Moldavian Plateau

The Moldavian Plateau (Romanian: Podișul Moldovei) or Pokutian-Bessarabian Upland is a geographic area spanning northeast Romania, most of Moldova (except the south), and most of the Chernivtsi Oblast of Ukraine.

The Moldavian Plateau is bounded (in clockwise order):

The Moldavian Plateau composes over two-thirds of the territory of the medieval Principality of Moldavia, with the Eastern Carpathian Mountains and the Bugeac Plain representing the remaining part. This fact is the origin of the name of the plateau. This geographic area (including Eastern Carpathians and the Bugeac) is also called (especially by historians) the Carpathian-Dniester-Pontic region, or the Carpathian-Dniester region, since it is bounded by the Carpathians to the west, by the river Dniester to the north and east, and by the Black Sea (Pontus Euxinus) and the Danube to the south-east and south.

The Moldavian Plateau was formed at the end of the Neogene through sediments, over an old continental platform, the East European Platform. Afterwards, the settled sediments, which were brought in by rivers from the Carpathian Mountains, were modeled by the elements giving the plateau its current aspect. The materials that formed the sediments are gravel and sand. Hardened, they formed gritstones. All over the plateau, the latter are interspersed with clays, or badlands, which produce landslides.

The slope of the terrain follows the direction of the rivers: from northwest to southeast. Along them, the altitude decreases from 700 metres (2,297 ft) to under 200 metres (656 ft). The strata are disposed in North-South and northwest-southeast aligned layers, producing asymmetric valleys and ridges. Among the latter are the steep edge of the Bârlad Plateau (Romanian: Podișului Bârladului), known as the Iași Ridge (Romanian: Coasta Iașilor), the edge of the Central Moldavian Plateau (Romanian: Podișul Moldovei Centrale), known as the Cornești Hills, and the edge of the Dniester Hills, known as the Dniester Ridge.

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