Today we are going to talk about the Pyrenees Mountains. The Pyrenees Mountains are the range between Spain and France. Reaching the top of Aneto at an altitude of 3,404 meters, the Pyrenees Mountains extend about 491 km from its confluence with the Cantabrian Mountains to the Mediterranean Sea. Let us collect a little more information about Pyrenees Mountains.
The Pyrenees Mountains, for the most part, form the main crest dividing between Spain and France and have sandwiches between the microstates of Andorra. Historically the Kingdom of Navarre and the Crown of Aragon extend on both sides of this mountain range. Rivers divide the landscape into numerous smaller basins in both the lower eastern and northwestern regions of this mountain range.
Physical Features of Pyrenees Mountains
Geology
The Pyrenees Mountains are older than the Alps. Remains of the Variscan orogeny include Massif Central in France and Meseta Central in Spain. Although the Pyrenees Mountains have had a relatively quiet history of internal distortion in other oceans and since their emergence, the Pyrenean block has sunk into a relatively unstable area of the Earth's crust that became active about 225 million years ago.
The earliest formations of this mountain range were rigid alluvial sediments on a granitic base. It sank shortly afterwards and was covered by secondary silt. The Pyrenees became two zones of the eastern strip over the mountains, of which the Spanish are the most developed and which are now the great zeal of the main chain of the Pyrenees.
The intense pressure and lifting of the Earth's crust first affected the eastern part, and the Pyrenees Mountains gradually extended toward the entire chain, culminating in the Eocene Epoch. Granite peaks in the western part of the Pyrenees Mountains are joined by limestone. The vast and unfamiliar character of this mountain range comes from its abundance of granite and which is particularly resistant to erosion, as well as weak glacial development.
The upper reaches of the Pyrenees Mountains have a less relaxed surface forming peneplain. The emergence of this peneplain is not earlier than in the time of the late Miocene. Probably the Pyrenees Mountains formed at very high altitudes because of the extensive silt which caused a significant increase in the local base level.
Physiography of Pyrenees Mountains
Physiographic this mountain range can be divided into three parts and includes the Atlantic, Central and Eastern Pyrenees. Together, the Pyrenees Mountains form a separate physics province of the larger alpine system division. In the western Pyrenees Mountains, the average elevation from the Basque Mountains near the Bay of Biscay in the Atlantic Ocean gradually increases from west to east.
The Central Pyrenees Mountains extend eastward from Somport Pass to the Aran Valley and include the highest peaks in the Pico d'Aneto, Monte Perdido, Pico Posets ranges. With the exception of a break in the eastern distance of the Pyrénées Ariègeoises in the Ariège area in the Eastern Pyrenees Mountains, the average elevation is significantly similar until the eastern part of the chain called Albères suddenly decreases.
The northern outer strip of the range consists of folds formed by the Petites Pyrénées. Most of the foothills of the Pyrenees Mountains are on the Spanish side and where there is a vast and complex arrangement of strips from Spanish Navarre to Northern Aragon and Catalonia and which reaches about 2,600 meters and reaches the coast. The slopes of the main range on the French side of the Pyrenees Mountains suddenly descend, and there are no foothills in the northeast corner of this mountain system except Corbières Massif.
Drainage of Pyrenees Mountains
The hydrographic system on the Pyrenees Mountains basically consists of a series of parallel valleys descending from the elevated peaks and passes. The system is chained by high dividing stripes in a north-south direction. The Pyrenees Mountains have a variety of maximum low water in summer and winter. Here the spring usually sees the largest flow with maximum rainfall and melting snow.
This increases the water power for industries and irrigation to the south on the mountain range. The torrential flow of many rivers through the demo medium on the Pyrenees Mountains is due to both the purity of the Pyrenees water and their excellence and richness as fishing streams. Existing Pyrenean glaciers are probably more frequent to the north than the southern slopes and have been reduced to valleys that hang at an altitude of more than 9,800 feet.
The fracture areas of this mountain range have many hot springs that are both sulfur and saline. The former occurs in the Pyrenees Mountains during the former axial mass while the latter occurs on the edge. The Pyrenees Mountains were reorganized and modernized by the end of the 19th century. There are more than 20 famous spas on the French side of the Pyrenees Mountains and in Spain they are numerous but fully exploited.
Climate of Pyrenees Mountains
Due to the humid air from the Atlantic Ocean on the Biscay Bay of this mountain range, the amount of rainfall, including rain and snow, is very high. After its humidity over the western and central Pyrenees Mountains, the air over the Eastern Pyrenees remains dry. The average winter temperature on the Pyrenees Mountains is −2 C.
Parts of the Pyrenees Mountains differ in more than one respect. There are some glaciers in the western and snowy central part of the Pyrenees Mountains but no glaciers in the eastern Pyrenees Mountains because the reason for their development is not enough snowfall. Glaciers are confined to the northern slopes of the central Pyrenees Mountains.
The Pyrenees Mountains, like the other great mountains of Central Europe, have considerable evidence of the extensive expansion of glaciers during the glacial period, and the best evidence of this is in the département of the Hautes-Pyrénées in the valley of the Argeles Gazost, between Lourdes and Gavarnie. The annual snow-line on these mountains varies in their different parts from about 2,700 to 2,800 meters above sea level.
Plant and animal life of Pyrenees Mountains
Due to the contact of the surfaces of the Pyrenees Mountains and the relief of the mountain, the local climatic conditions create all kinds of special local scattering. The most characteristic of the marine influence on the Pyrenees Mountains is that the low-lying and medium-high mountain forests are dominated by broad-leaved deciduous trees while the Mediterranean influence is represented by evergreen broad-leaved trees.
The diversity of vegetation on the Pyrenees Mountains shows itself in different layers. About 5,200 feet above the middle-altitude mountain range of this mountain range, the woods are replaced by needle conifers that require less water.
An even more significant effect of rainfall growth in the western part of the chain of the Pyrenees Mountains is seen in vegetation. In the extreme west of the Pyrenees Mountains, the lower mountains are forested, but the forest range decreases as the mountains move east. The Eastern Pyrenees Mountains are strangely wild and desolate because it is in this part of the chain that the granetic masses predominate.
The mountain range is almost as rich in endemic species as the Alps, and one of the most notable examples of endemic disease is the phenomenon of the genus Xatardia, which grows only on the Val d'Eynes and high alpine passes. Pyrenees Mountains include Bulbocodium vernum, Arenaria montana and Ranunculus glacialis. The most widely represented species found on the Pyrenees Mountains is the genus Saxifrage.
The Pyrenees Mountains present some striking examples of their locality in the fauna. In some streams of the northern slopes of the Pyrenees Mountains only the Pyrenean desman is found and only other desman is confined to the Caucasus rivers in southern Russia. The salamanders of this range also live in streams and lakes located at local relative elevations. Other peculiarities of the fauna of the Pyrenees Mountains include blind insects in the caves of Ariège and whose main origins are Adelops and Anophthalmus.
The brown bear, native to the Pyrenees Mountains, was hunted for near extinction in the 1990s but was reintroduced in 1996 when three bears were brought from Slovenia. The bear population has been successfully bred on the Pyrenees Mountains and there are now estimated to be about 15 brown bears in Madhya Pradesh around Fos.
Economy And People
The Pyrenees Mountains are home to a wide variety of people, including Andorrans, Bernice, Catalans and the Basque Country. Everyone in the Pyrenees Mountains speaks their own dialect or language and everyone wants to maintain and enhance their own autonomy while embracing the common unity among the people of each Pyrenees Mountains.
The people of the Pyrenees Mountains have traditionally relied on farming and raising livestock for their livelihood. Factors affecting the vegetation growth of the Pyrenees Mountains also influenced the traditional land use, crop type and farming method of each district. Typical Mediterranean products such as vegetables, wines and fruits are found in the Eastern Pyrenees Mountains and at the bottom of the southern slopes of the chain.
In the western and central Pyrenees Mountains are grown potatoes, sweet corn and fodder crops with their abundant rainfall. Livestock breeding, another essential element of the traditional economy, has a seasonal process of moving herds of sheep and cows up and down the Pyrenees Mountains.
Pyrenees Mountains do not match the growing vulnerability of agriculture through the development of industry. Yet the Pyrenees Mountains offer significant hydroelectric potential. The Pyrenees Mountains have some of the most resource mining, and the most admirable and varied supply of timber is home to most of the mills and factories established in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Although no railroads and no major highways pass through the area on the Pyrenees Mountains, an express highway is slowly being built between Toulouse, Frere and Barcelona, Spain. The Pyrenees Mountains are funded by foreign capital and depend on the assistance of the Spanish and French governments and the rest of the factories face an uncertain future.
Although the Pyrenees Mountains are a boon to the local economy, winter sports, summer travel, hunting and fishing and crowds of people visiting its central national parks have also contributed to the abandonment of the traditional way of life.
