Pontic Mountains

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As Pontic Mountains or Pontus Mountains, Turkish Kaçkar Dağları, also North Anatolian mountain range, a series of mountain ranges in the north of Turkey is referred to about 1000 km along the Black Sea coast of Asia Minor extend. They belong to the geologically relatively young alpidischen mountain fold, which extends from the Pyrenees and Alps to the Himalayas, and reach peak heights up to 3,932 meters. The name derives from the ancient Greek Pontos for sea coast and Black Sea ( Pontos Euxinos ), the above also went to the Roman and later Byzantine province of Pontus, which existed until 1143.

Geography and Agriculture

The Pontic Mountains rise immediately south of the Black Sea is just a narrow coastal strip. His individual mountain ranges are an average of 300 km long, usually run in an east-west direction, ranging from about 100 to 200 km inland. In the western and central part of the mountain ranges are lower, reaching only north of Ankara heights up to 2500 m, while in the East, many peaks over 3000 m high and in ostpontischen Mountains ( Dogu Karadeniz Dağları ) represent a striking coastal mountains. The highest elevation, the Kaçkar Dagi ( 3,932 m) is already close to the border with Georgia. There, with the port city of Batumi, the Pontic Mountains runs out suddenly, but shall be continued in the south-west of Ararat and Lesser Caucasus.

Most rivers are bound in the upper reaches of the east-west direction of the mountain chains, break through it but towards the Black Sea in narrow valleys or gorges cross. In the vicinity of these estuaries lying on the narrow coastal strip of the population centers in the west Kozlu and Zonguldak, Sinop, Samsun Bafra and, in the east, especially Ordu, Trabzon and Rize. An exception to the general course of the river, the Kizilirmak ( the ancient Halys ) dar. Although this longest of 1,400 km of power in Turkey rises only 100 km south of the Black Sea ( in Sivas ), but flows into the Central Anatolian highlands and turns after a wide semicircle back east and north until it reaches a wide peninsula aufschüttet into the sea at Bafra after a few rift valleys. In this and some other fertile alluvial plains, the few roads from the interior reach the coast.

The steep Northern Slope of the mountain ranges is heavily wooded and partly good agricultural land due to the frequent rainfall ( orographic rainfall ). Here especially hazelnuts, tea, tobacco, olives and, more recently, cherries and citrus fruits are grown. In the eastern lowlands, the centers of the Turkish rice cultivation are. Areas that are suitable because of its steepness or the uncertain soil ( slip hangs) for cultivation are partly overgrown with dense rhododendron. The higher regions are used as pasture and pasture area. The forest is mainly a Nordmann fir -Orient- beech mixed forest. The tree line is 2000-2300 meters. The year-round settlement dates on the north side of the mountain down to these heights.

To the south, the Anatolian highlands to go missing because of low rainfall, the forest inventory; there, the extremely sparsely populated landscape largely montane steppe character. Only along the rivers and basins grow willows and poplars, occasionally there is loosened stocks of oak and black pines. Because of the sparse population of flora and fauna are very rich in species.

Geology and rivers

Asia Minor (Anatolia) is framed on three sides by long mountain ranges, which is why the Pontic Mountains is called in geomorphology and North Anatolian Edge Mountains. Its southern counterpart is the Mediterranean bordering Taurus Mountains. Geologically, both belong to the long-range system of relatively young alpidischen orogeny, which extends from the Pyrenees through the Alps and Carpathians, the Balkans, the Caucasus and Iran to the Hindu Kush and the Himalayas. By continuing to the present day tectonic movements of the earth's crust, it always comes back to strong earthquakes.

In the western part of the Pontus Mountains, situated next to the alpidischen unfolding even more remains of geologically old Variscan orogeny. While this hull surfaces and ridges are higher than 2000 meters in a few places, the Ostpontische Mountains ( Dogu Karadeniz Dağları ) in numerous peaks more than 3000 meters rises, and in the Kaçkar Dagi even at 3937 meters.

In the upper reaches of all major rivers follow the predetermined by the mountain ranges east-west course. To have the Black Sea, however, they in deep transverse valleys make their way to the coast. Turkey's most important river, the Kizilirmak ( Halys ) is north-east of Ankara even a regular zig -zag pattern of several picturesque rift valleys. Just as the Yeşilırmak he stores his Delta estuary from the central part of the mountains into the sea before, during the third peninsula of the region is due ( at Sinope ) from a comparatively small but steep waters.

The main rivers in the western part are the Yenice ( Durchbruchtstal at Karabük ) and Gökırmak, while the eastern part is dominated by the extensive tectonic furrow of Kelkit and Çoruh. Only little south - at Erzurum - also springs of Karasu, which, however, subsequently, to the south flows the Euphrates. The opposite course takes the Kura, which rises in the north-eastern province of Kars, first east to Georgia, later flows to the Caspian Sea. This turns the Pontic Mountains, despite its peripheral location, the watershed between the three seas represent, which is related to its geological history.

According to research results of the TU Berlin the genesis of various deposits and petrology of some igneous rocks suggests that the Ostpontische Mountains ( Northeast Turkey ) is a ( paleo ) island arc. Accordingly, the southern neighbor Anatoliden were formed in the Vortiefenzone this volcanic arc. According to the theory of plate tectonics, the Black Sea is to be regarded as an active marginal basins north of the island arc and its continental crust was transformed into oceanic crust in the central region.

Among the ostpontischen deposits the coupled with the acidic volcanics ferrous metals are to lead, while the porphyry copper ores are likely to be less economically productive. However, of great importance is the extensive coal deposits in Zonguldak in the western Pontic Mountains.

Here, numerous industries are located - next to the coal -ua the textile industry and the iron processing. In the other mountain regions primarily plays the processing of Agricultural products such as wood, meat and oe Agricultural products an economic role.