Mountains from Space: Peaks and Ranges of the Seven Continents | Hardback

The mountains have always been very special regions - the scenes of myths and the seats of the gods, spaces to retreat to and strategic bulwarks, but also places of natural and cultural diversity and multivarious living conditions over small areas. This book takes a completely new and unique look at the world's mountains. It brings together pictures that have been produced by computer on the basis of a new type of unusually precise satellite measurements and provides views never seen before. It was not until the year 2000 that the earth's surface was first surveyed systematically and completely by satellite radar on the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission. This made it possible to show every… more » area with hitherto unknown precision and to produce views in perspective, which in reality are not possible for practical reasons n as if one were flying at a great height and seeing an infinite distance unhampered by clouds, haze and the refraction of light.This book is also a work of nonfiction about all the important aspects of the mountains - their genesis by volcanic activity and the collisions of continental tectonic plates; their role in the emergence of ecological diversity; their function for the weather and climate, their susceptibility to natural catastrophes, their specific sociological features. « less