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Central Balkan National Park
The Central Balkan National Park ( bg, Национален парк Централен Балкан) lies in the heart of Bulgaria, nestled in the central and higher portions of the Balkan Mountains. Its altitude varies from 550 m. near the town of Karlovo to 2376 m. at Botev Peak, the highest summit in the mountain range. It was established on 31 October 1991. The Central Balkan National Park is the third largest protected territory in Bulgaria, spanning an area of 716.69 km² with total length of 85 km from the west to the east and an average width of 10 km. It occupies territory from 5 of the 28 provinces of the country: Lovech, Gabrovo, Sofia, Plovdiv and Stara Zagora. The national park includes nine nature reserves covering 28% of its territory: Boatin, Tsarichina, Kozya Stena, Steneto, Severen Dzhendem, Peeshti Skali, Sokolna, Dzhendema and Stara Reka. The Central Balkan National Park is one of the largest and most valuable of the protected areas in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Balkan Mountains
The Balkan mountain range (, , known locally also as Stara planina) is a mountain range in the eastern part of the Balkan Peninsula in Southeastern Europe. The range is conventionally taken to begin at the peak of Vrashka Chuka on the border between Bulgaria and Serbia. It then runs for about , first in a south-easterly direction along the border, then eastward across Bulgaria, forming a natural barrier between the northern and southern halves of the country, before finally reaching the Black Sea at Cape Emine. The mountains reach their highest point with Botev Peak at . In much of the central and eastern sections, the summit forms the watershed between the drainage basins of the Black Sea and the Aegean. A prominent gap in the mountains is formed by the sometimes narrow Iskar Gorge, a few miles north of the Bulgarian capital, Sofia. The karst relief determines the large number of caves, including Magura, featuring the most important and extended European post-Palaeolithic cave ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dzhendema
Dzhendema or Djendema ( bg, Джендема ) is an area in the Balkan Mountains, Balkan mountain range in Bulgaria. The Southern Dzhendem, or just Dzhendema, occupies the southern slopes of Botev Peak, Mount Botev . It was established as reserve on March 28, 1953. Djendema encompasses 42.2 km2, and is the largest reserve in the mountain and the second largest reserve in Bulgaria. It is centred on a granite extrusion combined with limestone outcroppings to form a labyrinth of steep slopes; deep, narrow gorges, massive rock cliffs, and huge waterfalls. Djendema Reserve shelters beech and fir forests and large meadows with unique sub-alpine grassy species and communities. Because of its specific geological and climatic conditions, the area is rich in endemic species and rare plants. One could take several days to cross Djendema. The name is derived from Ottoman Turkish 'hell'. There is also so called Northern Dzhendem or the Northern Djendem located on the north slope of Moun ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Flora
Flora is all the plant life present in a particular region or time, generally the naturally occurring (indigenous) native plants. Sometimes bacteria and fungi are also referred to as flora, as in the terms '' gut flora'' or '' skin flora''. Etymology The word "flora" comes from the Latin name of Flora, the goddess of plants, flowers, and fertility in Roman mythology. The technical term "flora" is then derived from a metonymy of this goddess at the end of the sixteenth century. It was first used in poetry to denote the natural vegetation of an area, but soon also assumed the meaning of a work cataloguing such vegetation. Moreover, "Flora" was used to refer to the flowers of an artificial garden in the seventeenth century. The distinction between vegetation (the general appearance of a community) and flora (the taxonomic composition of a community) was first made by Jules Thurmann (1849). Prior to this, the two terms were used indiscriminately.Thurmann, J. (1849). ''Essai de ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Temperate Broadleaf And Mixed Forest
Temperate broadleaf and mixed forest is a temperate climate terrestrial habitat type defined by the World Wide Fund for Nature, with broadleaf tree ecoregions, and with conifer and broadleaf tree mixed coniferous forest ecoregions. These forests are richest and most distinctive in central China and eastern North America, with some other globally distinctive ecoregions in the Caucasus, the Himalayas, Southern Europe, Australasia, Southwestern South America and the Russian Far East. Ecology The typical structure of these forests includes four layers. * The uppermost layer is the canopy composed of tall mature trees ranging from high. Below the canopy is the three-layered, shade-tolerant understory that is roughly shorter than the canopy. * The top layer of the understory is the sub-canopy composed of smaller mature trees, saplings, and suppressed juvenile canopy layer trees awaiting an opening in the canopy. * Below the sub-canopy is the shrub layer, composed of low growi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Palearctic Realm
The Palearctic or Palaearctic is the largest of the eight biogeographic realms of the Earth. It stretches across all of Eurasia north of the foothills of the Himalayas, and North Africa. The realm consists of several bioregions: the Euro-Siberian region; the Mediterranean Basin; the Sahara and Arabian Deserts; and Western, Central and East Asia. The Palaearctic realm also has numerous rivers and lakes, forming several freshwater ecoregions. The term 'Palearctic' was first used in the 19th century, and is still in use as the basis for zoogeographic classification. History In an 1858 paper for the ''Proceedings of the Linnean Society'', British zoologist Philip Sclater first identified six terrestrial zoogeographic realms of the world: Palaearctic, Aethiopian/Afrotropic, Indian/Indomalayan, Australasian, Nearctic, and Neotropical. The six indicated general groupings of fauna, based on shared biogeography and large-scale geographic barriers to migration. Alfred Wallace ad ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ecoregion
An ecoregion (ecological region) or ecozone (ecological zone) is an ecologically and geographically defined area that is smaller than a bioregion, which in turn is smaller than a biogeographic realm. Ecoregions cover relatively large areas of land or water, and contain characteristic, geographically distinct assemblages of natural communities and species. The biodiversity of flora, fauna and ecosystems that characterise an ecoregion tends to be distinct from that of other ecoregions. In theory, biodiversity or conservation ecoregions are relatively large areas of land or water where the probability of encountering different species and communities at any given point remains relatively constant, within an acceptable range of variation (largely undefined at this point). Three caveats are appropriate for all bio-geographic mapping approaches. Firstly, no single bio-geographic framework is optimal for all taxa. Ecoregions reflect the best compromise for as many taxa as possible. Se ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rodope Montane Mixed Forests
The Rodope montane mixed forests is a terrestrial ecoregion of Europe defined by the WWF. It belongs in the temperate broadleaf and mixed forests biome and the Palearctic realm. Geography The Rodope mountane mixed forests cover the higher parts of the Balkan Mountains, the Rhodope Mountains, Rila, Pirin, Vitosha, Sredna Gora, Ograzhden and Maleshevo, situated almost entirely in Bulgaria, as well as in some adjacent areas in Greece, North Macedonia and Serbia. They span an area of 31,600 km2 and are replaced at lower altitudes by the Balkan mixed forests. Flora The number of species of vascular plants in the ecoregion are estimated at 3,000. The lower areas are covered with mixed deciduous woods, most prominently with European beech, Oriental hornbeam, European hornbeam and several oak species. The higher zones are dominated by coniferous forests — Scots pine, Bosnian pine, Macedonian pine, Bulgarian fir, Silver fir, Norway spruce, etc. The highest altitudes support sh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
World Heritage Site
A World Heritage Site is a landmark or area with legal protection by an international convention administered by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). World Heritage Sites are designated by UNESCO for having cultural, historical, scientific or other form of significance. The sites are judged to contain " cultural and natural heritage around the world considered to be of outstanding value to humanity". To be selected, a World Heritage Site must be a somehow unique landmark which is geographically and historically identifiable and has special cultural or physical significance. For example, World Heritage Sites might be ancient ruins or historical structures, buildings, cities, deserts, forests, islands, lakes, monuments, mountains, or wilderness areas. A World Heritage Site may signify a remarkable accomplishment of humanity, and serve as evidence of our intellectual history on the planet, or it might be a place of great natural beauty. A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Primeval Beech Forests Of The Carpathians And Other Regions Of Europe
Ancient and Primeval Beech Forests of the Carpathians and Other Regions of Europe is a transnational serial nature UNESCO World Heritage Site, encompassing 94 component parts (forests of European beech, ''Fagus sylvatica'') in 18 European countries. Together, the sites protect the largest and least disturbed forests dominated by the beech tree. In many of these stands (especially those in the Carpathians), these forests here were allowed to proceed without interruption or interference since the last ice age. These sites document the undisturbed postglacial repopulation of the species. Carpathian region The Primeval Beech Forests of the Carpathians include ten separate massifs located along the long axis from the Rakhiv mountains and Chornohora ridge in Ukraine over the Poloniny Ridge (Slovakia) to the Vihorlat Mountains in Slovakia. The Ancient Beech Forests of Germany include five locations, cover 4,391 hectares and were added in 2011. The Carpathian site covers a total area ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
PAN Parks
The PAN Parks Foundation was a non-governmental organisation that aimed to protect Europe's wildernesses. The foundation filed for bankruptcy in May 2014 in The Netherlands, but was denied the status by the court and is currently in liquidation. Details The PAN Parks Foundation was founded in 1998 by the World Wide Fund for Nature and the Dutch travel company Molecaten, with the aim of creating national parks in Europe, along the model of the Yellowstone and Yosemite National Parks in North America. The organisation aims to create a network of European wilderness areas where wilderness and high quality tourism facilities are balanced with environmental protection and sustainable local development. It attempts to achieve this through a process of auditing and verification, enabling it to certify parks owned by partners as meeting particular standards, combined with political advocacy on the local and European level. List of PAN Certified parks # Central Balkan National Park, Bulgar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
World Wide Fund For Nature
The World Wide Fund for Nature Inc. (WWF) is an international non-governmental organization founded in 1961 that works in the field of wilderness preservation and the reduction of human impact on the environment. It was formerly named the World Wildlife Fund, which remains its official name in Canada and the United States. WWF is the world's largest conservation organization, with over five million supporters worldwide, working in more than 100 countries and supporting around 3,000 conservation and environmental projects. They have invested over $1 billion in more than 12,000 conservation initiatives since 1995. WWF is a foundation with 65% of funding from individuals and bequests, 17% from government sources (such as the World Bank, DFID, and USAID) and 8% from corporations in 2020. WWF aims to "stop the degradation of the planet's natural environment and to build a future in which humans live in harmony with nature." The Living Planet Report has been published every two ye ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at promoting world peace and security through international cooperation in education, arts, sciences and culture. It has 193 member states and 12 associate members, as well as partners in the non-governmental, intergovernmental and private sector. Headquartered at the World Heritage Centre in Paris, France, UNESCO has 53 regional field offices and 199 national commissions that facilitate its global mandate. UNESCO was founded in 1945 as the successor to the League of Nations's International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation.English summary). Its constitution establishes the agency's goals, governing structure, and operating framework. UNESCO's founding mission, which was shaped by the Second World War, is to advance peace, sustainable development and human rights by facilitating collaboration and dialogue among nations. It pursues this objective t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
