EarthEnv

Global, remote-sensing supported environmental layers for assessing status and trends in biodiversity, ecosystems, and climate

GMBA Mountain Inventory v2

A hierarchical inventory of the world’s mountains for global comparative mountain science

A standardized delineation of the worlds’ mountains has many applications in research, education, and the science-policy interface. Here we provide a new inventory of 8616 mountain ranges developed under the auspices of the Global Mountain Biodiversity Assessment (GMBA). Building on an earlier compilation, the presented geospatial database uses a further advanced and generalized mountain definition and a semi-automated method to enable globally standardized, transparent delineations of mountain ranges worldwide. The inventory is presented on EarthEnv at various hierarchical levels, allowing users to select their preferred level of regional aggregation from continents to small subranges according to their needs and the scale of their analyses. The clearly defined, globally consistent and hierarchical nature of the presented mountain inventory offers a standardized resource for referencing and addressing mountains across basic and applied natural, social sciences research and a range of other uses in science communication and education.

Citation

Publication

Snethlage, M.A., Geschke, J., Spehn, E.M., Ranipeta, A., Yoccoz, N.G., Körner, Ch., Jetz, W., Fischer, M. & Urbach, D. A hierarchical inventory of the world’s mountains for global comparative mountain science. Nature Scientific Data. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-022-01256-y (2022).

Dataset

Snethlage, M.A., Geschke, J., Spehn, E.M., Ranipeta, A., Yoccoz, N.G., Körner, Ch., Jetz, W., Fischer, M. & Urbach, D. GMBA Mountain Inventory v2. GMBA-EarthEnv. https://doi.org/10.48601/earthenv-t9k2-1407 (2022).

Note: When using the GMBA Inventory v2.0, both the publication and the dataset must be cited.

@misc{https://doi.org/10.48601/earthenv-t9k2-1407,
  doi = {10.48601/EARTHENV-T9K2-1407},
  url = {https://earthenv.org/mountains},
  author = {Snethlage, M.A., Geschke, J., Spehn, E.M., Ranipeta, A., Yoccoz, N.G., Körner, Ch., Jetz, W., Fischer, M. & Urbach, D},
  keywords = {FOS: Earth and related environmental sciences},
  language = {en},
  title = {GMBA Mountain Inventory v2},
  publisher = {GMBA-EarthEnv},
  year = {2022},
  copyright = {Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International}
}

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Note: The map viewer shows two selected layers from the inventory: the ‘Basic’ selection which shows the smallest mapping units of the inventory and the ‘300’ selection which shows a selection of 291 major mountain ranges and systems. By clicking on any of the mountain range shapes a window pops up listing all the levels present in the inventory (including those not shown on the map).

Downloads

Download the default layer here (Standard extent - All layers).

Download the GMBA Mountain Definition v.2 here.

Custom

Information about custom downloads:
For more details, see publication

Extent:

Standard: is the main version of the GMBA Inventory v2.0, where the polygons represent actual (only slightly generalized) mountain ranges (according to the GMBA Definition v2.0). This layer can be used as such for analysis, but can also be intersected with the GMBA Definition v2.0 for more precision.
Broad: is a version of the GMBA Inventory 2.0 where the polygons extend well beyond the GMBA Definition v2.0, into the surrounding landscape. The polygons in this layer include more than actual mountainous terrain, and should therefore always be intersected with a mountain definition layer, such as those found on the Global Mountain Explorer (GME) before analysis

Layers:

All: is the complete GMBA Inventory v2.0 consisting of 8327 overlapping polygons ('Standard') and 8616 overlapping polygons ('Broad') at all different levels of the hierarchy.
Basic: is the subset of 6717 ('Standard') and 6991 ('Broad') smallest non-overlapping mapping units of the inventory, i.e. those having no 'child' sub-range
300 selection: is a subset of 291 ('Standard') and 292 ('Broad') non overlapping major mountain systems and ranges

Code

Additional information and tools for using the inventory are available on GitHub.

Contact

For questions, comments, corrections or additions, please contact us.