How high does a hill have to be to be considered a mountain?

Question

How high does a hill have to be to be considered a mountain?

Answer 1

This topic is anthropology, not geography.

Answer 2

My wife and I have argued about this for years.

She says it is not a mountain unless it has a "tree line" which is the point of altitude above which trees will not grow.  It is at least definable and none of the mountains I grew up near fit her definition (but are certainly called mountains).

I found a webpage where this issue was discussed and decided that there was no clear definition, but some of the ideas were:

• Hills may go as high up as 3,000 feet (about 1,000 m), with grassy, scrub and broad-leaved vegetation, while a mountain may be higher than that with pine forests and snow-covered peaks.

• Han Hunni in ‘Sustainable Management of Natural Resources in African and Asia Mountains’ (Royal Swedish Academy of Science 1999, Ambio, Vol 28, No 5, August 1999) gives altitude and slope as the two major criteria for the physical definition of a mountain eco-region. As these two factors influence the climate, vegetation, soil formation and hydrological processes, the most significant difference between mountain area and lowland is the abrupt changes in vegetation. At any latitude, the hill area is not high enough to show a significant change in vegetation, whereas a mountain area is high enough to demonstrate various vegetation belts.

• Hills and mountains are elevated features of the earth’s surface the standard measure of which is the ‘altitude’. There is an indirect relationship between altitude and vegetation, but a direct relationship between climatic conditions (temperature and humidity) and vegetation. The climatic conditions change with altitude at the same grid location (higher the altitude, lower the temperature), thus influencing vegetation. The climatic conditions also change with ‘latitude’ at the same altitude (generally temperature decreases from equator to poles), thus influencing the vegetation. (From Hurni’s analysis, it appears as if there will be similar vegetation at 500m altitude all over the world, but this is not so.)

• The mountain is a landform that rises 3,000 feet vertically over a distance of 1 mile.

• ‘Hills’ are those landforms having more sand/soft texture of soil irrespective of height and with good vegetation; whereas the mountains contain more hard rocks irrespective of height.

• The above definition based on texture doesn’t cut it. There are plenty of ‘hard hills’ and bountiful vegetation in the Himalayas that extend quite a bit higher than the highest Swiss Alps. Hills are often parts of mountains. Should one say a feature is a hill up to a certain point and then becomes a mountain? Or perhaps that the front of a lump is, according to the anthrocentric definition, a hill, while the backside is a mountain? And what does one do about the fact that hills may be growing into or ground down from mountains?

• Platforms and hills correspond to the 200-500m mean elevation class and have a greater degree of roughness (RR>20%). Plateaus (16.8 M km2), with mean elevations between 500 and 6,000m, have a medium degree of roughness (RR from 5 to 40%). Mountains (33.3 M km2) are differentiated from hills by their higher mean elevation, (>500 m), and from plateaus by their greater roughness (>20% then >40%) in each elevation class. Accordingly, Tibet and the Altiplano are very high plateaus, not mountains.  (Source: Meybeck M., Green P., Vorosmart C. A New Typology for Mountains and Other Relief Classes: An Application to Global Continental Water, Resources and Population Distribution, MRD Journal, Vol.21.1, pp 34-45)

• The criteria for defining mountains laid down by the World Conservation Monitoring Centre (WCMC) are:

    - >2,500 m;

    - between 1500 and 2499 m if slope is >2 degrees;

    - between 1000 and 1499 m if slope is >5 degrees and local elevation range (radius 7 km) > 300m;

    - between 300 and 999 m if local elevation range (radius 7 km) > 300m.

While altitude and slope have commonly been used, the local elevation range (relief) criterion is also critical, as those of us who live in and near low-altitude mountains know. The slope criteria of 2 and 5 degrees were essential to remove high-elevation plains and plateaux. The resulting digital map is beginning to be a standard reference, and is already being used as the basis for a number of other studies, both regional and global, of mountain regions.

Answer 3

There is no meaningful distinction. In some places there is a convention or rule applied by some authority based on criteria like height of the summit (either absolute or measured from the valley floor).

For example the summit of Mount Stapylton, Queensland, Australia is about 150m above sea level, and the surrounding coastal plain. It is the location of the Brisbane (Mt Stapylton) Weather Watch Radar.

While officially named a mountain, it has long been known to locals as Yellowwood Hill.

Answer 4

I don't know.  My mother used to make many mountains out of molehills.

Answer 5

Could be in comparison. Out in Colorado, 7,000 ft hills would be huge mountains in New York. The biggest mountains in New York would barely be a bump in the Rockies, or any other major mountain range.

Answer 6

^^^ Unless you are talking about the idea of a mountain. The classification of space in many different contexts. Once classification begins so do ideas about how that space should be used leading to commodification of that space in recent history by both NGO's and government organizations.

If you want a better idea read Conservation is Our Government Now by Paige West

Answer 7

my guess would be that a mountain forms from tectonic plate action.  two converging plates or colliding plates or submerging plates.  I think a hill is just a blemish on the surface of a plate.

This is my guess, not my wickyazzpedia post and paste!