Gargano National Park
The Gargano National Park Parco nazionale del Gargano, or is a national park in Italy on Gargano in Apulia (Italy). It is famous for its ancient pine forests. It includes the nature reserve Foresta Umbra ( Italian, dark forest, shady forest ' ) a, which is dominated by beech forests. The area of the National Park covers an area of nearly 120,000 hectares.
Foresta Umbra
The Foresta Umbra is divided into four more or less concentric zones: Zone A, Zone B, Zone C and Zone D.
- Zone D is generally open to visitors.
- Zone C is closed to traffic but open to pedestrians;
- Zone B is the actual nature reserve Foresta Umbra, where it is strictly forbidden to disturb the animal and plant life or damage.
- Zone A, the inaccessible heart of the forest, is completely closed for tourists and walkers and serves as a breathing space for the fauna of Gargano.
The nature reserve Foresta Umbra is about 400 hectares in size.
Hydrographic
On the Gargano current does not flow and there is only a sparse network of streams for surface drainage. An exception is a small area with a total area of about 11,000 ha in the northern part of the peninsula, where there are a few larger streams. You are inflows for the Lago di Varano and the Lago di Lesina.
In the karst landscape of the Gargano 3/4 of the precipitation seeps directly. There are two different groundwater streams, one of which (main pitch) affects the entire headland, while the second (secondary layer) is limited to the range of Vico del Gargano and Gargano Ischitella in the north of the peninsula.
In the north- west of the nature reserve, there are two lakes:
- The Lago di Lesina is a lagoon 24.4 km long and 2.4 km wide and has a circumference of nearly 50 km. It is navigable through two channels, the Acquarotta and Schiapparo. The channels connecting the lagoon with the Adriatic, from which the lake is separated by a dune. The fish-rich lake has brackish water because it is fed by mountain streams from the highlands with fresh water.
- The Lago di Varano, also a lagoon, is the largest lake in southern Italy ( 60.5 km ²). From the sea, it is a long sandy spit separated by 10 km, which thrives on a dense forest of pines, eucalyptus trees and mastic. Also, the Varano is a brackish lake, which is fed by many underground freshwater sources, while salt water from the Adriatic Sea is fed through the channels Foce Varano and Foce Capoiale. The lake is famous for its abundance of fish, especially eels, and mussels.
Communities
The places in the territory of the Foresta Umbra are: