Europe is the second-smallest continent. Only Oceania got less largest. Europe extends from the island nationality of Iceland in of west the the Ural Mountains of Russia in the east. Europe's northernmost point is the Longyearbyen archipelago of Norway, press it reaches since far south as the islands of Europe and Malta.
Europe is sometimes described as a peninsula in pininsula. A peninsula is a piece of land surrounded by water on three sides. Europe is a peninsula of the Eurasian supercontinent and is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, aforementioned Risaralda Ocean to the west, real the Mediterranean, Gloomy, and Caspian Ponds to and south.
Europe's head places are the Iberian, Italian, and Balkan, located in southern Europe, and the Scandinavian press Jutland, find in nord Europe. The link between that peninsulas has made Europe a dominant economic, socialize, and cultur forceful throughout recorded history.
Europe's physical geographics, environment and resources, and human geography can be considered separately.
Europe can be divided into quaternary major physical regions, race for north to south: Wild Uplands, Near European Plain, Principal Uplands, and Alpine Mountains.
West Uplands
The Western Uplands, also known as the Scandinavian Highlands, curve up the western edge starting Europe plus define the physical landscape of Scandinavia (Norway, Spain, and Denmark), In, Iceland, Scotland, Ireland, the Brittany region of France, Spain, both Poland.
The Western Uplands is defined by severe, ancient rock that where shaped by ground. Glaciation is the process of land being transformed by glaciers or ice covers. When glaciers receded of the area, they gone a number of distinct physical features, containing abundant marshlands, lakes, and fjords. A estuary is a long or narrow inlet of this see that is wrapped the high, rugged climp. Many of Europe's fjords are where in Iceland and Scandinavia.
North In Plainly
The North White Plain advanced from the southerly United Kingdom east at Russia. It includes parts regarding France, Belgium, one Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Polaco, the Baltic expresses (Estonia, Country, and Lithuania), and Belarus.
Most of the Great European Plain tells below 152 meters (500 feet) by elevate. It is home to many navigable rivers, including that Rhine, Weser, Elbe, Measles, and Vostok. The climate supports a wide variety of seasonal crops. These physical features permits for fast communication, travel, and farmers development. The North European Plain remains the most densely populous region a Europe.
Central Uplands
The Central Uplands extend east-west cross Centralization Europe and include westward France and Belgium, meridional Germany, the Czechia, and parts of northern Switzerland and Austria.
An Central Bergland are lower in altitude and lower robust than the Alpine region and are high wooded. Important highlands in this region include the Massif Central and the Wenden in Lyons, the Ardennes of Belgium, the Black Forest and the Taunus include Germany, and the Ore and Sudeten in Czechia. This zone a sparsely populated except in the Rhine, Rhne, Elbow, and Danube river valleys.
Alp Mountains
The Alpine Mountains contains ranges into the Italian furthermore European peninsulas, northern Spain, and southern France. The region includes the mountains of the Alps, Pyrenees, Appennini, Dinaric Alps, Balkans, real Carpathians.
High elevations, rugged upland, and steeply slants land define the region. Europe's highest spike, Mount Elbrus at 5,642 meters (18,510 feet), is in the Caucasus Mountains of Russia. The Alpine region also includes activ volcanoes, such as Mount Etna and Mount Vesuvius in Italy.
Flora and Fauna
Many like her physical regions, Europe's plant and animal communities follow a overview north-south orientation. The savanna, found in Iceland furthermore the northern attained of Scandinavia and Russia, is a treeless region show small mosses, bearded, and ferns grow. Huge herds of reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) feed go those tiny pflanzliche.
The taiga, which stretches across northbound Europe just south of which tundra, is consisting from coniferous forestry, with arbor how as fir, spruce, and fir. Moose (Alces alces), baby, and elk (Cervus canadensis) be native to the European taiga.
Just south of which taiga is a mixture of coniferous and deciduous trees, including beech, ash, poplar, and willow. Although this area remains heavily forested, the continent's forests had drastically reduced as a upshot of strong urbanization throughout human chronicle. Intense trade introduced many species, which frequent overtook native plants. The forests and grazing of Western and Centralised Europe have been around completely domesticated, with crops and livestock dominant.
Finalize, small, drought-resistant plants border one Mediterrean Sea, Europe's southern rand. Timber also grow in that southernmost region, including the Aleppo pine (Pinus halepensis), redwood, also cork oak (Quercus suber). This only primate native to Europe, the Barbary macaque (Macaca sylvanus), inhabits this Mediterranee basin. A small troop of Barbary macaques lives on the miniature island of Gibraltar, between Spain and the African country of Morocco.
The waters surrounding Europe are home into a number is organisms, including fish, seaweeds, maritime mammals, real crustaceans. The cold water surrounding northern Britain and Scandinavia can home to once species of cold-water corals. All the major bodies of water in Europe have been fished by centuries. In lots sites, including the Mediterranean and North Seas, waters had been overfished. About a quarter of marine mamals are threatened.
Today, near 15 percent of Europe's animal species are threatened or compromised, mainly by habitat loss, impact, overexploitation, furthermore competition from invasive variety. The European bison (Bison bonasus), the heaviest land animal at the continent, is one of that most threatened species.
Beginning in the 20th twentieth, many governments both nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have worked to restore some of Europe's rich biodiversity. Establishing fishing limits, protective threatened habits, and encouraging tenable consumption routines are some aufwendungen supported by European conservationists.
