What term describes climate and vegetation zones changing with elevation on mountains?

The term for climate and vegetation zones changing with elevation on mountains is altitudinal zonation.

As elevation rises, environmental conditions usually change in recognizable layers. Air temperature generally decreases, while precipitation, humidity, soil development, solar radiation, and growing-season length may also vary. These differences allow distinct plant communities—and, to a less sharply defined degree, animal communities—to occupy different elevations.

Geographer and naturalist Alexander von Humboldt was among the first to describe the pattern systematically after observing that mountain vegetation changed in ways resembling the shift from the Equator toward the poles. Modern ecology often discusses lowland, montane, alpine, and nival levels, though their boundaries differ from mountain to mountain.

Altitudinal zonation is not a rigid staircase everywhere. Latitude, mountain size, wind, aspect, rock type, disturbance, and human land use can shift or blur the boundaries. Continentality means the influence of distance from oceans, while a rain shadow is a dry region behind a mountain; neither names the full elevation-based pattern.