Mountain Ranges, Deserts and Landforms of Romania

Geography

Although commonly referred to as a mountain chain, the Carpathians do not form an uninterrupted chain of mountains, but consist of several orographically and geologically distinctive groups. The northwestern Carpathians begin in Slovakia and southern Poland. They surround Transcarpathia and Transylvania in a large semicircle, sweeping towards the southeast, and end on the Danube near Orșova in Romania. The total length of the Carpathians is over 1,500 km (930 mi).

The mountain chain's width varies between 12 and 500 km (7 and 311 mi). The highest altitudes of the Carpathians occur where they are widest, in the Transylvanian plateau and in the southern Tatra Mountains group.

Geology

The area now occupied by the Carpathians was once occupied by smaller ocean basins. The Carpathian mountains were formed during the Alpine orogeny in the Mesozoic and Cenozoic by moving the ALCAPA (Alpine-Carpathian-Pannonian), Tisza and Dacia plates over subducting oceanic crust.

The mountains take the form of a fold and thrust belt with generally north vergence in the western segment, northeast to east vergence in the eastern portion and southeast vergence in the southern portion. Currently, the area is the most seismically active in Central Europe.

The external, generally northern, portion of the orogenic belt is a Tertiary accretionary wedge of a so-called Flysch belt (the Carpathian Flysch Belt) created by rocks scraped off the sea bottom and thrust over the North-European plate.

Ecology

The ecology of the Carpathians varies with altitude, ranging from lowland forests to alpine meadows. Foothill forests are primarily of broadleaf deciduous trees, including oak, hornbeam, and linden. European beech is characteristic of the montane forest zone. Higher-elevation subalpine forests are characterized by Norway spruce (Picea abies). Krummholz and alpine meadows occur above the treeline.

Wildlife in the Carpathians includes Eurasian brown bear (Ursus arctos arctos), Eurasian wolf (Canis lupus lupus), Eurasian lynx (Lynx lynx), European wildcat (Felis silvestris), Tatra chamois (Rupicapra rupicapra tatrica), European bison (Bison bonasus), and golden eagle (Aquila chrysaetos).

Geography and ecology

The steppe covers an area of 994,000 km2 (384,000 sq mi) of Central and Eastern Europe, that extends from northeastern Bulgaria and southeastern Romania, through Moldova, and southern and eastern Ukraine, through the Northern Caucasus of southern Russia, and into the Lower Volga region of western Kazakhstan, to the east of the Ural Mountains. It is bounded by the East European forest steppe to the north, a transitional zone of mixed grasslands and temperate broadleaf and mixed forests. To the south, the steppe extends to the Black Sea, except the Crimean and western Caucasus mountains' border with the sea, where the Crimean Submediterranean forest complex defines the southern edge of the steppes.

Geography

Its territory covers approximately 52,000 km2 (20,000 sq mi) of Hungary, approximately 56% of its total area of 93,030 km2 (35,920 sq mi). The highest point of the plain is Hoportyó (183 m (600 ft)); the lowest point is the Tisza River. The terrain ranges from flat to rolling plains.

The most important Hungarian writers inspired by and associated with the plain are Ferenc Móra and Zsigmond Móricz, as well as the poets Sándor Petőfi and Gyula Juhász.

Hungarian scientists born on the plain include Zoltán Bay, physicist; János Irinyi, chemist, inventor of the noiseless match; János Kabay, pharmacologist; Gábor Kátai, physician and pharmacist; and Frigyes Korányi, physician and pulmonologist.

History

During the prehistoric era, the Great Hungarian Plain was a place of cultural and technological changes, as well as an important meeting point of cultures of Eastern and Western Europe. It is a region of great archaeological importance to major European cultural transitions.

Agriculture began in the Great Hungarian Plain with the Early Neolithic Körös culture, located in present-day Serbia, 6000–5500 B.C.E. followed 5500 B.C.E. by the Linear Pottery culture (LBK) which later became the dominant agricultural culture of Europe. The LBK was followed by the Lengyel culture in the Late Neolithic 5000–3400 BC.

Terminology disputes about wider location of the Plain

The Great Hungarian Plain is often depicted as "part of" the Pannonian Basin, however it is often disputed by Hungarian geographers, due to its erroneous and unhistorical nature of the "Pannonian Basin" term.

Regarding the name as such, in terms of ancient history, namely that the northern and eastern boundary line of the namesake Roman province of Pannonia was formed by the River Danube. The Roman province Pannonia was bounded on the north and east by the Danube river, thus the Great Hungarian Plain was clerly not part of that ancient Roman province.

Geography and geology

Probably 40% of the Delta was built in the last 1,000 years. Finding that was like a eureka moment.

At present, the delta suffers from a large sediment deficit, after the construction of dams on the Danube and its tributaries in the later half of the 20th century. Construction of a dense network of shallow channels in the delta over the same period, a sedimentation enhancing strategy, attenuated the deficit on the delta plain but increased erosion along the coast. The Danube Delta is a low alluvial plain, mostly covered by wetlands and water. It consists of an intricate pattern of marshes, channels, streamlets and lakes. The average altitude is 0.52 m, with 20% of the territory below sea level, and more than half not exceeding one meter in altitude.

History

Recorded history notes that the Dacians lived in the Danube Delta before it was conquered by the Romans. After later invasion by the Goths, the region changed hands many times. During the 15th century, the Danube Delta became part of the Ottoman Empire. In 1812, following the Russo-Turkish War, the borders of the Ottoman and Russian Empires were set by the Kilia and Old Stambul Channels of the Danube, and in 1829 by the St George Channel. The Treaty of Paris of 1856, which ended the Crimean War, assigned the Danube Delta to the Ottoman Empire and established an international commission which undertook a series of works to help navigation.

Geology

The South Carpathians represent an intricate pile of tectonic nappes, overthrusted from west eastwards during the Austrian (Middle Cretaceous) and Laramian paroxysmal phases, corresponding to various plate fragments. The napes are (from west eastwards): the Supragetic, Getic, Severin and Danubian Units. The Getic Nappe was identified by Murgoci (1905), while the general understanding over the Alpine structure of the South Carpathians was later refined by Codarcea (1940), Codarcea et al. (1961), Năstăseanu et al. (1981), Săndulescu (1984), Săndulescu and Dimitrescu (2004), and Mutihac (1990). The first to apply the global tectonics concepts for the Romanian Carpathians were Rădulescu and Săndulescu (1973).