Mountain and animals. Because of the less hospitable terrain and climate, mountains tend to be used less for agriculture and more for resource extraction and recreation, such as mountain climbing. The highest mountain on Earth is Mount Everest in the Himalayas of Asia, whose summit is above mean sea level. The highest known mountain on any planet in the Solar System is Olympus Mons on Mars at . There is no universally accepted definition of a mountain. Elevation, volume, relief, steepness, spacing and continuity have been used as criteria for defining a mountain. In the Oxford English Dictionary a mountain is
Olympus Mons gradient and residual heat from the volcano's magma chamber. Potential springs or seeps around the volcano would offer exciting possibilities for detecting microbial life. Olympus Mons and a few other volcanoes in the Tharsis region stand high enough to reach above the frequent Martian dust-storms recorded by telescopic observers as early as the 19th century. The astronomer Patrick Moore pointed out that Schiaparelli (1835–1910) "had found that his "Nodus Gordis" and "Olympic Snow" [Nix Olympica] were almost the only features to be seen" during dust storms, and "guessed correctly that they must be high". The Mariner 9 spacecraft arrived in