Vosges Mountains - Geography

Geography

The elongated massif is divided south to north into three sections:

• the Higher Vosges (Hautes Vosges), extending in the southern part of the range from Belfort to the valley of the Bruche. The rounded summits of the Hautes Vosges are called ballons in French or "balloons".
• the sandstoned Vosges (50 km, or 31 miles), between the Permian Basin of Saint-Die including the Devon-Dinantian volcanic massif of Schirmeck-Moyenmoutier and the Col de Saverne
• the Lower Vosges (48 km, or 30 miles), between the Col de Saverne and the source of the Lauter.

In addition, the term "Central Vosges" is used to designate the various lines of summits, especially those above 1000 metres in elevation. The French department of Vosges is named after the range.

From a geological point of view, a graben in the beginning of the Tertiary area caused the formation of Alsace and the uplift of the plates of the Vosges now in eastern France and the Black Forest now in Germany. Strictly speaking scientifically, the Vosges Mountains are not mountains as such, but rather the western edge of the unfinished Alsatian graben, stretching continuously as part of the larger Tertiary formations. Erosive glacial action was the primary means by which the representative highland massif feature developed.

Geographically, the Vosges Mountains are located wholly in France far above the Col de Saverne separating them from the Palatinate Forest in Germany, which logically continues the same Vosges geologic structure but traditionally receives this different name for historical and political reasons.

The Vosges in their southern and central parts are called the Hautes Vosges. These consist of a large Carboniferous mountain eroded just before the Permian era with gneiss, granites, porphyritic masses or other volcanic intrusions. but in the north, south and west, there places less eroded by glaciers, and here Vosges Triassic and Permian red sandstone remains in large beds. The grès vosgien, (a French name for a Triassic rose sandstone) are embedded sometimes up to more than 500 metres in thickness. The Lower Vosges in north are dislocated plates of various sandstones, ranging from 300 to 600 metres (1000 to 1850 ft.) high.

The highest points are located in the Hautes Vosges: the Grand Ballon in ancient times called Ballon de Guebwiller or Ballon de Murbach rises to 1424 m (4,670 ft), the Storckenkopf to 1366 m (4,481 ft), the Hohneck to 1364 m (4,475 ft), and the Ballon d'Alsace to 1247 m (4,091 ft). The Col de Saales, between the Higher and Central Vosges, reaches nearly 579 m (1,900 ft), both lower and narrower than the Higher Vosges, with Mont Donon (1008 m, 3307 ft.) being the highest point of this Nordic section.

There is a remarkable similarity between the Vosges and the corresponding range of the Black Forest on the other side of the Rhine: both lie within the same degrees of latitude, have similar geological formations and are characterized by forests on their lower slopes, above which are open pastures and rounded summits of a rather uniform altitude; furthermore, both exhibit steeper slopes towards the Rhine and a more gradual descent on the other side. This occurs because both the Vosges and the Black Forest were formed by isostatic uplift, in a response to the opening of the Rhine Graben. The Rhine Graben is a major extensional basin. When such basins form, the thinning of the crust causes uplift immediately adjacent to the basin. The amount of uplift decreases with distance from the basin, causing the highest range of peaks to be immediately adjacent to the basin, and the increasingly lower mountains to stretch away from the basin.