The East European Plain. Ancient Mountain Regions

Map  Questions.

1. Study the altitude scale on the physical map of Europe.
2. Find the East European Plain on the map. What hills, to your
   knowledge, stretch across the centre of this plain?
3. What mountains of Europe do you know? Locate them on the
   map.

Relief Peculiarities of Europe. The relief of Europe varies to a remarkable degree. Vast lowlands alternate with hills and mountain ranges. Almost two-thirds of the surface of Europe is lowland. Tall and impassable mountains are rare.

Fig. 13. Europe: Relief and minerals. — The Pechora Basin; 2 — the Donets Basin; 3 — the Upper Silesian Basin; 4 — the Ruhr Basin; 5 — Krivoi Rog; 6 — the Kursk Magnetic Anomaly.

As a result, communication between the various parts of Europe is not difficult.
Eastern and Western Europe differ greatly in relief. The surface of Western Europe is uneven and broken. Mountain ranges alternate with tablelands and lowlands. Eastern Europe, on the other hand, is almost entirely flat.
Relief of Eastern Europe. Almost all of Eastern Europe is occupi­ed by the vast East European, or Russian, Plain. Level lowlands alternate with low ridges. Nowhere except in the extreme north-west is the elevation above 500 metres.
In the centre of the East European Plain are the Central Russian (Va1dai) and Volga Uplands, greatly dissected by ravines. There occur remnants of ancient and denuded mountains, the Donets Hills, for example, whose highest point is 367 metres.

sea level.) Could the ocean waters penetrate into this region, they would flood extensive areas.
Only along the edges of the East European Plain do mountains occur. In the east stretch the Ural Mountains, fairly low but very rich in minerals. The Crimean Mountains ex­tend along the southern coast of the Crimean Peninsula, coming to an abrupt end at the Black Sea.
Ancient Mountain Region and Lowlands of Western Europe. The Polish and North German Plains are exten­sions of the East European Plain into Western Europe.

Fig. 14. An ancient mountain scene: Black Forest. (From the German 'Schwarzwald') Note the gentle slopes of the hills and the rounded tops.

These lowlands are flanked along the Baltic coast by chains of hills. Closer to the North Sea, the North German Plain merges into level and low-lying marshland covered with meadows and peat bogs. Amidst these occur small lakes and brown-watered drainage canals. Parts of the coastal belt are below sea level and are furnished with dykes and a system of drainage canals through which the water is pumped back into the sea. In stormy weather the sea sometimes breaks through the dykes and floods the low-lying coastal areas.

On the Scandinavian Peninsula north of this lowland area rise the ancient Scandinavian Mountains, much-denuded and with flattish or rounded tops. Peaks are very rare among them. The upper slopes are covered with eternal snow and glaciers. The mountains break off abruptly at the western coastline.
South of the lowland area, in the centre of Western Europe, stretches a series of ancient ridges that are divided into separate masses: the Central Massif (or Plateau) in France, the Central Uplands in Germany, the Czech Massif and others. In these regions, mountains alternate with depressions and low-lying lands (Fig. 14).

Questions and Assignments.

• Study  the physical  map and determine which mountain
  ranges are higher: the Ural, Crimean or Scandinavian.
• Find the places in Europe lying below sea level. What colours are used to indicate them on the map?
• Study the map of Europe and determine the approximate
  altitudes of the following cities: Leningrad (on the Baltic   Sea),
  Astrakhan (near the Caspian Sea) and Madrid (on the Iberian Penin­sula).
• What is the altitude of the region you live in?