Belgium
|
|
BELGIUM
Landscapes for living! |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Bruges, Rozenhoedkaai
|
All medieval cities of the Low Countries originated along waterways as means for transport and communication. Their location is further controlled by additional geological-geomorphological factors such as change in soil type and hence in vegetation and agricultural produce, sandy elevations due to river dunes or narrowing alluvial plain facilitating river crossings and protecting against floods, or changes in hydrographic regime such as landward limits of tidal currents or confluences necessitating transshipment or change from fluvial to overland transport.
Bruges benefited from its position at the contact between interior Flanders, standing on Tertiary upland with a thin veneer of coversands, and maritime Flanders on fertile Quaternary Polder deposits, with quick access to the North Sea by the Zwin tidal channel. Silting of the Zwin and landward ingression of the Honte tidal channel during the 15th-16th centuries led to the decline of Bruges and the rise of Antwerp harbour further inland. The economic decline of Bruges resulted in a unique preservation of its medieval architecture. |
|
Photo: © Toerisme Brugge
|
|
|
|
The Sentry (la Sentinelle in French)
Area: Wallonia, Ardenne, River Aisne valley
Locality: Villers-Ste-Gertrude
Emsian conglomeratic beds made up of quartz
and sandstone boulders with reddish cement.
|
|
|
|
The Rocks of Freyr
Area: Wallonia, Ardenne, River Meuse valley
Locality: Dinant (Anseremme)
Tournaisian and Visean limestones forming a cliff of
maximum 120 m high and used by climbers as training centre.
|
|
|
|
The Fondry des Chiens
Area: Wallonia, Fagne
Locality: Nismes
Givetian limestones were karstified during the Cenozoic below a cover of Oligocene sands (cryptokarst). Iron was leached by infiltration waters and reprecipitated as limonitic bodies at the bottom of the karstic depression. These limonitic sands were completely removed by human activity.
|
|
|
|
|
The Walgrappe Syncline
Area: Wallonia, Ardenne, River Meuse valley
Locality: Lustin
Syncline made up of centimetric to decimetric thick layers of Famennian sandstones exploited as aggregate. Here, the structure has not imposed its shape to the landscape as the syncline coincides with a hill.
|
|
|
|
The Bayard Rock
Area: Wallonia, Ardenne, River Meuse valley
Locality: Dinant
Upright Tournaisian limestone beds with cherts and microbreccias. These rocks are made up from sediments deposited on the slopes surrounding Waulsortian reefs. They were folded during the Variscan orogeny, but only the vertical flank of a syncline is visible on the picture.
|
|
|
|
The Rocks of Chamia
Area: Wallonia, Ardenne, River Meuse valley
Locality: Waulsort
Cliff is made up of Tournaisian dark grey crinoidal limestones, very well stratified in their lower part, and massive in their upper part. A thrust fault is underlined by the contrast between rock and vegetation.
|
| |
Back to map of Europe
Photo credits: Léon Dejonghe