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

The GMBA Mountain Inventory v2.0 is a hierarchically organized spatial vector layer in ESRI shape format. The polygons represent several thousand mountain ranges across various scales (see numbers below). Depending on the region, these polygons range from very small (e.g. High Tatras) to very large (e.g. Carpathians) across up to 10 levels, whereas in other regions, the depth of the inventory is more limited (e.g. South Siberian Mountains with 4 levels).  

The hierarchical structure of the inventory allows the user to represent mountain ranges at different levels of detail, either at a coarse scale (e.g. European Alps) or at a refined scale (e.g. 134 polygons representing the smallest so-called basic subranges of the European alps). This flexibility in the use and application means that the default layer is complex as it is composed of all overlapping polygons (from large to small). Accordingly, two simpler non-overlapping layers are also available: basic and 300 Selection.

Besides its hierarchical structure, the inventory also exists in two different versions that reflect different definitions of mountains and are therefore of two different extents. Accordingly, each layer exists in standard extent and in broad extent.

More details about the layers are provided in the Downloads section at the bottom of the page.

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}
}

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

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

Extent:

Standard: is the main version of the GMBA Inventory v2.0, where the polygons represent actual mountain ranges according to the GMBA Definition v2.0.
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, such as to include all the terrain considered mountainous according to the WCMC and USGS mountain definitions that are featured on the Global Mountain Explorer (GME) and represent alternatives to the GMBA Definition v2.0. Because the polygons in this layer include more than actual mountainous terrain, they should always be intersected with either the WCMC or the USGS mountain definition layer available in the GME (or any other alternative to the GMBA Definition v2.0).