Lesson 1 Flashcards
What are some uses of fresh water from mountainous regions?
- ) Drinking water
- ) Domestic use
- ) Irrigation
- ) Industry
- ) Transportation
Mountains comprise over how much of the world’s surface?
Over 1/4
How much of the world’s population lives within or very close to mountainous areas?
Over 1/4
What type of electricity makes up nearly 20% of the world’s entire electricity supply?
- Hydro power from mountain water sheds
What is Endemic?
- Many plants and animals are endemic to mountain regions, having evolved in isolation over millennia to inhabit specialized alpine environments
Where can the last of the world’s mountain gorillas be found?
- Volcanoes of the Virunga Mountains along the border of Rwanda in East Africa
- Less than 300 can be found
What are 4 groups of indigenous peoples living in the Mountains that are talked about?
- ) Quechua people of Bolivia, Equador, and Peru in South American Andes
- ) Southern Tuchone First Nations of the southern Yukon in Canada
- ) Nakhi and Yi people of Hunan Province, China
- ) Sherpa peoples of the Mount Everest region in Nepal
What is the world’s largest and fastest growing industries that mountains are taking up?
- Tourism
- Including adventure, sport and rec, scenic beauty, solitude, interactions with people who live there
What is Sustainable Development?
- The capacity to balance human needs with the preservation of the environment
What is exclusion as talked about in the video?
- In many parts of the world, they can be places of debilitating poverty, places on society’s margins where communications are poor and infrastructure, jobs, and services are sorely lacking.
- Foreign investment and hyper-development have made some mountains “destinations” only for the wealthy, and generally unaffordable for everyone else
What are the criteria of a mountain?
- ) Size
- ) Elevation
- ) Terrain
Who is Roderick Peattie?
- He wrote the 1936 classic book - Mountain Geography - that suggested several subjective criteria to mountains
What is the “Great Wave Off Kanagawa?”
- One of the best recognized works of Japanese art in the world.
- It was a wave and Mount Fuji in the background symbolizing stability, amidst the wild and chaotic world
What is the most active volcano in Europe?
- Mount Etna - menacing and devilish
What is Elevation?
- Height above sea level
- Elevation is the vertical distance between a point on a land surface and a reference point (usually sea level)
- Mountains cannot be defined simply on elevation
What is a Plateau?
- A plateau is a high plain or table land, usually consisting of relatively flat terrain that’s raised significantly above the surrounding area.
What is known as the “Roof of the World?”
- The Tibetan Plateau, reaches altitude of 5,000 meters above sea level
An objective definition of mountainous terrain should include what three things?
- ) The Local Relief
- ) Steepness of the Slope
- ) The Amount of Land in Slope
What is Local Relief?
- Local relief is the elevational distance between the highest and the lowest points in a given area
- Local relief by itself remains an incomplete measure of mountains
What is Erosion?
- Forces of wear and tear which beat down, carve out, and make smooth the surface of the earth
- Mountainous terrain also results from destructive process like constant erosion
One of the most distinctive characteristics of mountains, in addition to high relief and steepness of slope, is the…
… great environmental contrast all within a relatively short distance
- Climatic variation is typically reflected in the vegetation, giving mountains a vertical change in plant communities, or bioclimatic belts, from bottom to top
What is the definition of a mountain, according to Allton Buyers, Larry Price, and Martin Price from their book called?
- Mountain Geography
- A formal definition of a mountain is it is a conspicuous elevated land form of high relative relief
What is Price’s summary of a mountain?
- So to summarize, a mountain can be defined objectively in terms of its altitude, its slope and its local elevation range or lumpyness. But it can also be defined in terms of its characteristics such as its climate, it’s vegetation and also by the people who live around it for whom it has meaning.
What is Altitude?
- Altitude is the vertical distance between an object such as a bird, 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 mean sea level.
- Commercial airlines refer to altitude in this fashion.
What is Height?
- Height is the vertical distance between the top of an object, such as a tree or building or person, and the land surface where the object is in direct contact with the ground. So it’s a measure of how far something protrudes above the land surface.
Interactive Map: The European Alps
Location - Central Europe
Interactive Map: The Canadian Rockies
Location - Western Canada
Interactive Map: Mount Etna
Location - Sicily, Italy
Tallest and most active volcano in Europe
Interactive Map: The Virunga Mountains
Location - East Africa
(Chain of volcanoes along the northern border of Rwanda, DRC, and Uganda)
(Home to the endangered Mountain Gorilla)
Interactive Map: The South American Andes
Location - Western Coast of South America
longest continental mountain range in the world, and highest outside of Asia
Interactive Map: The Guinea Highlands
Location - The large island of New Guinea
Interactive Map: The Appalachians
Location - Eastern North America
natural barrier to westward expansion of European colonial immigrants
Interactive Map: Mount Fuji
Location - Honshu Island, Japan
The highest mountain in Japan, active strato-volcano, and holy mountain
