1.
Valley
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A valley is a low area between hills, often with a river running through it. In geology, a valley or dale is a depression that is longer than it is wide, the terms U-shaped and V-shaped are descriptive terms of geography to characterize the form of valleys. Most valleys belong to one of two main types or a mixture of them, with respect to the cross section of the slopes or hillsides. A valley in its broadest geographic sense is known as a dale. A valley through which a river runs may also be referred to as a vale, a small, secluded, and often wooded valley is known as a dell or in Scotland as a glen. A wide, flat valley through which a river runs is known in Scotland as a strath, a mountain cove is a small valley, closed at one or both ends, in the central or southern Appalachian Mountains which sometimes results from the erosion of a geologic window. A small valley surrounded by mountains or ridges is sometimes known as a hollow, a deep, narrow valley is known as a cwm. Similar geological structures, such as canyons, ravines, gorges, gullies, chines, a valley formed by erosion is called an erosional valley, a valley formed by geologic events such as drop faults or the rise of highlands is called a structural valley. A valley formed by flowing water, or river valley, is usually V-shaped, the exact shape will depend on the characteristics of the stream flowing through it. Rivers with steep gradients, as in mountain ranges, produce steep walls, shallower slopes may produce broader and gentler valleys. However, in the lowest stretch of a river, where it approaches its base level, it begins to deposit sediment, in prehistory, the rivers were used as a source of fresh water and food, as well as a place to wash and a sewer. The proximity of water moderated temperature extremes and provided a source for irrigation, most of the first civilizations developed from these river valley communities. In geography, a vale is a river valley, usually with a particularly wide flood plain or flat valley bottom. In Southern England, vales commonly occur between the escarpment slopes of pairs of chalk formations, where the dome has been eroded, exposing less resistant underlying rock. Rift valleys, such as the Albertine Rift, are formed by the expansion of the Earths crust due to tectonic activity beneath the Earths surface, there are various forms of valley associated with glaciation that may be referred to as glacial valleys. A valley carved by glaciers is normally U-shaped, the valley becomes visible upon the recession of the glacier that forms it. When the ice recedes or thaws, the remains, often littered with small boulders that were transported within the ice. Floor gradient does not affect the shape, it is the glaciers size that does
2.
Central Europe
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Central Europe lies between Eastern Europe and Western Europe. The concept of Central Europe is based on a historical, social and cultural identity. Central Europe is going through a phase of strategic awakening, with such as the CEI, Centrope. While the regions economy shows high disparities with regard to income, elements of unity for Western and Central Europe were Roman Catholicism and Latin. According to Hungarian historian Jenő Szűcs, foundations of Central European history at the first millennium were in connection with Western European development. The keyword of Western social development after millennium was the spread of liberties and autonomies in Western Europe and these phenomena appeared in the middle of the 13th century in Central European countries. There were self-governments of towns, counties and parliaments, in 1335 under the rule of the King Charles I of Hungary, the castle of Visegrád, the seat of the Hungarian monarchs was the scene of the royal summit of the Kings of Poland, Bohemia and Hungary. They agreed to cooperate closely in the field of politics and commerce, in the Middle Ages, countries in Central Europe adopted Magdeburg rights. Before 1870, the industrialization that had developed in Western and Central Europe, even in Eastern Europe, industrialization lagged far behind. Russia, for example, remained rural and agricultural. The concept of Central Europe was already known at the beginning of the 19th century, an example of that-time vision of Central Europe may be seen in J. Partsch’s book of 1903. On 21 January 1904, Mitteleuropäischer Wirtschaftsverein was established in Berlin with economic integration of Germany, another time, the term Central Europe became connected to the German plans of political, economic and cultural domination. The bible of the concept was Friedrich Naumann’s book Mitteleuropa in which he called for a federation to be established after the war. The concept failed after the German defeat in World War I, the revival of the idea may be observed during the Hitler era. According to Emmanuel de Martonne, in 1927 the Central European countries included, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, italy and Yugoslavia are not considered by the author to be Central European because they are located mostly outside Central Europe. The author use both Human and Physical Geographical features to define Central Europe, the interwar period brought new geopolitical system and economic and political problems, and the concept of Central Europe took a different character. The centre of interest was moved to its eastern part – the countries that have appeared on the map of Europe, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, however, the conflict of interests was too big and neither Little Entente nor Intermarium ideas succeeded. The interwar period brought new elements to the concept of Central Europe, after the war, the Eastern part of Central Europe was placed at the centre of the concept
3.
Ice age
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An ice age is a period of long-term reduction in the temperature of Earths surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental and polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers. Within a long-term ice age, individual pulses of cold climate are termed glacial periods, in the terminology of glaciology, ice age implies the presence of extensive ice sheets in both northern and southern hemispheres. In 1742 Pierre Martel, an engineer and geographer living in Geneva, two years later he published an account of his journey. He reported that the inhabitants of that valley attributed the dispersal of erratic boulders to the glaciers, later similar explanations were reported from other regions of the Alps. In 1815 the carpenter and chamois hunter Jean-Pierre Perraudin explained erratic boulders in the Val de Bagnes in the Swiss canton of Valais as being due to glaciers previously extending further. An unknown woodcutter from Meiringen in the Bernese Oberland advocated a similar idea in a discussion with the Swiss-German geologist Jean de Charpentier in 1834, comparable explanations are also known from the Val de Ferret in the Valais and the Seeland in western Switzerland and in Goethes scientific work. Such explanations could also be found in parts of the world. When the Bavarian naturalist Ernst von Bibra visited the Chilean Andes in 1849–1850, meanwhile, European scholars had begun to wonder what had caused the dispersal of erratic material. From the middle of the 18th century, some discussed ice as a means of transport, the Swedish mining expert Daniel Tilas was, in 1742, the first person to suggest drifting sea ice in order to explain the presence of erratic boulders in the Scandinavian and Baltic regions. In 1795, the Scottish philosopher and gentleman naturalist, James Hutton, two decades later, in 1818, the Swedish botanist Göran Wahlenberg published his theory of a glaciation of the Scandinavian peninsula. He regarded glaciation as a regional phenomenon, only a few years later, the Danish-Norwegian geologist Jens Esmark argued a sequence of worldwide ice ages. In a paper published in 1824, Esmark proposed changes in climate as the cause of those glaciations and he attempted to show that they originated from changes in Earths orbit. During the following years, Esmarks ideas were discussed and taken over in parts by Swedish, Scottish, at the University of Edinburgh Robert Jameson seemed to be relatively open to Esmarks ideas, as reviewed by Norwegian professor of glaciology Bjørn G. Andersen. Jamesons remarks about ancient glaciers in Scotland were most probably prompted by Esmark, in Germany, Albrecht Reinhard Bernhardi, a geologist and professor of forestry at an academy in Dreissigacker, since incorporated in the southern Thuringian city of Meiningen, adopted Esmarks theory. In a paper published in 1832, Bernhardi speculated about former polar ice caps reaching as far as the zones of the globe. When he read his paper before the Schweizerische Naturforschende Gesellschaft, most scientists remained sceptical, finally, Venetz convinced his friend Jean de Charpentier. De Charpentier transformed Venetzs idea into a theory with a limited to the Alps. In fact, both men shared the same volcanistic, or in de Charpentiers case rather plutonistic assumptions, about the Earths history, in 1834, de Charpentier presented his paper before the Schweizerische Naturforschende Gesellschaft
4.
Glacial period
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A glacial period is an interval of time within an ice age that is marked by colder temperatures and glacier advances. Interglacials, on the hand, are periods of warmer climate between glacial periods. The last glacial period ended about 15,000 years ago, the Holocene epoch is the current interglacial. A time when there are no glaciers on Earth is considered a greenhouse climate state, within the Quaternary glaciation, there have been a number of glacials and interglacials. The last glacial period was the most recent glacial period within the current ice age, occurring in the Pleistocene epoch, the glacial advance reached its maximum extent about 18,000 BP. In Europe, the ice sheet reached northern Germany, since orbital variations are predictable, computer models that relate orbital variations to climate can predict future climate possibilities. Work by Berger and Loutre suggests that the current warm climate may last another 50,000 years
5.
Ice sheet
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An ice sheet is a mass of glacier ice that covers surrounding terrain and is greater than 50,000 km2, thus also known as continental glacier. Ice sheets are bigger than ice shelves or alpine glaciers, masses of ice covering less than 50,000 km2 are termed an ice cap. An ice cap will typically feed a series of glaciers around its periphery, although the surface is cold, the base of an ice sheet is generally warmer due to geothermal heat. In places, melting occurs and the melt-water lubricates the ice sheet so that it more rapidly. This process produces fast-flowing channels in the ice sheet — these are ice streams, the present-day polar ice sheets are relatively young in geological terms. The Antarctic Ice Sheet first formed as an ice cap in the early Oligocene, but retreating and advancing many times until the Pliocene. The Greenland ice sheet did not develop at all until the late Pliocene and this had the unusual effect of allowing fossils of plants that once grew on present-day Greenland to be much better preserved than with the slowly forming Antarctic ice sheet. The Antarctic ice sheet is the largest single mass of ice on Earth and it covers an area of almost 14 million km2 and contains 30 million km3 of ice. Around 90% of the water on the Earths surface is held in the ice sheet. The continent-wide average surface temperature trend of Antarctica is positive and significant at >0.05 °C/decade since 1957, the Antarctic ice sheet is divided by the Transantarctic Mountains into two unequal sections called the East Antarctic ice sheet and the smaller West Antarctic Ice Sheet. The EAIS rests on a land mass but the bed of the WAIS is, in places. It would be seabed if the ice sheet were not there, the WAIS is classified as a marine-based ice sheet, meaning that its bed lies below sea level and its edges flow into floating ice shelves. The WAIS is bounded by the Ross Ice Shelf, the Ronne Ice Shelf, the Greenland ice sheet occupies about 82% of the surface of Greenland, and if melted would cause sea levels to rise by 7.2 metres. Estimated changes in the mass of Greenlands ice sheet suggest it is melting at a rate of about 239 cubic kilometres per year and these measurements came from NASAs Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment satellite, launched in 2002, as reported by BBC News in August 2006. Ice movement is dominated by the motion of glaciers, whose activity is determined by a number of processes and their motion is the result of cyclic surges interspersed with longer periods of inactivity, on both hourly and centennial time scales. The Greenland, and probably the Antarctic, ice sheets have been losing mass recently, because losses by melting, the IPCC projects that ice mass loss from melting of the Greenland ice sheet will continue to outpace accumulation of snowfall. Accumulation of snowfall on the Antarctic ice sheet is projected to outpace losses from melting, understanding of these processes is limited and there is no consensus on their magnitude. More research work is required to improve the reliability of predictions of ice-sheet response on global warming
6.
Glacial series
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The term glacial series was used as early as 1882 by Albrecht Penck initially for the northern Alpine Foreland. Later the term was expanded and used to refer to the Scandinavian glaciation region, a complete glacial series is formed when the edge of the ice sheet remains static for a long time and is not destroyed again by a further advance of the ice mass. The Alpine glaciers, that formed a network of ice streams during the high points of the ice ages, repeatedly flowed beyond the boundary of the Alps, there they formed vast foreland glaciers. In this Alpine Foreland glaciation, Penck identified a number of landforms, the moraines, the Zungenbecken, the terminal moraines. The bowl-shaped basins, which were formed by the scouring of the ground by the glacier, were called Zungenbecken, in these basins, if there was no outlet, glacial lakes were formed during the retreat of the glacier. There is a number of lakes of this type in the Salzkammergut, typical landforms within the Zungenbecken of the Alpine Foreland are drumlins, but there are rarely any tunnel valleys. Around the Zungenbecken on the edge of the ice sheet, are ridges of glacial till known as terminal moraines. Till is the material makes up ground, lateral and medial moraines. Ground moraine consists of material that was once beneath the glacier and was transported by it, the lateral moraines comprise that eroded material which is carried along at the sides of a glacier. A lateral moraine that is no longer being added to with glacial material because the glacier has retreated for climatic reasons, is known as a flank moraine. In the Alps the remaining flank moraines were formed during the Little Ice Age in medieval times. They lie several metres higher than the present glacier surface and extend far beyond the present glacier snouts, medial moraines are formed when the lateral moraines of two glaciers are combined when they flow together. On the far side of the zone is the gravel outwash plain. Those waters usually came from glacier caves whose former location is still today from the dips in the level of the terminal moraines. Often the gravel plains are markedly terraced, younger outlets have cut so-called little trumpet-shaped valleys in the gravel plains. The material of the plans is glacial till. The transport capacity of the meltwater is considerably less than that of the glacier, by contrast, elements with smaller grain size, like clays and sands can be transported much further, which is why they are rarely found in the gravel plains. Glacial meltwater valleys emerged as a result of meltwater flowing away in a parallel to the edge of the ice mass and are a feature of Northern Central Europe
7.
North German Plain
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The North German Plain or Northern Lowland is one of the major geographical regions of Germany. It is the German part of the North European Plain, the region is bounded by the coasts of the North Sea and Baltic Sea to the north and Germanys Central Uplands to the south. Elements of the Rhenish Massif also act a part of the boundary of the plain, the Eifel, Bergisches Land. In the east the North German Plain spreads out beyond the Harz mountains and Kyffhäuser further to the south as far as the Central Saxon hill country and the foothills of the Ore Mountains. The terrain may be considered as part of the Old or Young Drift, depending on whether or not it was formed by the ice sheets of the last glacial period, the surface relief varies from level to undulating. The lowest points are low moorlands and old marshland on the edge of the ridge of dry land in the west of Schleswig-Holstein and in the north west of Lower Saxony. The highest points may be referred to as Vistula and Hall glaciation terminal moraines – e. g. on the Fläming Heath, following the ice ages, rain-fed, raised bogs originated in western and northern Lower Saxony during warm periods of high precipitation. These bogs were widespread but much of this terrain has now been drained or otherwise superseded. The coastal areas consist of Holocene lake and river marshes and lagoons connected to Pleistocene Old and Young Drift terrain in stages of formation. After or during the retreat of the glaciers, wind-borne sand often formed dunes, human intervention caused the emergence of open heath such as the Lüneburg Heath, and measures such as deforestation and the so-called Plaggenhieb caused a wide impoverishment of the soil. The most fertile soils are the marshes and the Börde areas. High level bog peat can be found in the poorest soils, in the loess areas of the lowland are found the oldest settlement locations in Germany. The north eastern part of the plain is geomorphologically distinct and contains a multitude of lakes which are vestiges of the last ice age, the retreating glaciers left this landscape behind around 16,000 to 13,000 years ago. In comparison, the dry plains of northwestern Germany are more heavily weathered and levelled as the last large scale glaciations here occurred at least 130,000 years ago, the region is drained by rivers that flow northwards into the North Sea or the Baltic. The Rhine, Ems, Weser, Elbe and Havel are the most important rivers drain the North German Lowlands into the North Sea and created woods in their flood plains and folds. Only a small area of the North German Plain falls within the catchment area of the Oder, the North Sea coast and the adjacent coastal areas of the facing East and North Frisian Islands are characterised by a maritime climate. South of the coast, a band of maritime and sub-maritime climate stretches from the east coast of Schleswig-Holstein to the western edges of the Central Uplands. Locally, a continental climate can be found in the rain shadow of the Harz and some smaller areas of upland like the Drawehn
8.
Poland
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Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe, situated between the Baltic Sea in the north and two mountain ranges in the south. Bordered by Germany to the west, the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south, Ukraine and Belarus to the east, the total area of Poland is 312,679 square kilometres, making it the 69th largest country in the world and the 9th largest in Europe. With a population of over 38.5 million people, Poland is the 34th most populous country in the world, the 8th most populous country in Europe, Poland is a unitary state divided into 16 administrative subdivisions, and its capital and largest city is Warsaw. Other metropolises include Kraków, Wrocław, Poznań, Gdańsk and Szczecin, the establishment of a Polish state can be traced back to 966, when Mieszko I, ruler of a territory roughly coextensive with that of present-day Poland, converted to Christianity. The Kingdom of Poland was founded in 1025, and in 1569 it cemented a political association with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania by signing the Union of Lublin. This union formed the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, one of the largest and most populous countries of 16th and 17th century Europe, Poland regained its independence in 1918 at the end of World War I, reconstituting much of its historical territory as the Second Polish Republic. In September 1939, World War II started with the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany, followed thereafter by invasion by the Soviet Union. More than six million Polish citizens died in the war, after the war, Polands borders were shifted westwards under the terms of the Potsdam Conference. With the backing of the Soviet Union, a communist puppet government was formed, and after a referendum in 1946. During the Revolutions of 1989 Polands Communist government was overthrown and Poland adopted a new constitution establishing itself as a democracy, informally called the Third Polish Republic. Since the early 1990s, when the transition to a primarily market-based economy began, Poland has achieved a high ranking on the Human Development Index. Poland is a country, which was categorised by the World Bank as having a high-income economy. Furthermore, it is visited by approximately 16 million tourists every year, Poland is the eighth largest economy in the European Union and was the 6th fastest growing economy on the continent between 2010 and 2015. According to the Global Peace Index for 2014, Poland is ranked 19th in the list of the safest countries in the world to live in. The origin of the name Poland derives from a West Slavic tribe of Polans that inhabited the Warta River basin of the historic Greater Poland region in the 8th century, the origin of the name Polanie itself derives from the western Slavic word pole. In some foreign languages such as Hungarian, Lithuanian, Persian and Turkish the exonym for Poland is Lechites, historians have postulated that throughout Late Antiquity, many distinct ethnic groups populated the regions of what is now Poland. The most famous archaeological find from the prehistory and protohistory of Poland is the Biskupin fortified settlement, dating from the Lusatian culture of the early Iron Age, the Slavic groups who would form Poland migrated to these areas in the second half of the 5th century AD. With the Baptism of Poland the Polish rulers accepted Christianity and the authority of the Roman Church
9.
Outwash plain
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An outwash plain, also called a sandur, sandr or sandar, is a plain formed of glacial sediments deposited by meltwater outwash at the terminus of a glacier. As it flows, the glacier grinds the rock surface. Sandurs are common in Iceland where geothermal activity accelerates the melting of ice flows, sandurs derive their name from Skeiðarársandur in Iceland, the largest outwash plain in the world with an area of 1,300 km2. Sandurs are found in glaciated areas, such as Svalbard, Kerguelen Islands, an outwash plain might contain surficial braided stream complexes that rework the original deposits. They may also contain kettle lakes, locations where blocks of ice have melted, sandurs are most common in Iceland, where geothermal activity beneath ice caps speeds up the deposition of sediment by meltwater. As well as regular geothermal activity, volcanic activity gives rise to large glacial bursts several times a century, the Gaspé Peninsula that makes up the essential part of southern Quebec also contains several example of paleo-sandar, dating from the Pleistocene ice melt. The original sandur from which the name is derived is Skeiðarársandur. Skeiðarársandur is the largest sandur in the world, covering an area of 1,300 km2, volcanic eruptions under the icecap have given rise to many large glacial bursts, most recently in 1996, when the Ring Road was washed away. This road, which encircles Iceland and was completed in 1974, has since been repaired. The 1996 jökulhlaup was caused by the eruption of the Grímsvötn volcano, net deposition of sediment was estimated to be 12,800,000 m3. The main braided channels of Skeiðarársandur are the Gígjukvísl and Skeiðará rivers, in the Gígjukvísl there was massive sediment deposition of up to 12 m, which occurred closest to the terminus of the glacier. The erosional patterns of Skeiðarársandur can be seen by looking at the elevation differences measured with repeat-pass laser altimetry flown in 1996,1997. Of the overall deposition during the 1996 jökulhlaup, nearly half of the net gain had been eroded 4 years after the flood and these two rivers on the sandur display drastically different erosional patterns. The Gígjukvísl river is some of the highest level of sediment deposit occurred. This indicates that these massive jökulhlaup deposits may have a large impact in the short term. However, in order to have sustained active accretion across the entire sandur there needs to be a diffuse, kankakee Outwash Plain Terminal moraine Church, Michael A. Baffin Island sandurs, a study of arctic fluvial processes. Garvin J. B. Topographic Dynamics of Kerguelen Island, A Preliminary SRTM Analysis, American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2001 Gomez B. Russell A. J. Knudsen O. Sediment Distribution on Skeidararsandur, Southeast Iceland, American Geophysical Union, glacial Outburst Floods in Iceland, EGS - AGU - EUG Joint Assembly, Abstracts from the meeting held in Nice, France, 6–11 April 2003 Magilligan F. J. Gomez B
10.
North Sea
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The North Sea is a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean located between Great Britain, Scandinavia, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France. An epeiric sea on the European continental shelf, it connects to the ocean through the English Channel in the south and it is more than 970 kilometres long and 580 kilometres wide, with an area of around 570,000 square kilometres. The North Sea has long been the site of important European shipping lanes as well as a major fishery, the North Sea was the centre of the Vikings rise. Subsequently, the Hanseatic League, the Netherlands, and the British each sought to dominate the North Sea and thus the access to the markets, as Germanys only outlet to the ocean, the North Sea continued to be strategically important through both World Wars. The coast of the North Sea presents a diversity of geological and geographical features, in the north, deep fjords and sheer cliffs mark the Norwegian and Scottish coastlines, whereas in the south it consists primarily of sandy beaches and wide mudflats. Due to the population, heavy industrialization, and intense use of the sea and area surrounding it. In the southwest, beyond the Straits of Dover, the North Sea becomes the English Channel connecting to the Atlantic Ocean, in the east, it connects to the Baltic Sea via the Skagerrak and Kattegat, narrow straits that separate Denmark from Norway and Sweden respectively. In the north it is bordered by the Shetland Islands, and connects with the Norwegian Sea, the North Sea is more than 970 kilometres long and 580 kilometres wide, with an area of 570,000 square kilometres and a volume of 54,000 cubic kilometres. Around the edges of the North Sea are sizeable islands and archipelagos, including Shetland, Orkney, the North Sea receives freshwater from a number of European continental watersheds, as well as the British Isles. A large part of the European drainage basin empties into the North Sea including water from the Baltic Sea, the largest and most important rivers flowing into the North Sea are the Elbe and the Rhine – Meuse watershed. Around 185 million people live in the catchment area of the rivers discharging into the North Sea encompassing some highly industrialized areas, for the most part, the sea lies on the European continental shelf with a mean depth of 90 metres. The only exception is the Norwegian trench, which extends parallel to the Norwegian shoreline from Oslo to a north of Bergen. It is between 20 and 30 kilometres wide and has a depth of 725 metres. The Dogger Bank, a vast moraine, or accumulation of unconsolidated glacial debris and this feature has produced the finest fishing location of the North Sea. The Long Forties and the Broad Fourteens are large areas with uniform depth in fathoms. These great banks and others make the North Sea particularly hazardous to navigate, the Devils Hole lies 200 miles east of Dundee, Scotland. The feature is a series of trenches between 20 and 30 kilometres long,1 and 2 kilometres wide and up to 230 metres deep. Other areas which are less deep are Cleaver Bank, Fisher Bank, the International Hydrographic Organization defines the limits of the North Sea as follows, On the Southwest
