Abstract
This study assesses the global mountain population, population change over the 1975–2015 time-range, and urbanisation for 2015. The work uses the World Conservation Monitoring Centre (WCMC) definition of mountain areas combined with that of mountain range outlines generated by the Global Mountain Biodiversity Assessment (GMBA). We estimated population change from the Global Human Settlement Layer Population spatial grids, a set of population density layers used to measure human presence and urbanisation on planet Earth. We show that the global mountain population has increased from over 550 million in 1975 to over 1050 million in 2015. The population is concentrated in mountain ranges at low latitudes. The most populated mountain ranges are also the most urbanised and those that grow most. Urbanisation in mountains (66%) is lower than that of lowlands (78%). However, 34% of the population in mountains live in cities, 31% in towns and semi-dense areas, and 35% in rural areas. The urbanisation rate varies considerably across ranges. The assessments of population total, population trends, and urbanisation may be used to address the issue “not to leave mountain people behind” in the sustainable development process and to understand trajectories of change.
Highlights
The challenges of making a living in mountains have been extensively described in informative reports [1,2,3], book chapters [4], and scientific papers [5]
We considered using the Global Human Settlement population (GHS-POP) spatial grid of 1 × 1 km2 [18] over other gridded population datasets used in previous studies [4], as the data are open source, are consistent and comparable in time and space [18,19,20], and most importantly are used in implementing the Degree of Urbanisation (DoU) [21]
The results are summarised in four subchapters that include an overview of population and urbanisation in world mountains (Figure 2), an overview on all the Global Mountain Biodiversity Assessment (GMBA) ranges, an overview of the GMBA ranges that include both rural and urban populations, and a discussion of the GMBA population trajectories
Summary
The challenges of making a living in mountains have been extensively described in informative reports [1,2,3], book chapters [4], and scientific papers [5]. The first global assessment of mountain population used Landscan gridded population density [9] for the year 2000 [10]. Recent studies include the analysis of population in the Global Mountain Biodiversity Assessment (GMBA) [12] based on a new definition of mountains [13], which provided population estimates for each range for the years 2000 and 2012 using FAO statistics and Landscan gridded population [11]. The GMBA mountain outline study [12] addresses issues related to the definition difference and surface estimation difference with WCMC mountain areas. The study estimates the surface area of the GMBA mountain ranges per climatic belt and provides area and population estimation at the continental level
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