Great Glen

Great Glen (English, German " Big Valley " from Scottish Gaelic Gleann Mòr ), also known as Glen More, is a tectonic fault line runs right through Scotland and divided the Highlands of Scotland in the Grampian Mountains and the North West Highlands. The fault is seismically active. Every century there are several earthquake measuring 4 on the Richter scale.

The majority of the valley is covered by three elongated lakes: West Loch Lochy, in the middle hole Oich and east - as the most famous Scottish lake - Loch Ness. The watershed is located between Loch Lochy and Loch Oich: Hole Oich flows through the River Oich in Loch Ness, which is in turn connected by the River Ness with the eastern Bay Moray Firth. At its mouth lies Inverness, the capital of the county of Highland. The waters of Loch Lochy, however, flows in a westerly direction and flows near Fort William in the estuary Loch Linnhe. The fault is located southwest Ireland continued and Lough Foyle follows, Donegal Bay and Galway Bay. In the Irish continental shelf to form a submarine canyon.

Parallel to the rivers - - the lakes of the Great Glen with the adjacent bays Moray Firth and Loch Linnhe connects and as an east -west passage ship allows across the British Mainland in the Great Glen of the Caledonian Canal, which runs. The trench had a strategic importance, for example in the Jakobitenaufständen in the 18th century for the control of Scottish Highland clans.

There were a number of tectonic movements from the Middle Carboniferous to the early Tertiary. The leaf shift was moving left and right, and shifted over 130 km. Vertical movements have raised and eroded the north-western edge. Friction and pressure caused the formation of a 1.6 km wide zone from broken rocks. The Great Glen Fault as it is today was created by the Great Glen glacier that eroded the soft rock to break the warp. Back he had a steep glaciated valley.