Great European Plain

Location

The Great European Plain stretches from the Pyrenees Mountains and the French coast of the Bay of Biscay in the west to the Russian Ural Mountains in the east, including parts of Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Romania, Bulgaria, and Kazakhstan. Most of the Great European Plain lies below 500 feet (152 metres) in elevation. It has coastlines in the west and northwest to marginal seas of the Atlantic Ocean, in the northeast to seas of the Arctic Ocean, and in the southeast to the Black Sea. To the south of the Middle European Plain stretch the central uplands and plateaus of Europe elevating to the peaks of the Alps, the Carpathian Mountains and the Balkan Mountains. To the northwest across the English Channel lie the British Isles and their lowlands, while across several straits north of the Jutland Peninsula lies the Central Swedish lowland in the Scandinavian Peninsula, which is part of the Fennoscandia ecoregion.