Hills thought to be mountains: A geobiocultural characterization of island highlands in Canada's continental plain

Abstract

North America is characterized by an expansive continental plain that has been described as platter-flat. Yet this central continental plain includes isolated uplands that some people call mountains. The hill-mountain muddle is a classic problem of geomorphology, arising from the challenge of discriminating continuous, attached forms. Here we approach this problem initially by using crisp, terrain-only classification approaches. We overlay a global mountain classifier with a plain and prairie designation to identify 20 mountains in Canada's continental plain, then apply a landform classification tool to delineate their spatial extents and to locate adjacent, equal-area lowlands. We then characterize and compare the attributes of uplands and adjacent lowlands with 15 geobiocultural indicators reflective of the intersections of land, life, and people. Supporting our hypothesis that small, isolated uplands in the continental plain have distinctiveness disproportionate to their dimensions, the 20 uplands are indeed modest in elevation, prominence, and isolation, but distinct in geobiological characteristics relative to adjacent lowlands. The geobiocultural distinctiveness of uplands in the plain relative to surrounding lowlands causes these local prominences to stand out, to seem higher than they are, and to be hills described or named as mountains.