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Mountain inventory published in Alpine Botany

12.04.2017

An article by the Global Mountain Biodiversity Assessment (GMBA) team has been published in the journal Alpine Botany. “A global inventory of mountains for bio-geographical applications” describes the process the GMBA team followed to develop an inventory of the world’s mountains in order to assess the biological diversity housed within them.

In December 2016, on International Mountain Day, the GMBA launched the new version of their mountain inventory online. It includes more than 1 000 mountain ranges with their name, coordinates, surface of mountain terrain stratified by dominant life zones, and human population estimates. This inventory is based on the GMBA definition of mountains and of climatic belts.

This inventory offers a framework for the integration of mountain biota in regional and larger scale biodiversity assessments, for biogeography, bioclimatology, macroecology and conservation research, and for the exploration of a multitude of socio-ecological and climate change-related research questions in mountain biota, including the potential pressure on alpine ecosystems.

Read “A global inventory of mountains for bio-geographical applications” 

See the GMBA mountain inventory online 

Disclaimer: The definition of mountains created and implemented by the GMBA to develop this mountain inventory and the related mountain statistics is different from the UNEP-WCMC definition used by the United Nations as well as the Mountain Partnership Secretariat. For this reason, the statistics held within differ from those presented in the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations’ 2015 study “Mapping the vulnerability of mountain peoples to food insecurity”.

Photo: FAO/Thomas Hofer