Swiss Plateau

The Swiss Plateau or Central Plateau (German: Schweizer Mittelland; French: plateau suisse; Italian: altopiano svizzero) constitutes one of the three major landscapes in Switzerland alongside the Jura Mountains and the Swiss Alps. It covers about 30% of the Swiss surface. It comprises the regions between the Jura and the Alps, partly flat but mostly hilly, and lies at an average height between 400 and 700 m AMSL. It is by far the most densely populated region of Switzerland, and the most important with respect to economy and transportation.

In the north and northwest, the Swiss Plateau is sharply delimited geographically and geologically by the Jura Mountains. In the south, there is no clear border with the Alps. Usually, the rising of the terrain to altitudes above 1500 metres AMSL (lime Alps, partly sub-alpine molasse), which is very abrupt in certain places, is taken as a criterion for delimitation. Occasionally the regions of the higher Swiss Plateau, especially the hills of the canton of Fribourg, the Napf region, the Töss region and parts of the Appenzell region are considered to form the Swiss Alpine foreland in a narrow sense. However, if a division into the three main regions Jura Mountains, Swiss Plateau and Alps is considered, the Alpine foreland belongs clearly to the Swiss Plateau. In the southwest, the Swiss Plateau is confined by Lake Geneva, in the northeast, by Lake Constance and the Rhine.

Geologically, the Swiss Plateau is part of a larger basin that extends beyond the border of Switzerland. At its southwestern end, in France, the plateau, in the Genevois, ends at Chambéry where Jura and Alps meet. At the other side of the Lake Constance, the plateau continues in the German and Austrian Pre-Alps.

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