Pyrenees

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Topographic map of the Pyrenees

The Pyrenees (Spanish Pirineos, Portuguese Pireneus, French Pyrenees, Basque Pirinioak, Catalan Pyrenees, Aragonese and Occitan Perines Pireneus ) is a 430 km long mountain range. They separate the Iberian Peninsula in the south from the rest of Europe in the north and lying between the Atlantic Ocean to the west ( Bay of Biscay ) and the Mediterranean Sea to the east ( Golf de Roses).

The state border between France and Spain follows the ridge substantially. In the middle of the Pyrenees lies the tiny country of Andorra.

Geography

The Pyrenees are divided into the Western or Atlantic Pyrenees, the high or central Pyrenees and the eastern Pyrenees, including the Pic du Canigou heard. The area of ​​the high Pyrenees stretches from Port de Canfranc in the west to the Val d' Aran in the east.

The highest mountain is the Pico de Aneto in Maladeta massif with over 3400 m. There are around two hundred peaks over 3000 m in the Pyrenees. The highest mountains are still glaciated, although since about the middle of the 19th century a strong retreat of glaciers can be observed. The once very impressive Ossoue Glacier on Vignemale has lost much of its former size.

Politics, History and Economics

Before colonization by Cro- Magnon man (Homo sapiens), the Spanish foothills of the Pyrenees was already inhabited by Neanderthals, as evidenced by findings in the Cova Gran de Santa Linya.

Through the Pyrenees runs the political border between France and Spain. The tiny principality of Andorra is located in the eastern Pyrenees. As the Alpine region is also the Pyrenees to a culturally connecting function between the three riparian states, which, for example, by using the same languages ​​( Catalan, Gascon and Basque) shows.

It is operated extensive grazing with sheep, cattle and goats in the summer months on the high pastures. Especially in the western Pyrenees cheeses are produced. In the vast limestone caves there are many available in which the cheese to ripen on the mountain pastures. The company produces cheese made ​​from cow's and sheep's milk, often mixed. Well-known varieties are the Ossau Iraty Brebis -Pyrénées from the Vallée d' Aspe, the Vallée d'Ossau and the adjacent Spanish Pyrenees and Pyrenean cheese produced from cow's milk in the Basque Country with its black wax coating. Also from goat's milk fresh and stored goats cheese is made.

In the foothills to run both on the French ( Irouleguy, Jurançon Corbières ) and on the Spanish side viticulture. By the middle of the 20th century played an important role in smuggling. As pack animals were used in the western Pyrenees, the pottok ponies, while the proven Merens ponies as a smuggler in the east.

Geology

The Pyrenees emerged as the Alps in front of around 50 to 100 million years ago during the Tertiary. The western Pyrenees consist mainly of limestone, while in the central Pyrenees various granites dominate. The fold mountain was covered especially during the Ice Age, with a closed ice cover. Through the Ice Age many hanging valleys and many thousands of glacial lakes have formed. With these boundary conditions may lead to large-scale devastation, such as the floods in the Pyrenees in 2013, while snow melt and heavy rains.

Fauna

On the French side live in large mixed forests up to about 1800 m altitude also some brown bears. In the high alpine areas of the Pyrenäengemse is ( isard French, Spanish Sarrio or rebeco ) to be found, but it also occurs in the Cantabrian Mountains and the Abruzzo region. Despite precautions, the local subspecies is finally extinct pyrenaica of Iberiensteinbocks in 2000 for unknown reasons. At the western end of the mountain range of the world's highly endangered European mink has its last natural occurrence in Western Europe. Although originally not native, the naturalized from the Alps marmots have very common. Rare and threatened in its existence the Pyrenean Desman, is a kind of the family of moles. The bird is about the Stone, minke, and Bonelli's eagle and goose, dirt and bearded vultures mentioned. More particularly remarkable, because most widely isolated breeding birds are ptarmigan, grouse, white-backed woodpecker, Dotterel, wall creeper, Alpine Chough, siskin, Zitronenzeisig, Ring Ouzel and Water Pipit. There are a large number of insects, especially here fall on the approximately 300 species of butterflies and grasshoppers and beetles. Among the endemic species of these mountains include the Pyrenean newt and the Mohrenfalterart Erebia gorgone.

Flora

The flora contains about 4,500 plant species, of which 150 are endemic. You are rudiments of the last great ice age: during the Pleistocene ranged many species of plants from the cold north to the warmer south, but they could not cross the Pyrenees. However, some of them fled into valleys and have become endemic in this area. Examples include the Pyrenean lily and the Pyrenean rock plate.

National Parks

There are three in the Pyrenees National Park. The oldest is located in 1917 created on the Spanish side of the National Park of Ordesa y Monte Perdido, south of the Cirque de Gavarnie. This covers an area of ​​about 156 km ². Likewise in Spain is the National Park Aigüestortes de Sant Maurici with an extension of about 141 km ², making it the smallest of the three National Parks. On the French side the range of the mountains south of the Vallee d' Aspe Lescun in the west to and including the Néouvielle massif in the east to the National Park (Parc National des Pyrenees ) was declared in 1967. This has an area of 457 km ².

Exploration of the Pyrenees

One of the leading researchers Pyrenees, the French geographer and mountaineer Franz Schrader (1844-1924), whose father had moved to the beginning of the 19th century from Magdeburg to France. He has charted several major massifs of the Pyrenees, particularly known he was for research into the Cirque de Gavarnie, at their feet in the small town he Gavarnie also buried next to another known Pyrenees researchers, Henry Russell. Schrader was the first to climb the Grand Bachimale ( 3144 m), the three-thousand was named in his honor Pic Schrader. Schrader was President of the Club Alpin Français and Knight of the Legion of Honour.