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unless stated.
A mountain range is land with lots of
mountains. Many mountain ranges are long
and narrow, such as the Himalayas, the
Andes and the Appalachians.

Mountain ranges are often formed when two
tectonic plates push against each other.
Mountains in the same range are usually
about the same age.

Many mountain ranges contain smaller
mountain ranges: for example,
the Appalachian Mountains contain the
Smoky Mountains and the Blue Ridge
Mountains, while the Carpathians contain the
Tatra Mountains.

Climate and Weather
Mountain ranges change the worlds weather
and climate. Mountains push air up, and it
gets cooler. This leads to rain and snow on
one side of the mountain.

When the air goes down on the other side of
the mountain, it gets warmer, but it is now
dry, so the land on this side of the mountain
range can be very dry (a rain shadow). The
highest mountain ranges affect the climate
across large parts of continents: for example,
Central Asia is very dry because of the
Himalayas.


A lot of the worlds fresh water is found in
mountain ranges, either in rivers or as water
from glaciers.
Major Mountain Ranges
Some of the major mountain ranges of the
world include:

The Atlas Mountains, which stretch for
2500 kilometres through Morocco, Algeria
and Tunisia

The Appalachian Mountains, which stretch
down the east of North America from
Canada to Georgia. They include the Blue
Ridge Mountains of Virginia.

The Rocky Mountains, which stretch down
the western side of North America

The Himalayas, a huge mountain range
separating India from Tibet. The
Himalayas contain the highest mountains
in the world.

The Andes, which stretch down the west
coast of South America. The Andes are
the world's longest mountain range on the
Earths surface. They are 7,000 kilometres
long.

However, the world's longest mountain range
is the Mid-Ocean Ridge. This is a mountain
range that is mostly under the sea.
Sometimes the tops of these mountains form
islands. The Mid-Ocean Ridge is
65,000 kilometres long.


The Mid-Ocean Ridge