Swiss Plateau - Geography

Geography

In the north and northwest, the Swiss Plateau is sharply delimited geographically and geologically by the Jura Mountains. In the south, there is no clear border with the Alps. Usually, the rising of the terrain to altitudes above 1500 metres AMSL (lime Alps, partly sub-alpine molasse), which is very abrupt in certain places, is taken as a criterion for delimination. Occasionally the regions of the higher Swiss Plateau, especially the hills of the canton of Fribourg, the Napf region, the Töss region and parts of the Appenzell region are considered to form the Swiss Alpine foreland in a narrow sense. However, if a division into the three main regions Jura Mountains, Swiss Plateau and Alps is considered, the Alpine foreland belongs clearly to the Swiss Plateau. In the southwest, the Swiss Plateau is confined by Lake Geneva, in the northeast, by Lake Constance and the Rhine.

Geologically, the Swiss Plateau is part of a larger basin that extends beyond the border of Switzerland. At its southwestern end, in France, the plateau, in the Genevois, ends at Chambéry where Jura and Alps meet. At the other side of the Lake Constance, the plateau continues in the German and Austrian Prealps.

Within Switzerland, the Swiss Plateau has a length of about 300 km, and its width increases from the west to the east: In the Geneva region, it is about 30 km, at Bern about 50 km and in eastern Switzerland about 70 km.

Many cantons of Switzerland include a part in the Swiss Plateau. Entirely situated within the Swiss Plateau are the cantons of Zurich, Thurgau and Geneva; mostly situated within the Swiss Plateau are the cantons of Lucerne, Aargau, Solothurn, Bern, Fribourg and Vaud; small portions of the Swiss Plateau are situated in the cantons of Neuchâtel, Zug, Schwyz, St. Gallen and Schaffhausen.