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mountain
[ moun-tn ]SHOW IPA

See synonyms for: mountainmountains on Thesaurus.com

noun

1. a natural elevation of the earth's surface rising more or less abruptly to a

summit, and attaining an altitude greater than that of a hill, usually
greater than 2,000 feet (610 meters).
2. a large mass of something resembling this, as in shape or size.

3.
4.
5.

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adjective
6. of or relating to mountains:mountain air.
7. living, growing, or located in the mountains:mountain people.

od to be larger than hills, but the term has no standardized geological meaning. Very
rarely do mountains occur individually. In most cases, they are found in elongated
ranges or chains. When an array of such ranges is linked together, it constitutes a
mountain belt. For a list of selected mountains of the world, see below.
Mount Triumph, Washington
A mountain belt is many tens to hundreds of kilometres wide and hundreds to
thousands of kilometres long. It stands above the surrounding surface, which may be a
coastal plain, as along the western Andes in northern Chile, or a high plateau, as within
and along the Plateau of Tibet in southwest China. Mountain ranges or chains extend
tens to hundreds of kilometres in length. Individual mountains are connected by ridges
and separated by valleys. Within many mountain belts are plateaus, which stand high
but contain little relief. Thus, for example, the Andes constitute a mountain belt that
borders the entire west coast of South America; within it are both individual ranges,
such as the Cordillera Blanca in which lies Peru’s highest peak, Huascarán, and the high
plateau, the Altiplano, in southern Peru and western Bolivia.
Geomorphic characteristics

Bearhat Mountain
Mountainous terrains have certain unifying characteristics. Such terrains have higher
elevations than do surrounding areas. Moreover, high relief exists within mountain belts
and ranges. Individual mountains, mountain ranges, and mountain belts that have been
created by different tectonic processes, however, are often characterized by different
features.

Chains of active volcanoes, such as those occurring at island arcs, are commonly marked
by individual high mountains separated by large expanses of low and gentle topography.
In some chains, namely those associated with “hot spots” (see below), only the
volcanoes at one end of the chain are active. Thus, those volcanoes stand high, but with
increasing distance away from them erosion has reduced the sizes of volcanic structures
to an increasing degree.

Britannica Quiz

All About Mountains Quiz

The folding of layers of sedimentary rocks with thicknesses of hundreds of metres to a

few kilometres often leaves long parallel ridges and valleys termed fold belts, as, for
example, in the Valley and Ridge province of Pennsylvania in the eastern United States.
The more resistant rocks form ridges, and the valleys are underlain by weaker ones.
These fold belts commonly include segments where layers of older rocks have been
thrust or pushed up and over younger rocks. Such segments are known as fold and
thrust belts. Typically their topography is not as regular as where folding is the most
important process, but it is usually dominated by parallel ridges of resistant rock divided
by valleys of weaker rock, as in the eastern flank of the Canadian Rocky Mountains or in
the Jura Mountains of France and Switzerland.

Most fold and thrust belts are bounded on one side, or lie parallel to, a belt or terrain
of crystalline rocks. These are metamorphic and igneous rocks that in most cases
solidified at depths of several kilometres or more and that are more resistant to erosion
than the sedimentary rocks deposited on top of them. These crystalline terrains typically
contain the highest peaks in any mountain belt and include the highest belt in the world,
the Himalayas, which was formed by the thrusting of crystalline rocks up onto the
surface of the Earth. The great heights exist because of the resistance of the rocks to
erosion and because the rates of continuing uplift are the highest in these areas. The
topography rarely is as regularly oriented as in fold and thrust belts.
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In certain areas, blocks or isolated masses of rock have been elevated relative
to adjacent areas to form block-fault mountains or ranges. In some places, block-fault
ranges with an overall common orientation coalesce to define a mountain belt or chain,
but in others the ranges may be isolated.

Block faulting can occur when blocks are thrust, or pushed, over neighbouring valleys,
as has occurred in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah in the western
United States or as is now occurring in the Tien Shan, an east–west range in western
China and Central Asia. Within individual ranges, which are usually a few hundred
kilometres long and several tens of kilometres wide, crystalline rocks commonly crop
out. On a large scale, there is a clear orientation of such ranges, but within them the
landforms are controlled more by the variations in erosion than by tectonic processes.

Block faulting also occurs where blocks are pulled apart, causing a subsidence of the
intervening valley between diverging blocks. In this case, alternating basins and ranges
form. The basins eventually fill with sediment, and the ranges—typically tens of
kilometres long and from a few to 20–30 kilometres wide—often tilt, with steep relief on
one side and a gentle slope on the other. The uniformity of the gently tilted slope owes
its existence to long periods of erosion and deposition before tilting, sometimes with a
capping of resistant lava flows on this surface prior to tilting and faulting. Both the
Tetons of Wyoming and the Sierra Nevada of California were formed by blocks being
tilted up toward the east; major faults allowed the blocks on their east sides to drop
steeply down several thousand metres and thereby created steep eastern slopes.

In some areas, a single block or a narrow zone of blocks has subsided between
neighbouring blocks or plateaus that moved apart to form a rift valley between them.
Mountains with steep inward slopes and gentle outward slopes often form on the
margins of rift valleys. Less commonly, large areas that are pulled apart and subside
leave between them an elevated block with steep slopes on both sides. An example of
this kind of structure, called a horst, is the Ruwenzori in East Africa.

Finally, in certain areas, including those that once were plateaus or broad uplifted
regions, erosion has left what are known as residual mountains. Many such mountains
are isolated and not part of any discernible chain, as, for instance, Mount Katahdin in
Maine in the northeastern United States. Some entire chains (e.g., the Appalachians
in North America or the Urals in Russia), which were formed hundreds of millions of
years ago, remain in spite of a long history of erosion. Most residual chains and
individual mountains are characterized by low elevations; however, both gentle and
precipitous relief can exist, depending on the degree of recent erosion.