Sudetes
Template:Short description Template:Infobox mountain The Sudetes (Template:IPAc-en Template:Respell), also known as the Sudeten Mountains or Sudetic Mountains, is a geomorphological subprovince of the Bohemian Massif province in Central Europe, shared by the Czech Republic, Poland and Germany. They consist mainly of mountain ranges and are the highest part of the Bohemian Massif. They stretch from the Saxon capital of Dresden in the northwest across to the region of Lower Silesia in Poland and to the city of Ostrava in the Czech Republic in the east. Geographically the Sudetes are a Mittelgebirge with some characteristics typical of high mountains.<ref name="Migon2008">Template:Cite journal</ref> Its plateaus and subtle summit relief makes the Sudetes more akin to mountains of Northern Europe than to the Alps.<ref name="Migon2008" />
In the east of the Sudetes, the Moravian Gate and Ostrava Basin separates from the Carpathian Mountains. The Sudetes' highest mountain is Sněžka (Template:Langx) at Template:Convert, which is also the highest mountain of the Czech Republic, Bohemia, Silesia, and Lower Silesian Voivodeship. It lies in the Giant Mountains on the border between the Czech Republic and Poland. Praděd (1,491 m/4,893 ft) in the Hrubý Jeseník mountains is the highest mountain of Moravia. Lusatia's highest point (1,072 m/3,517 ft) lies on Smrk mountain in the Jizera Mountains, and the Sudetes' highest mountain in Germany, which is also the country's highest mountain east of the river Elbe, is Lausche (793 m/2,600 ft) in the Lusatian Mountains. The most notable rivers rising in the Sudetes are the Elbe, Oder, Spree, Morava, Bóbr, Lusatian Neisse, Eastern Neisse, Jizera and Kwisa. The highest parts of the Sudetes are protected by national parks;<ref name="Mazurski1986" /> Karkonosze and Stołowe (Table) in Poland and Krkonoše in the Czech Republic.
In the west, the Sudetes border with the Elbe Sandstone Mountains. The westernmost point of the Sudetes lies in the Dresden Heath (Dresdner Heide), the westernmost part of the West Lusatian Hill Country and Uplands, in Dresden.
The Sudeten Germans (the German-speaking inhabitants of Czechoslovakia) as well as the Sudetenland (the border regions of Bohemia, Moravia, and Czech Silesia they inhabited) are named after the Sudetes.
EtymologyEdit
The name Sudetes is derived from Sudeti montes, a Latinization of the name Soudeta ore used in the Geographia by the Greco-Roman writer Ptolemy (Book 2, Chapter 10) Template:Circa for a range of mountains in Germania in the general region of the modern Czech Republic.
There is no consensus about which mountains he meant, and he could for example have intended the Ore Mountains, joining the modern Sudetes to their west, or even (according to Schütte) the Bohemian Forest (although this is normally considered to be equivalent to Ptolemy's Gabreta forest).<ref>Template:Citation</ref> The modern Sudetes are probably Ptolemy's Askiburgion mountains.<ref>Template:Citation</ref>
Ptolemy wrote "Σούδητα" in Greek, which is a neuter plural. Latin mons, however, is a masculine, hence Sudeti. The Latin version, and the modern geographical identification, is likely to be a scholastic innovation, as it is not attested in classical Latin literature. The meaning of the name is not known. In one hypothetical derivation, it means Mountains of Wild Boars, relying on Indo-European *su-, "pig". A better etymology perhaps is from Latin sudis, plural sudes, "spines", which can be used of spiny fish or spiny terrain.
SubdivisionsEdit
Template:See also The Sudetes are usually divided into:
- Eastern Sudetes, in the Czech Republic and Poland
- Central Sudetes, in the Czech Republic and Poland
- Western Sudetes, in Germany, the Czech Republic and Poland
- Frýdlant Hills
- Giant Mountains with Mt. Sněžka, Template:Convert
- Giant Mountains Foothills
- Ještěd–Kozákov Ridge
- Jizera Mountains
- Kaczawskie Mountains
- Kaczawskie Foothills
- Lusatian Mountains
- Lusatian Highlands
- Lusatian Gefilde
- West Lusatian Foothills
- East Lusatian Foothills
- Rudawy Janowickie
- Jelenia Góra Valley
- Zittau Basin
- Sudeten Foreland
High Sudetes (Template:Langx, Template:Langx, Template:Langx) is together name for the ranges of Giant Mountains, Hrubý Jeseník and Králický Sněžník Mountains.
ClimateEdit
The highest mountains, those located along the Czech–Polish border have annual precipitations around Template:Convert.<ref name="trel2008" /> The Table Mountains, which reach Template:Convert in elevation, have precipitations ranging from Template:Convert at lower locations to Template:Convert in the upper parts, with July being the rainiest month. Snow cover at the Table Mountains typically last 70 to 95 days depending on altitude.<ref name="Glinaetal2016">Template:Cite journal</ref>
VegetationEdit
Settlement, logging and clearance has left forest pockets in the foothills with dense and continuous forest being found in the upper parts of the mountains.<ref name="Mazurski1986" /> Due to logging in the last centuries little remains of the broad-leaf trees like beech, sycamore, ash and littleleaf linden that were once common in the Sudetes. Instead Norway spruce was planted in their place in the early 19th century, in some places amounting to monocultures.<ref name="Mazurski1986" /> To provide more space for spruce plantations various peatlands were drained in the 19th and 20th century.<ref name="Glinaetal2016"/> Some spruce plantations have suffered severe damage as the seeds used came from lowland specimens that were not adapted to mountain conditions.<ref name="Mazurski1986" /> Silver fir grow naturally in the Sudetes being more widespread in past times, before clearance since the Late Middle Ages and subsequent industrial pollution reduced the stands.<ref name="Barz" />
Many arctic-alpine and alpine vascular plants have a disjunct distribution being notably absent from the central Sudetes despite suitable habitats. Possibly this is the result a warm period during the Holocene (last 10,000 years) which wiped out cold-adapted vascular plants in the medium-sized mountains of the central Sudetes where there was no higher ground that could serve as refugia.<ref name="KwiaKra2016">Template:Cite journal</ref>Template:Efn-ua Besides altitude the distribution of some alpine plants is influenced by soil. This is the case of Aster alpinus that grows preferentially on calcareous ground.<ref name="KwiaKra2016" /> Other alpine plants such as Cardamine amara, Epilobium anagallidifolium, Luzula sudetica and Solidago virgaurea occur beyond their altitudinal zonation in very humid areas.<ref name="KwiaKra2016" />
Peatlands are common in the mountains occurring on high plateaus or in valley bottoms. Fens occur at slopes.<ref name="Glinaetal2016" />
Timber lineEdit
The higher mountains of the Sudetes lie above the timber line which is made up of Norway spruce.<ref name="trel2008">Template:Cite journal</ref><ref name="Krizek2007" /> Spruces in wind-exposed areas display features such as flag tree disposition of branches, tilted stems and elongated stem cross sections.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Forest-free areas above the timber line have increased historically by deforestation<ref name="KwiaKra2016" /> yet lowering of the timber line by human activity is minimal.<ref name="Krizek2007" /> Areas above the timber line appear discontinuously as "islands" in the Sudetes.<ref name="trel2008" /> In the Giant Mountains the timber line lies at c. 1230 m a.s.l. while to the southeast in the Hrubý Jeseník mountains it lie at c. 1310 m a.s.l.<ref name="trel2008" /> Part of the Hrubý Jeseník mountains have been above the timber line for no less than 5000 years.<ref name="trel2008" /> Mountains rise considerably above the timber line, at most 400 m, a characteristic that sets the Sudetes apart from other Mittelgebirge of Central Europe.<ref name="Migon2008" />
GeologyEdit
Geological research has been hampered by the multinational geography of the Sudetes with and the limitation of studies to state boundaries.<ref name="RozyMig2017" />Template:Efn-ua
BedrockEdit
The igneous and metamorphic rocks of the Sudetes originated during the Variscan orogeny and its aftermath.<ref name="Migon1996" /> The Sudetes are the northeasternmost accessible part of Variscan orogen as in the North European Plain the orogen is buried beneath sediments.<ref name="Mazuretal2006">Template:Cite journal</ref> Plate tectonic movements during the Variscan orogeny assembled together four major and two to three lesser tectonostratigraphic terranes.<ref name="MazurAlek2002" />Template:Efn-ua The assemblage of the terranes ought to have involved the closure of at least two ocean basins containing oceanic crust and marine sediments.<ref name="TM2008" /> This is reflected in the ophiolites, MORB-basalts, blueschists and eclogites that occur in-between terranes.<ref name="MazurAlek2002">Template:Cite journal</ref> Various terranes of the Sudetes are likely extensions of the Armorican terrane while other terranes may be the fringes of the ancient Baltica continent.<ref name="Mazuretal2006" /> One possibility for the amalgamation of terranes in the Sudetes is that the Góry Sowie-Kłodzko terrane collided with the Orlica-Śnieżnik terrane causing the closure of a small oceanic basin. This event led to obduction of the Central Sudetic ophiolite in the Devonian period. In the Early Carboniferous the joint Góry Sowie-Kłodzko-Orlica-Śnieżnik terrane collided with the Brunovistulian terrane. This last terrane was part of the Old Red Continent and could correspond either to Baltica or the eastern tip of the narrow Avalonia terrane. Also by the Early Carboniferous the Saxothuringian terrane collided with the Góry Sowie-Kłodzko-Orlica-Śnieżnik terrane closing the Rheic Ocean.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
Once the main phase of deformation of the orogeny was over basins that had formed in-between metamorphic rock massifs were filled by sedimentary rock in the Devonian and Carboniferous periods.<ref name="TM2008">Template:Cite book</ref> During and after sedimentation large granitic plutons intruded the crust. Viewed in a map today these plutons make up about 15% the Sudetes.<ref name="Migon1996">Template:Cite journal</ref><ref name="TM2008" /> Granites are of S-type.<ref name="Mazuretal2006" /> The granites and grantic-gneisses of Izera in the west Sudetes are disassociated from orogeny and thought to have formed during rifting along a passive continental margin.<ref name="Obercetal2005">Template:Cite journal</ref>Template:Efn-ua The Karkonosze Granite, also in the west Sudetes, have been dated to have formed c. 318 million years ago at the beginning of the Variscan orogeny.<ref name="Awdanetal2010">Template:Cite journal</ref> The Karkonosze Granite is intruded by somewhat younger lamprophyre dykes.<ref name="Awdanetal2010" />
A NW-SE to WNW-ESE oriented strike-slip fault —the Intra-Sudetic fault— runs through the length of the Sudetes.<ref name="TM2008" /> The Intra-Sudetic fault is parallel with the Upper Elbe fault and Middle Oder fault.<ref name="Mazuretal2006" /> Other main faults at the sudetes are also NW-SE oriented, dextral and of strike slip type. These include the Tłumaczów-Sienna Fault and the Marginal Sudetic Fault.<ref name="Oberc1991">Template:Cite journal</ref>
Volcanism and thermal watersEdit
There are remnants of lava flows and volcanic plugs in the Sudetes.<ref name="Berkeetal2002" /> The volcanic rocks making up these outcrops are of mafic chemistry and include basanite and represent episodes of volcanism in the Oligocene and Miocene periods.<ref name="Berkeetal2002" />Template:Efn-ua Volcanism affected not only the Sudetes but also parts of the Sudetic foreland being part of a SW-NE oriented Bohemo-Silesian Belt of volcanic rocks.<ref name="Berkeetal2002">Template:Cite journal</ref> Mantle xenoliths have been recovered from the lavas of a volcano at Ještěd-Kozákov Ridge in the Czech western Sudetes.<ref name="Ackermanetal2012">Template:Cite journal</ref> These pyroxenite xenoliths arrived to surface from approximate depths of 35, 70 and 73 km and indicate a complex history for the mantle beneath the Sudetes.<ref name="Ackermanetal2012" />
There are thermal springs in the Sudetes with measured temperatures of 29 to 44 °C. Drilling has revealed the existence of waters at 87 °C at depths of 2000 m. These modern waters are believed to be associated to the Late Cenozoic volcanism in Central Europe.<ref>Template:Cite conference</ref>
Uplift and landformsEdit
The Sudetes forms the NE border of the Bohemian Massif.<ref name="Mazuretal2006" /> In detail the Sudetes is made up of a series of massifs that are rectangular and rhomboid in plan view.<ref name="Piotr2011" /> These mountains corresponds to horsts and domes separated by basins, including grabens.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> The mountains took their present form after the Late Mesozoic retreat of the seas from the area which left the Sudetes subject to denudation for at least 65 million years.<ref name="Piotr2011" /> This meant that during the Late Cretaceous and Early Cenozoic 8 to 4 km of rock was eroded from the top of what is now the Sudetes.<ref name="Aramowiczetal2006">Template:Cite journal</ref> Concurrently with the Cenozoic denudation the climate cooled due to the northward drift of Europe. The collision between Africa and Europe has resulted in the deformation and uplift of the Sudetes.<ref name="Piotr2011">Template:Cite journal</ref> As such the uplift is related to the contemporary rise of the Alps and Carpathians.<ref name="Piotr2011" /><ref name="RozyMig2017">Template:Cite journal</ref>Template:Efn-ua The acceleration of uplift of the Sudetes occurred during the Middle Miocene because of the Bohemian Massif's growth.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Uplift was accomplished by the creation or reactivation of numerous faults leading to a reshaping of the relief by renewed erosion.<ref name="Migon1996" /> Various "hanging valleys" attest to this uplift.<ref name="RozyMig2017" /> Block tectonics has uplifted or sunken crustal blocks. While the Late Cenozoic uplift has uplifted the Sudetes as a whole some grabens precede this uplift.<ref name="Oberc1991" />
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Weathering during the Cenozoic led to the formation of an etchplain in parts of Sudetes. While this etchplain has been eroded various landforms and weathering mantles have been suggested to attest its former existence.<ref name="Migon1996" /> At present the mountain range shows a remarkable diversity of landforms.<ref name="Piotr2011" /> Some of the landforms present are escarpments, inselbergs, bornhardts, granitic domes, tors, flared slopes and weathering pits.<ref name="Migon1996" /> Various escarpments have originated from faults and may reach heights of up to 500 m.<ref name="RozyMig2017" /> To the northeast the Sudetes is separated from the Sudetic foreland by a sharp mountain front made up of an escarpment linked to the Sudetic Marginal Fault.<ref name="ML1998" /> Near Kaczawa this escarpment reaches 80 to 120 m in height. The relative influence of Pliocene-Quaternary tectonic movements and erosion in shaping the mountain landscape may vary along the northern front of the Sudetes.<ref name="ML1998">Template:Cite journal</ref>
During the Quaternary glaciations the Giant Mountains was the most glaciated part of the Sudetes. Evidence of this are its glacial cirques and the glacial valleys that develop next to it.<ref name="Migon2008" /> The precise timing of the glaciations in the Sudetes is poorly constrained.<ref name="Migon2008" /> Parts of the Sudetes remained free from glacier ice developing permafrost soils and periglacial landforms such as rock glaciers, nivation hollows, patterned ground, blockfields, solifluction landforms, blockstreams, tors and cryoplanation terraces.<ref name="Krizek2007">Template:Cite book</ref> The occurrence or not of these periglacial landforms depends on altitude, the steepness and direction of slopes and the underlying rock type.<ref name="Krizek2007" />
Mass wastingEdit
Other than debris flows there is little contemporary mass wasting in the mountains.<ref name="Migon2008" /> Avalanches are common in the Sudetes.<ref name="Migon2008" />
HistoryEdit
The area around the Sudetes had by the 12th century been relatively densely settled<ref name="Mazurski1986" /> with agriculture and settlements expanding further in the High Middle Ages from the 13th century onward.<ref name="Glinaetal2016" /> The majority of settlers were Germans from neighbouring Silesia, founding typical Waldhufendörfer.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> As this trend went on thinning of forest and deforestation had turned clearly unsustainable by the 14th century.<ref name="Barz">Template:Cite report</ref> In the 15th and 16th centuries agriculture had reached the inner part of Table Mountains in the Central Sudetes.<ref name="Mazurski1986" /> Destruction and degradation of the Sudetes forest peaked in the 16th and 17th centuries<ref name="Barz" /> with demand of firewood coming from glasshouses that operated through the area in the early modern period.<ref name="Mazurski1986">Template:Cite journal</ref>
Some limited form of forest management begun in the 18th century<ref name="Barz" /> while in the industrial age demand for firewood was sustained by metallurgic industries in the settlements and cities around the mountains.<ref name="Mazurski1986" /> In the 19th century the Central Sudetes had an economic boom with sandstone quarrying and a flourishing tourism industry centered on the natural scenery. Despite this there was at least since the 1880s a trend of depopulation of villages and hamlets which continued into the 20th century.<ref name="MigonLatocha2013" /> Since World War II various areas that were cleared of forest have been re-naturalized.<ref name="MigonLatocha2013" /> Industrial activity across Europe has caused considerable damage to the forests as acid rain and heavy metals has arrived with westerly and southwesterly winds.<ref name="Mazurski1986" /> Silver firs have proven particularly vulnerable to industrial soil contamination.<ref name="Barz" />
Sudetes and "Sudetenland"Edit
After World War I, the name Sudetenland came into use to describe areas of the First Czechoslovak Republic with large ethnic German populations. In 1918, the short-lived rump state of German-Austria proclaimed a Province of the Sudetenland in northern Moravia and Austrian Silesia around the city of Opava (Troppau).
The term was used in a wider sense when on 1 October 1933 Konrad Henlein founded the Sudeten German Party and in Nazi German parlance Sudetendeutsche (Sudeten Germans) referred to all autochthonous ethnic Germans in Czechoslovakia. They were heavily clustered in the entire mountainous periphery of Czechoslovakia—not only in the former Moravian Provinz Sudetenland but also along the northwestern Bohemian borderlands with German Lower Silesia, Saxony and Bavaria, in an area formerly called German Bohemia. In total, the German minority population of interwar Czechoslovakia numbered around 20% of the total national population.
Sparking the Sudeten Crisis, Adolf Hitler got his future enemies Britain and France to concede the Sudetenland with most of the Czechoslovak border fortifications in the 1938 Munich Agreement, leaving the remainder of Czechoslovakia shorn of its natural borders and buffer zone, finally occupied by Germany in March 1939. After being annexed by Nazi Germany, much of the region was redesignated as the Reichsgau Sudetenland.
After World War II, most of the previous population of the Sudetes was forcibly expelled on the basis of the Potsdam Agreement and the Beneš decrees, and the region was resettled by new Polish and Czechoslovak citizens. A considerable proportion of the Czechoslovak populace thereafter strongly objected to the use of the term Sudety. In the Czech Republic the designation Krkonošsko-jesenická subprovincie is used in academic context and usually only the discrete Czech names for the individual mountain ranges (e.g. Giant Mountains) appear, as under Subdivisions above.
Economy and tourismEdit
Part of the economy of the Sudetes is dedicated to tourism. Coal mining towns like Wałbrzych have re-oriented their economies towards tourism since the decline of mining in the 1980s.<ref name="Mazurski">Template:Cite journal</ref> As of 2000 scholar Krzysztof R. Mazurski judged that the Sudetes, much like Poland's Baltic coast and the Carpathians, were unlikely to attract much foreign tourism.<ref name="Mazurski" /> Sandstone was quarried in Sudetes during the 19th and 20th centuries.<ref name="MigonLatocha2013">Template:Cite journal</ref> Likewise volcanic rock has also been quarried<ref name="Berkeetal2002" /> to such degree untouched volcanoes are scarce.<ref name="Mig2015">Template:Cite journal</ref> Sandstone labyrinths have been a notable tourist attraction since the 19th century with considerable investments being done in projecting trails some of which involve rock engineering.<ref name="MigonLatocha2013" />
In the Sudetes there are several spa towns with sanatoria: Jeseník, Velké Losiny, Bludov, Lipová-lázně, Janské Lázně and Karlova Studánka in the Czech Republic, and Kudowa-Zdrój, Polanica-Zdrój, Duszniki-Zdrój, Lądek-Zdrój and Jedlina-Zdrój in Poland. In many places the tourist base is developed – hotels, guest houses and ski infrastructure.
The nearest international airports are Dresden Airport in Dresden and Wrocław Airport in Wrocław.
Notable townsEdit
Towns in this area with more than 10,000 inhabitants include:
- Poland
- Bielawa
- Bogatynia
- Boguszów-Gorce
- Dzierżoniów
- Głuchołazy
- Jawor
- Jelenia Góra
- Kamienna Góra
- Kłodzko
- Kowary
- Lubań
- Nowa Ruda
- Strzegom
- Świdnica
- Świebodzice
- Wałbrzych
- Ząbkowice Śląskie
- Zgorzelec
- Czech Republic
- Germany
- Bautzen
- Bischofswerda
- Dresden
- Ebersbach-Neugersdorf
- Görlitz
- Kamenz
- Löbau
- Neustadt in Sachsen
- Radeberg
- Zittau
GalleryEdit
- Śnieżne Kotły, Karkonosze.jpg
- Pielgrzymy.jpg
- SzczeliniecWielki.jpg
"Hell" on Szczeliniec Wielki, Table Mountains
- Sokolik-FilarZachodni.JPG
- Widok na Sokole Góry.JPG
Góry Sokole
- Masyw Starościnskich Skał.JPG
- MG 2763-HDR (tz).jpg
- Szczeliniec Wielki @.jpg
- Karkonoski Park Narodowy – Wodospad Kamieńczyka 02.jpg
- Widok z Zygmuntowki.jpg
A view from Zygmuntówka refuge, Owl Mountain range (Góry Sowie)
- 2006.02 Organy1.jpg
- Trojmezí CZ-PL-DE.jpg
Tripoint of Germany, Czech Republic, and Poland in the Eastern Upper Lusatia
- Blick auf den Berg Oybin in Zittauer Gebirge... 2H1A9113WI.jpg
Monastery ruins on the Oybin
- Luzicke hory Hvozd Oybin.jpg
Zittau Mountains with the Hochwald mountain
- Töpfer1.jpg
Rock Gate (Felsentor)
- Ještěd , letecký pohled.jpg
- Raspenava - pohled od křížku u rybníka Netík na severní svahy Jizerských hor (Krásná Máří, Svinské čelo).jpg
View towards the Jizerskohorské bučiny National Nature Reserve
- 2016 Wodospad Wilczki w Międzygórzu 01.jpg
See alsoEdit
- Chojnik
- Crown of Polish Mountains
- Main Sudetes Trail
- Grüssau Abbey
- Izera railway
- Kłodzko Fortress
- Książ
- Mount Ślęża
- Niesytno Castle
- Tourism in Poland
- Wambierzyce
- Wilczka Falls Nature Reserve
NotesEdit
ReferencesEdit
External linksEdit
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