Mountain Ranges, Deserts and Landforms of Serbia

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

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

The Balkan Mountains are, technically, a chain of fold mountains—mountains formed by the compression and breaking of layers of rock. On a geological time scale, they are a rather young and recently formed part of the Alp-Himalayan chain which stretches across most of Eurasia. The Balkan Mountains can be divided into two parts—the main Balkan Chain and the Pre-Balkans (Fore-Balkan) to the north, which extend slightly onto the Danubian Plain. To the south, the mountains border the Sub-Balkan valleys, a row of 11 valleys running from the Bulgarian-Serbian border east to the Black Sea, separating the Balkan Mountains from a chain of other ranges known as Srednogorie (which includes Vitosha and Sredna Gora).

Protected areas and ecology

Significant areas of the Balkan mountains are under protection by Bulgarian law, including one national park — Central Balkan National Park; three nature parks — Vrachanski Balkan Nature Park, Bulgarka Nature Park and Sinite Kamani Nature Park, over 20 nature reserves, as well as numerous natural landmarks.

Central Balkan National Park is among the largest and most valuable of the protected areas in Europe. Since 2017, its ancient beech forests have been included in the Primeval Beech Forests UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is the third largest protected territory in Bulgaria, spanning an area of 716.69 km2 with total length of 85 km from the west to the east and an average width of 10 km.

History

The Balkan Mountains have had a significant and special place in the history of Bulgaria since its founding in 681. It was a natural fortress of the Bulgarian Empire for centuries and formed an effective barrier to Moesia where most of the medieval capitals were located. The Balkan mountains were the site of numerous battles between the Bulgarian and Byzantine Empires including the Battle of the Rishki Pass (759), Battle of the Varbitsa Pass (811), the Battle of Tryavna (1190) and the Battle of Devina (1279). In the battle of the Varbitsa Pass, Khan Krum decisively defeated an enormous Byzantine army, killing Emperor Nikephoros I. For many centuries, the Byzantines feared these mountains, their armies reportedly retreating upon approaching them.

Geology

The Dinaric Karst region is built mostly of Mesozoic limestone and dolomite deposited on top of a huge Bahama-type carbonate platform, while a few kilometers thick carbonate successions have been deformed during the Alpine orogenesis. The main tectonic phase of the Alpine orogenesis in the Dinaric Karst region took place in the Cenozoic Era (Paleogene) as a result of the Adriatic microplate (Adria) collision with the Serbo-Macedonian and Rhodope Massifs, and the process is still active. The Mesozoic limestone forms a very distinctive region of the Balkans, notable for features such as the Karst Plateau, which has given its name to all such terrains of limestone eroded by groundwater.