Elster Mountains

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The Elstergebirge to the Saxon- Czech border

Chapel Hill Schoenberg

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The Elster Mountains ( Czech Halštrovské hory), named after the river Weiße Elster, is a small mountain range in the Saxon Vogtland and přírodní park Halštrov ( Nature Park Elster ) in the northwest of the Czech Republic.

Geographically, the mountain is located in the main unit Upper Vogtland ( 412) within the main unit group Vogtland ( 41).

Geography

The Elstergebirge lies at the southernmost tip of Saxony in the German - Czech border region. It is in the north- east by the line Erlbach - Gunzen delimited by the Ore Mountains and the Southwest in Aš ( Asch ) and Hazlov ( Haslau ) from the Fichtelgebirge. To the south the Eger Basin joins.

Mountains

Highest elevations of chapel hill with 759 m above sea level. NN on German and the Haj ( Hainberg ) with 758 m nm on the Czech side.

Geology

General

The Elstergebirge consists largely of a crystalline Early Paleozoic bedrock. The outcropping metamorphic rocks from the Cambrian encamped to the Silurian sediments than from. During the Variscan orogeny, these rocks were folded and placed in their basic storage steeply to the south. In the southwest intruded the Fichtelgebirge granite. As the youngest Altsedimente occur sporadically in the northeast of the mountain ( High fire ) Silurian gravel and alum on. The bulk form Ordovician and Cambrian phyllites. In the Paleozoic sea led to the formation of sandbanks that were metamorphosed to quartzites and stand today as steep cliffs of the area significantly in Cambrian and Ordovician time. The High Stone is a typical representative of this clingstones. North of Bad Bramstedt occur on a narrow strip Cambrian mica schist and paragneiss south following days, before this sequence is interrupted by the granite pluton. Sporadically there are in the whole mountain as well as in the ore and the Fichtelgebirge and the Egergraben tertiary basalt breakthroughs, of which only the chimneys are preserved in Elstergebirge. The Elstergebirge was lifted wound scholl like in the Tertiary in the east, this occurs geomorphological outline of the Egertal especially in Schönberg / Vojtanov on. In the eastern part of the mountain, on the border of the Ore Mountains, the area is crisscrossed directed by an extensive northwest-southeast fault system. This crosses the Erzgebirgsabriss and is partly still active. There always comes back to vertical tensions that erupt in earthquakes ( an earthquake swarm ). The Elster Mountains, where there are mineral springs, one of the most seismically active regions of Central Europe.

Restvulkanismus

With the vertical displacements of the Scholl Egergrabens against ore, Elster and Fichtelgebirge, there was an intense volcanic activity to the Quaternary. This is not completely decayed until today ( hůrka and Eisenbühl in Egertal ). The residual phenomena occur in Elstergebirge numerous, partly strongly radioactive and CO2-containing mineral springs, which are mostly used for spa and tourist purposes. It also comes again and again to earthquake series, the so-called earthquake swarms.

Nature Spatial allocation

Geographically, is the core of the south-eastern part of the Elstergebirge Upper Vogtland. However, this ends in the Northeast already west of the Zwota and Southwest already northeast of Eger, not only beside the river itself thus has the Elstergebirge in the east, where his highest elevations, components of the Western Ore Mountains and on the southwest by the the Fichtelgebirge belonging Selb - Wunsiedler plateau.

The manual of the biogeographic division of Germany, the former German Federal Institute for Regional Studies describes the Elstergebirge as part of the Upper Vogtland, but pulls in his cards, which are used by the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation, the above-mentioned limits, creating a natural spatial Elstergebirge is defined, in particular, the highest surveys ( vrch Počátecký, high fire and Vysoký kámen ) according to popular demarcation excludes, whereby the Chapel Hill would be the highest point. Also only a few years old revised natural spatial structure of the Saxon Ministry of the Environment draws a similar south-western border of the West Ore Mountains, which approximately follows the ( rectangular ) line Gunzen Mark Neukirchen- Erlbach.

The north-eastern boundary of the Fichtelgebirge runs in the mapping of the Federal Institute for Regional Studies of immediately north of Franzensbad to the northwest over Hazlov and meets immediately west of Aš on the German border.

In the geomorphological classification of the Czech Republic, the Elstergebirge part of Smrčiny is said unit, which in turn is part of the Krušnohorská hornatina ( Erzgebirge mountain region ). Our own natural spatial unit " Halštrovské hory " ( Elstergebirge ) does not exist in the Czech Republic.