracting quickly. Pyramid-shaped mountains, such as the Swiss Alps, have sides that rise sharply and consistently decrease in area the higher they go. The Kunlun Mountains of China take the form of inverse pyramids, which gradually expand in area as elevation increases before suddenly widening toward their peaks. For hourglass-shaped mountain ranges such as the Himalayas, land area rises slightly then decreases at mid elevations before increasing sharply at higher elevations.

Yet, people's idea that land area steadily shrinks as a mountain rises is so entrenched that it has come to guide conservation plans and research related to climate change, says first author Paul R. Elsen, a Princeton graduate student of ecology and evolutionary biology when the study was conducted. Scientists project that, as mountain species move to higher elevations to escape rising global temperatures, they will face a consistent loss of territory--as well as an increase in resource competition--that all but ensures their eventual extinction.

While this risk exists in pyramid-shaped ranges, many species in other range types might, in fact, benefit from...

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