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Trees cannot grow at high altitude, because of cold temperature or lack of available moisture. [82]: 51 The lack of trees causes an ecotone, or boundary, that is obvious to observers. This boundary is known as the tree line. The highest-altitude plant species is a moss that grows at 6,480 m (21,260 ft) on Mount Everest. [83]
Hypobaric decompression is the reduction in ambient pressure below the normal range of sea level atmospheric pressure. Altitude decompression is hypobaric decompression which is the natural consequence of unprotected elevation to altitude, while other forms of hypobaric decompression are due to intentional or unintentional release of pressurization of a pressure suit or pressurized compartment ...
Altitude research gets round this by studying the effects of oxygen deprivation on otherwise healthy people. Travelling to high altitude is often used as a way of studying the way the body responds to a shortage of oxygen. It is difficult and prohibitively expensive to conduct some of this research at sea level.
This adaptation means irreversible, long-term physiological responses to high-altitude environments associated with heritable behavioral and genetic changes. While the rest of the human population would suffer serious health consequences at high altitudes, the indigenous inhabitants of these regions thrive in the highest parts of the world.
Altitude sickness, the mildest form being acute mountain sickness (AMS), is a harmful effect of high altitude, caused by rapid exposure to low amounts of oxygen at high elevation. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ] People's bodies can respond to high altitude in different ways.
However, the human body has both short-term and long-term adaptations to altitude that allow it to partially compensate for the lack of oxygen. There is a limit to the level of adaptation; mountaineers refer to the altitudes above 8,000 metres (26,000 ft) as the death zone , where it is generally believed that no human body can acclimatize .
Acclimatization or acclimatisation (also called acclimation or acclimatation) is the process in which an individual organism adjusts to a change in its environment (such as a change in altitude, temperature, humidity, photoperiod, or pH), allowing it to maintain fitness across a range of environmental conditions.
Many deaths in high-altitude mountaineering have been caused by the effects of the death zone, either directly by the loss of vital functions or indirectly by poor decisions made under stress (e.g., not turning back in deteriorating conditions, or misreading the climbing route), or physical weakening leading to accidents (e.g., falls).