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14-876: It forms part of the northern perimeter of the Bohemian Massif and comprises Saxon Switzerland , the German part of the Elbe Sandstone Mountains and the Zittau Hills , a small section of the Lusatian Mountains on German soil. Because the boundary between the Elbe Sandstone Mountains and the Lusatian Uplands is on Czech territory, the two natural regions are physically separated. At the beginning of

28-433: A fold and thrust belt, the belt propagates into its foreland. New thrusts develop at the front of the belt, folding the older thrusts that have become inactive. This sequential propagation of thrusts into the foreland is the most common. Thrusts that form within the belt rather than at the thrust front are known as "out-of-sequence". In map view, fold and thrust belts are generally sinuous rather than completely linear. Where

42-717: A number of mittelgebirges and consists of crystalline rocks, which are older than the Permian (more than 300 million years old) and therefore deformed during the Variscan Orogeny . Parts of the Sudetes within the Bohemian Massif, Giant Mountains in particular, stand out from the ordinary mittelgebirge pattern by having up to four distinct levels of altitudinal zonation , glacial cirques , small periglacial landforms and an elevation significantly above

56-643: The Rhenohercynian Zone , have more ore deposits. On the other hand, the Bohemian massif has many quarries where granite , granodiorite and diorite are won for use as decorative building stone. 50°08′N 14°59′E  /  50.133°N 14.983°E  / 50.133; 14.983 Fold and thrust belt A fold and thrust belt (FTB) is a series of mountainous foothills adjacent to an orogenic belt , which forms due to contractional tectonics . Fold and thrust belts commonly form in

70-407: The forelands adjacent to major orogens as deformation propagates outwards. Fold and thrust belts usually comprise both folds and thrust faults , commonly interrelated. They are commonly also known as thrust-and-fold belts, or simply thrust-fold belts. Fold and thrust belts are formed of a series of sub-parallel thrust sheets, separated by major thrust faults. As the total shortening increases in

84-607: The loess landscapes to the east and west into the natural region of Upper Lusatia ; to the west the new major unit merges into the Ore Mountains and the Vogtland . The Lusatian Mountains are not, however, built of chalk sandstone, but descend northwards and form the eastern part of the Saxon Uplands together with the 'real' chalk sandstone region. The Saxon-Bohemian Chalk Sandstone Region, according to Meynen,

98-483: The timber line . The Bohemian Massif is a province within the Hercynian Forest subsystem. It borders with four provinces: Western Carpathians on the east, Eastern Alps on the south, North European Plain on the north, and Central Uplands on the west. The Bohemian Massif is further divided into six subprovinces: The landscapes in the Bohemian Massif are mostly dominated by rolling hills. North of

112-718: The 21st century, the working group for Ecological Balance and Regional Character in the Saxon Academy of Sciences in Leipzig grouped all mountain and hill areas in the Saxon-Bohemian border region into a single geographical unit known as the Saxon Highlands and Uplands . This includes the Lusatian Mountains sandwiched between the Zittau Hills and Saxon Switzerland, which had been grouped by Meynen with

126-474: The Bohemian Massif was formed during the Variscan Orogeny . The Variscan Orogeny was a phase of mountain building and accretion of terranes that resulted from the closing of the Rheic Ocean when the two paleocontinents Gondwana (in the south) and Laurussia (in the north) collided. Most of the Bohemian Massif is often supposed to belong to a terrane called Cadomia or Armorica , which also included

140-677: The exception of Variscan massifs like the Bohemian Massif. The basement rocks and terranes of the Bohemian Massif are tectonically part of three main structural zones, which differ in metamorphic degrees, lithologies and tectonic styles. This tectonic subdivision was formed during the Variscan Orogeny. Unlike other Variscan massifs in Central Europe the Bohemian Massif is not very rich in ores . The Harz Mountains further north in Germany, which are geologically part of

154-729: The other Variscan mittelgebirges of Central Europe, the valleys are more irregular and less pronounced as in the relatively young fold and thrust belt of the Alps . The plateaus are orographically more similar in morphology. Water gaps in the Bohemian Massif are the Wachau , the Strudengau and the valley of the Danube from Vilshofen over Passau and the Schlögener Schlinge till Aschach . The internal tectonic structure of

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168-578: The river Danube the topography is characterized by gentle valleys and broad, flat ridges and hilltops. The highest peaks on the Czech-Austrian borderline are the Plöckenstein (Plechý, 1,378 m) and Sternstein (1,125 m). The bedrock of acid gneiss and granite is weathered to brown soil ( cambisols ). In flat areas and valleys the groundwater had more influence on soil formation ; in such places gley soils may be found too. As in

182-546: The terranes of the Armorican Massif in western France. This supposedly formed a microcontinent that became sandwiched between the large continental masses north and south. The result of the Variscan Orogeny was that almost all continental mass became united in a supercontinent called Pangaea . From the Permian period onward the Variscan mountain belt eroded and became partly covered by younger sediments , with

196-615: Was divided as follows (in brackets: natural regions according to the BfN ): Bohemian Massif The Bohemian Massif ( Czech : Česká vysočina or Český masiv , German : Böhmische Masse or Böhmisches Massiv ) is a geomorphological province in Central Europe . It is a large massif stretching over most of the Czech Republic , eastern Germany , southern Poland and northern Austria . The massif encompasses

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