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53-464: The Lauteraarhorn includes two unnamed but noticeable subsidiary summits: the north summit (4,015 m) and the central summit (4,014 m), both having a topographic prominence of over 30 metres. The main summit is the southernmost one and has a modest topographic prominence of 128 metres, due to the high elevation of the ridge (the Schrecksattel) connecting it to the slightly higher Schreckhorn. Only

106-452: A topographic map . However, when the key col is far away, or when one wants to calculate the prominence of many peaks at once, software can apply surface network modeling to a digital elevation model to find exact or approximate key cols. Since topographic maps typically show elevation using contour lines , the exact elevation is typically bounded by an upper and lower contour, and not specified exactly. Prominence calculations may use

159-420: A "closer" peak than the encirclement parent (if there is one), which is still "better" than the peak in question. The differences lie in what criteria are used to define "closer" and "better." The (prominence) parent peak of peak A can be found by dividing the island or region in question into territories, by tracing the two hydrographic runoffs, one in each direction, downwards from the key col of every peak that

212-494: A "hierarchy" of peaks going back to the highest point on the island. One such chain in Britain would read: Billinge Hill → Winter Hill → Hail Storm Hill → Boulsworth Hill → Kinder Scout → Cross Fell → Helvellyn → Scafell Pike → Snowdon → Ben Nevis . At each stage in the chain, both height and prominence increase. Line parentage, also called height parentage, is similar to prominence parentage, but it requires

265-527: A distance of 360 m (1200 feet). The key col may also be close to the subject peak or far from it. The key col for Aconcagua, if sea level is disregarded, is the Bering Strait at a distance of 13,655 km (8,485 miles). The key col for the South Summit of Mount Everest is about 100 m (330 feet) distant. A way to visualize prominence is to imagine raising sea level so

318-408: A great deal of information about the peak's position. In general, the analysis of parents and lineages is intimately linked to studying the topology of watersheds . Alteration of the landscape by humans and presence of water features can give rise to issues in the choice of location and height of a summit or col. In Britain, extensive discussion has resulted in a protocol that has been adopted by

371-485: A hierarchy which defines some peaks as subpeaks of others. For example, in Figure ;1, the middle peak is a subpeak of the right peak, which is a subpeak of the left peak, which is the highest point on its landmass. In that example, there is no controversy about the hierarchy; in practice, there are different definitions of parent. These different definitions follow. Also known as prominence island parentage , this

424-418: A highest submerged col of about 40 m, or only 8888 m below the peak of Everest. As a result, Mauna Kea's prominence might be subjectively more impressive than Everest's, and some authorities have called it the tallest mountain from peak to underwater base. Dry prominence is also useful for measuring submerged seamounts . Seamounts have a dry topographic prominence, a topographic isolation , and

477-422: A measure of the independence of a summit . The key col ("saddle") around the peak is a unique point on this contour line and the parent peak is some higher mountain, selected according to various criteria. The prominence of a peak is the least drop in height necessary in order to get from the summit to any higher terrain. This can be calculated for a given peak in the following manner: for every path connecting

530-436: A negative topographic elevation . Prominence values are accurate to perhaps 100m owing to uncertainties in ocean sounding depths. List of highest mountains There are at least 108 mountains on Earth with elevations of 7,200 m (23,600 ft; 4.5 mi) or greater above sea level . Of these, 14 are more than 8,000 m (26,000 ft; 5.0 mi). The vast majority of these mountains are located on

583-409: A prominence cutoff criterion. The height parent is the closest peak to peak A (along all ridges connected to A) that has a greater height than A, and satisfies some prominence criteria. The disadvantage of this concept is that it goes against the intuition that a parent peak should always be more significant than its child. However it can be used to build an entire lineage for a peak which contains

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636-401: A prominence-based list is that it may exclude well-known or spectacular mountains that are connected via a high ridge to a taller summit, such as Eiger , Nuptse or Annapurna IV . A few such peaks and mountains with nearly sufficient prominence are included in this list, and given a rank of "S". It is very unlikely that all given heights are correct to the nearest metre; indeed, the sea level

689-437: A prominence-ranked list is that it needs no cutoff since a peak with high prominence is automatically an independent peak. It is common to define a peak's parent as a particular peak in the higher terrain connected to the peak by the key col. If there are many higher peaks there are various ways of defining which one is the parent, not necessarily based on geological or geomorphological factors. The "parent" relationship defines

742-484: Is Aconcagua (6,960 m), in Argentina , and its prominence is 6,138 m. (To further illustrate the rising-sea model of prominence, if sea level rose 56 m, North and South America would be separate continents and Denali would be 6138 m, its current prominence, above sea level. At a slightly lower level, the continents would still be connected and the high point of the combined landmass would be Aconcagua,

795-523: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Topographic prominence In topography , prominence or relative height (also referred to as autonomous height , and shoulder drop in US English, and drop in British English) measures the height of a mountain or hill's summit relative to the lowest contour line encircling it but containing no higher summit within it. It is

848-452: Is a sub-summit of the main summit (which has a height and prominence of 8,848 m). Many lists of mountains use topographic prominence as a criterion for inclusion in the list, or cutoff . John and Anne Nuttall's The Mountains of England and Wales uses a cutoff of 15 m (about 50 ft), and Alan Dawson's list of Marilyns uses 150 m (about 500 ft). (Dawson's list and the term "Marilyn" are limited to Britain and Ireland). In

901-540: Is adjacent to the Mariana Trench ; the most extreme claim is that, measured from Challenger Deep 313 kilometres (194 mi) away, Mount Lamlam is 11,530 metres (37,820 ft) tall. Ojos del Salado has the greatest rise on Earth : 13,420 m (44,029 ft) vertically to the summit from the bottom of the Atacama Trench , which is about 560 km (350 mi) away, although most of this rise

954-443: Is becoming preferred. There are two varieties of topographic prominence: wet prominence and dry prominence. Wet prominence is the standard topographic prominence discussed in this article. Wet prominence assumes that the surface of the earth includes all permanent water, snow, and ice features. Thus, the wet prominence of the highest summit of an ocean island or landmass is always equal to the summit's elevation. Dry prominence, on

1007-425: Is called the "parent peak"). A common definition of a mountain is a summit with 300 m (980 ft) prominence. Alternatively, a relative prominence (prominence/height) is used (usually 7–8%) to reflect that in higher mountain ranges everything is on a larger scale. The table below lists the highest 100 summits with at least 500 m (1,640 ft) prominence, approximating a 7% relative prominence. A drawback of

1060-406: Is defined as follows. In Figure 2 the key col of peak A is at the meeting place of two closed contours, one encircling A (and no higher peaks) and the other containing at least one higher peak. The encirclement parent of A is the highest peak that is inside this other contour. In terms of the falling-sea model, the two contours together bound an "island", with two pieces connected by an isthmus at

1113-404: Is equal to its wet prominence (4205 m) plus the depth of its highest submerged col (about 5125 m). Totaling 9330 m, this is greater than any mountain apart from Everest. The dry prominence of Aconcagua is equal to its wet prominence (6960 m) plus the depth of the highest submerged col of the Bering Strait (about 40 m), or about 7000 m. It is worth noting Mauna Kea

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1166-560: Is equal to its wet prominence plus the depth of its highest submerged col. Because Earth has no higher summit than Mount Everest , Everest's prominence is either undefined or its height from the lowest contour line. In a dry Earth, the lowest contour line would be the deepest hydrologic feature, the Challenger Deep , at 10,924 m depth. Everest's dry prominence would be this depth plus Everest's wet prominence of 8848 m, totaling 19,772 m. The dry prominence of Mauna Kea

1219-406: Is more prominent than peak A. The parent is the peak whose territory peak A is in. For hills with low prominence in Britain, a definition of "parent Marilyn " is sometimes used to classify low hills ("Marilyn" being a British term for a hill with a prominence of at least 150 m). This is found by dividing the region of Britain in question into territories, one for each Marilyn . The parent Marilyn

1272-461: Is not part of the mountain. The highest mountains are also not generally the most voluminous. Mauna Loa (4,169 m or 13,678 ft) is the largest mountain on Earth in terms of base area (about 5,200 km or 2,000 sq mi) and volume (about 42,000 km or 10,000 cu mi), although, due to the intergrade of lava from Kilauea , Hualalai and Mauna Kea , the volume can only be estimated based on surface area and height of

1325-457: Is not used because there is no obvious choice of cutoff. This choice of method might at first seem arbitrary, but it provides every hill with a clear and unambiguous parent peak that is taller and more prominent than the hill itself, while also being connected to it (via ridge lines). The parent of a low hill will also usually be nearby; this becomes less likely as the hill's height and prominence increase. Using prominence parentage, one may produce

1378-702: Is often problematic to define when a mountain is remote from the sea. Different sources often differ by many metres, and the heights given below may well differ from those elsewhere in this encyclopedia. As an extreme example, Ulugh Muztagh on the north Tibetan Plateau is often listed as 7,723 m (25,338 ft) to 7,754 m (25,440 ft), but appears to be only 6,973 m (22,877 ft) to 6,987 m (22,923 ft). Some mountains differ by more than 100 m (330 ft) on different maps, while even very thorough current measurements of Mount Everest range from 8,840 m (29,003 ft) to 8,849 m (29,032 ft). These discrepancies serve to emphasize

1431-590: Is relatively close to its submerged key col in the Pacific Ocean, and the corresponding contour line that surrounds Mauna Kea is a relatively compact area of the ocean floor. Whereas a contour line around Everest that is lower than 9330m from Everest's peak would surround most of the major continents of the Earth. Even just surrounding Afro-Eurasia would run a contour line through the Bering Straight, with

1484-546: Is that the prominence is the height of the peak's summit above the lowest contour line encircling it, but containing no higher summit within it; see Figure 1. The parent peak may be either close or far from the subject peak. The summit of Mount Everest is the parent peak of Aconcagua in Argentina at a distance of 17,755 km (11,032 miles), as well as the parent of the South Summit of Mount Everest at

1537-694: Is the Marilyn whose territory the hill's summit is in. If the hill is on an island (in Britain) whose highest point is less than 150 m, it has no parent Marilyn. Prominence parentage is the only definition used in the British Isles because encirclement parentage breaks down when the key col approaches sea level. Using the encirclement definition, the parent of almost any small hill in a low-lying coastal area would be Ben Nevis , an unhelpful and confusing outcome. Meanwhile, "height" parentage (see below)

1590-512: The shape of the Earth is not spherical. Sea level closer to the equator is several kilometres farther from the centre of the Earth. The summit of Chimborazo , Ecuador 's tallest mountain, is usually considered to be the farthest point from the Earth's centre, although the southern summit of Peru 's tallest mountain, Huascarán , is another contender. Both have elevations above sea level more than 2 km (1.2 mi) less than that of Everest. Download coordinates as: Almost all mountains in

1643-408: The child peak. For example, one common use of the concept of parent is to make clear the location of a peak. If we say that Peak A has Mont Blanc for a parent, we would expect to find Peak A somewhere close to Mont Blanc. This is not always the case for the various concepts of parent, and is least likely to be the case for encirclement parentage. Figure 3 shows a schematic range of peaks with

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1696-410: The color underlying the minor peaks indicating the encirclement parent. In this case the encirclement parent of M is H whereas an intuitive view might be that L was the parent. Indeed, if col "k" were slightly lower, L would be the true encirclement parent. The encirclement parent is the highest possible parent for a peak; all other definitions indicate a (possibly different) peak on the combined island,

1749-400: The contiguous United States, the famous list of " fourteeners " (14,000 foot / 4268 m peaks) uses a cutoff of 300 ft / 91 m (with some exceptions). Also in the U.S., 2000 ft (610 m) of prominence has become an informal threshold that signifies that a peak has major stature. Lists with a high topographic prominence cutoff tend to favor isolated peaks or those that are

1802-488: The disadvantage in using the encirclement parent. A hill in a low-lying area like the Netherlands will often be a direct child of Mount Everest , with its prominence about the same as its height and its key col placed at or near the foot of the hill, well below, for instance, the 113-meter-high key col of Mont Blanc . When the key col for a peak is close to the peak itself, prominence is easily computed by hand using

1855-578: The edge of the Indian Plate and Eurasian Plate in China , India , Nepal , and Pakistan . The dividing line between a mountain with multiple peaks and separate mountains is not always clear (see also Highest unclimbed mountain ). A popular and intuitive way to distinguish mountains from subsidiary peaks is by their height above the highest saddle connecting it to a higher summit, a measure called topographic prominence or re-ascent (the higher summit

1908-405: The edifice. Mount Kilimanjaro is the largest non-shield volcano in terms of both base area (635 km or 245 sq mi) and volume (4,793 km or 1,150 cu mi). Mount Logan is the largest non-volcanic mountain in base area (311 km or 120 sq mi). The highest mountains above sea level are also not those with peaks farthest from the centre of the Earth, because

1961-475: The encirclement parent.) While it is natural for Aconcagua to be the parent of Denali, since Denali is a major peak, consider the following situation: Peak A is a small hill on the coast of Alaska, with elevation 100 m and key col 50 m. Then the encirclement parent of Peak A is also Aconcagua, even though there will be many peaks closer to Peak A which are much higher and more prominent than Peak A (for example, Denali). This illustrates

2014-492: The high contour (giving in a pessimistic estimate ), the low contour (giving an optimistic estimate), their mean (giving a "midrange" or "rise" prominence ) or an interpolated value (customary in Britain). The choice of method depends largely on the preference of the author and historical precedent. Pessimistic prominence, (and sometimes optimistic prominence) were for many years used in USA and international lists, but mean prominence

2067-667: The highest point of their massif ; a low value, such as the Nuttalls', results in a list with many summits that may be viewed by some as insignificant. While the use of prominence as a cutoff to form a list of peaks ranked by elevation is standard and is the most common use of the concept, it is also possible to use prominence as a mountain measure in itself. This generates lists of peaks ranked by prominence , which are qualitatively different from lists ranked by elevation. Such lists tend to emphasize isolated high peaks, such as range or island high points and stratovolcanoes . One advantage of

2120-424: The highest points around and are likely to have extraordinary views. Only summits with a sufficient degree of prominence are regarded as independent mountains. For example, the world's second-highest mountain is K2 (height 8,611 m, prominence 4,017 m). While Mount Everest 's South Summit (height 8,749 m, prominence 11 m ) is taller than K2, it is not considered an independent mountain because it

2173-503: The key col. The encirclement parent is the highest point on this entire island. For example, the encirclement parent of Mont Blanc , the highest peak in the Alps , is Mount Everest . Mont Blanc's key col is a piece of low ground near Lake Onega in northwestern Russia (at 113 m (371 ft) elevation), on the divide between lands draining into the Baltic and Caspian Seas . This is

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2226-709: The list are located in the Himalaya and Karakoram ranges to the south and west of the Tibetan plateau. All peaks 7,000 m (23,000 ft) or higher are located in East , Central or South Asia in a rectangle edged by Noshaq (7,492 m or 24,580 ft) on the Afghanistan–Pakistan border in the west, Jengish Chokusu (Tuōmù'ěr Fēng, 7,439 m or 24,406 ft) on the Kyrgyzstan – Xinjiang border to

2279-402: The list may change and even new mountains could enter the list over time. To be safe, the list has been extended to include all 7,200 m (23,622 ft) peaks. The highest mountains above sea level are generally not the highest above the surrounding terrain. There is no precise definition of surrounding base, but Denali , Mount Kilimanjaro and Nanga Parbat are possible candidates for

2332-435: The main sources of prominence data in Britain and Ireland. Other sources of data commonly ignore human-made alterations, but this convention is not universally agreed upon; for example, some authors discount modern structures but allow ancient ones. Another disagreement concerns mountaintop removal , though for high-prominence peaks (and for low-prominence subpeaks with intact summits), the difference in prominence values for

2385-513: The main summit of the Lauteraarhorn (together with the adjoining Schreckhorn) is on the UIAA list of Alpine four-thousanders . The first ascent was on 8 August 1842 by Pierre Jean Édouard Desor , Christian Girard, Arnold Escher von der Linth with the guides Melchior Bannholzer and Jakob Leuthold. This article about a mountain, mountain range, or peak located in the canton of Bern

2438-420: The meeting place of two 113 m (371 ft) contours, one of them encircling Mont Blanc; the other contour encircles Mount Everest. This example demonstrates that the encirclement parent can be very far away from the peak in question when the key col is low. This means that, while simple to define, the encirclement parent often does not satisfy the intuitive requirement that the parent peak should be close to

2491-599: The north, Gongga Shan (Minya Konka, 7,556 m or 24,790 ft) in Sichuan to the east, and Kabru (7,412 m or 24,318 ft) on the Sikkim – Nepal border to the south. As of December 2018 , the highest peaks on four of the mountains— Gangkhar Puensum , Labuche Kang III , Karjiang , and Tongshanjiabu , all located in Bhutan or China —have not been ascended. The most recent peak to have its first ever ascent

2544-402: The other hand, ignores water, snow, and ice features and assumes that the surface of the earth is defined by the solid bottom of those features. The dry prominence of a summit is equal to its wet prominence unless the summit is the highest point of a landmass or island, or its key col is covered by snow or ice. If its highest surface col is on water, snow, or ice, the dry prominence of that summit

2597-569: The parent peak and subject peak are two separate islands. Then lower it until a tiny land bridge forms between the two islands. This land bridge is the key col of the subject peak, and the peak's prominence is its elevation from that key col. Prominence is interesting to many mountaineers because it is an objective measurement that is strongly correlated with the subjective significance of a summit. Peaks with low prominence are either subsidiary tops of some higher summit or relatively insignificant independent summits. Peaks with high prominence tend to be

2650-428: The peak to higher terrain, find the lowest point on the path; the key col (or highest saddle , or linking col , or link ) is defined as the highest of these points, along all connecting paths; the prominence is the difference between the elevation of the peak and the elevation of its key col. On a given landmass, the highest peak's prominence will be identical to its elevation. An alternative equivalent definition

2703-474: The tallest mountain on land by this measure. The bases of mountain islands are below sea level, and given this consideration Mauna Kea (4,207 m (13,802 ft) above sea level) is the world 's tallest mountain and volcano , rising about 10,203 m (33,474 ft) from the Pacific Ocean floor. Mount Lamlam on Guam is periodically claimed to be among the world's highest mountains because it

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2756-501: The two conventions is typically relatively small. The key col and parent peak are often close to the sub-peak but this is not always the case, especially when the key col is relatively low. It is only with the advent of computer programs and geographical databases that thorough analysis has become possible . For example, the key col of Denali in Alaska (6,194 m) is a 56 m col near Lake Nicaragua . Denali's encirclement parent

2809-401: The uncertainties in the listed heights. Though some parts of the world, especially the most mountainous parts, have never been thoroughly mapped, it is unlikely that any mountains this high have been overlooked, because synthetic aperture radar can and has been used to measure elevations of most otherwise inaccessible places. Still, heights or prominences may be revised, so that the order of

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