Palatine Watershed

The Palatine main watershed is in the Palatinate, the watershed between the upper Rhine and the Middle Rhine, the two successive sections of the Rhine, the touch or flow through the state of Rhineland- Palatinate.

In southern and central Palatinate Forest, the effect of Palatine main watershed is particularly clear. There she separates the basins of its four major drainage systems in eastern and western range: Said at the headwaters Wieslauter Lauter, the Queich and Speyerbach flow eastward directly to the Upper Rhine, the Schwarzbach collects the water from the Western Palatinate Forest and sends it over blew, Saar and Moselle to the Middle Rhine.

Course

Southern and central part

In the southern Palatinate Forest, the German part of the Wasgau, the Palatine main watershed begins on the French border in the area of ​​alder head ( 473 m above sea level. NHN ), where she continued the watershed of the northern Vosges. Always about from southwest to northeast, they will first east of Pirmasens Eppenbrunn and past the Great Schiffelskopf ( 457 m) and reaches the Gräfensteiner country. From there it runs to the mighty head ( 606 m) in the Middle Franconia pasture where a few miles to the hamlet of Locust Cross ( 470 m ) still one of the highest settlements in the Palatinate Forest, exactly on the Palatine main watershed. This then reaches in the Lower Franconia grazing the area west of Waldleiningen.

Northern part

For the remainder of the Palatine main watershed there are two possibilities; depending on whether the mouth of the Nahe near Bingen is still attributed to the Upper Rhine or even to the Middle Rhine, the main watershed runs south or east of the catchment area nearby.

In the first, the case usually adopted, the main watershed is the same as the watershed of the Schwarzbach river and its tributaries (primarily Moosalb, Rodalb, Wall half and Hornbach) in the near Creek Glan. The watershed extends from the Lower Franconia pasture to the west by the Empire in the Great Forest Humberg (430 m) over the area of ​​the Great House Mountain (471 m) between Kaiserslautern and Landstuhl. On the Sickinger Höhe it passes close by the north edge to the border at Saarland Homburg.

In rare postulated second case, the main watershed of the Lower Franconia pasture later running north continues northeast. She separates the catchment area of ​​close in the West, belong to the Lauter ( local forest Louder), Alsenz and Appel stream from the sources smaller left upper Rhine tributaries, namely Isenach, Corner Brook, Rein and Pfrimm. From the stump forest in northern Palatinate Forest, the main watershed changes in the North Palatine Uplands, whose highest peak, Thunder Mountain ( 686.5 m), it passes immediately to the west of the summit. North of Kirchheimbolanden in Orbis (327 m), it leaves between the source of the Selz, which flows to the Upper Rhine and the upper reaches of the near Creek Wiesbach the Palatinate Rheinhessen out.

Altitude

In the south of the Palatine main watershed achieved heights below 500 m, its highest points are in the middle Palatinate Forest northwest of the Hort head with 591 m and near Eschkopf and Mosisberg with each 596m above sea level. NHN. The two possible branches to the north differ in altitude considerably: The westward road is well below 500 m. The northern branch has at Thunder Mountain to more than 600 m, and from there decreases its height in the last eight kilometers to the Rhine-Hessian border on just over 300 m.