International Mountain Day- 11/12/2013 Today is international Mountain Day! To celebrate here&rs

International Mountain Day- 11/12/2013 Today is international Mountain Day! To celebrate here’s the next mountain themed post! But what is international mountain day? International Mountain Day was founded after a a United Nations conference in 1992. This conference led the way for the adoption of Chapter 13 of Agenda 21 “Managing Fragile Ecosystems: Sustainable Mountain Development”. The UN realised that mountains are an incredibly important part of our Earth, and the importance and awareness increased each year, until the United Nations declared 2002 the Year of the Mountain, and from the onwards, on the 11 December each year, “International Mountain Day”. Whilst the United Nations are concentrating on the sustainability aspect of mountains- they are a food source for humans and animals alike, mountains are also important for other reasons. They regulate our seasons, they act as unique ecosystems and they make for some pretty amazing geology! But perhaps most importantly, nearly all of the worlds rivers have their sources in mountains, and over half of the population of the world depends on mountain sourced water. But, what is a mountain? There is no universally accepted definition for what a mountain is, but Whittow’s Dictionary of Physical Geography states “Some authorities regard eminences above 600m (2,000 ft) as mountains, those below being referred to as hills.”Other definitions have included height over base of 2000, and height over base over 1500m but with a slope of 2 or 5 degrees. So stay tuned today for some interesting posts all about mountains! -The Earth Story Teamhttp://www.fao.org/mnts/home/en/ image- The Matterhorn at Sunrise; Verena Popp-Hackner -- source link

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