Tag: mediterranean climatic region

Danube River

Created with Sketch. The river rises in the Black Forest Mountains of Germany and flows eastward into the Black Sea. The Danube River is an important international waterway, flowing through or forming a part of the borders of ten countries and through major cities such as Vienna, Bratislava, Budapest, and Belgrade.

Glacier

Spain is the second most mountainous country in Europe, but it isn’t only its mountains that impress.  About 40% of Spain’s land mass is made up of a high central plateau (Meseta) ranging from 400 to 1000 metres in height. 

Covering Castilla-León, Castilla-La Mancha, Extremadura, and chunks of Aragón and La Rioja, the Meseta is bordered on the north by the Cordillera Cantábrica, split near the middle into northern and southern halves by the Sierra de Guadarrama and the Sierra de Gredos, and rimmed to the south by the Sierra Morena.  

A true fjord is formed when a glacier cuts a U-shaped valley by ice segregation and abrasion of the surrounding bedrock. According to the standard model, glaciers formed in pre-glacial valleys with a gently sloping valley floor. The work of the glacier then left an overdeepened U-shaped valley that ends abruptly at a valley or trough end. Such valleys are fjords when flooded by the ocean. Thresholds above sea level create freshwater lakes. Glacial melting is accompanied by the rebounding of Earth's crust as the ice load and eroded sediment is removed (also called isostasy or glacial rebound). In some cases this rebound is faster than sea level rise. Most fjords are deeper than the adjacent sea; Sognefjord, Norway, reaches as much as 1,300 m (4,265 ft) below sea level. Fjords generally have a sill or shoal (bedrock) at their mouth caused by the previous glacier's reduced erosion rate and terminal moraine. In many cases this sill causes extreme currents and large saltwater rapids (see skookumchuck). Saltstraumen in Norway is often described as the world's strongest tidal current. These characteristics distinguish fjords from rias (e.g. the Bay of Kotor), which are drowned valleys flooded by the rising sea. Drammensfjorden is cut almost in two by the Svelvik "ridge", a sandy moraine that during the ice cover was under sea level but after the post-glacial rebound reaches 60 m (200 ft) above the fjord.

The highlands of Bohemia, the Meseta of Spain and the Central Massif of France are plateaus of Europe

Spain,

France,

Dnieper River, Ukrainian Dnipro, Russian Dnepr, Belarusian Dnyapro, ancient (Greek) Borysthenes, river of Europe, the fourth longest after the Volga, Danube, and Ural. It is 1,367 miles (2,200 km) in length and drains an area of about 195,000 square miles (505,000 square km).

The Dnieper rises at an elevation of about 720 feet (220 metres) in a small peat bog on the southern slope of the Valdai Hills of Russia, about 150 miles (240 km) west of Moscow, and flows in a generally southerly direction through western Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine to the Black Sea. For the first 300 miles (480 km) it passes through the Smolensk oblast (region) of Russia, first to the south and then to the west; near Orsha it turns south once more and for the next 370 miles (600 km) flows through Belarus. Finally, it flows through Ukrainian territory: south to Kiev, southeast from Kiev to Dnipropetrovsk, and then south-southwest to the Black Sea.

Massif Central, upland area in south-central France. Bordered by the lowlands of Aquitaine on the west, the Paris Basin and the Loire River valley on the north, the Rhône-Saône river valley on the east, and the Mediterranean coastlands of Languedoc on the south, it is conventionally demarcated by the 1,000 feet- (300 m-) above-sea-level contour. Occupying about one-sixth of France (33,000 square miles [86,000 square km]), the massif, for the most part, consists of plateaus lying between 2,000 and 3,000 feet (600 and 900 m). The highest peaks are Sancy Hill (Puy de Sancy; 6,184 feet [1,885 m]) and the Plomb du Cantal (6,096 feet [1,858 m]).