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Geography of
Europe
Land of Fire, Ice
and Tourist

Presented By:
GROUP 3

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 Surface: Europe has a total land area of
10,180,000 sq km.
Location: Europe is bordered on the north
by the Barents Sea, west by the Atlantic
Ocean, and south by the Mediterranean Sea.
Population: Europe has approximately
731,000,000.

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 Official Language: Europe has
no official language. The EU
encourages all its citizens to
be multilingual.
Climate: Europe climate
remains temperate and mild,
with cool summers and cold
winters.
Time Zone:

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Europe is the world's second-smallest continent by surface
area. Of Europe's approximately 50 states, Russia is the
largest by both area and population while the Vatican
City is the smallest. Europe is the third-most populous
continent after Asia and Africa, with a population of
731 million or about 11% of the world's population.

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 MAJOR GEOGRAPHIC
QUALITIES
• Western extremity of Eurasia
• Lingering world influence
• High degrees of specialization
• Manufacturing dominance
• Numerous nation-states
• Urbanized population
• High standards of living
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 RELATIVE LOCATION
• At the heart of the land hemisphere
• Maximum efficiency for contact with the
rest of the world
• Every part of Europe is close to the sea.
• Navigable waterways
• Moderate distances

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 Location
• Excluding Russia, Europe occupies only 3.4% of the
global surface (2,284,509 sq. miles).
• Europe has a high-latitude northerly location.
• Much of Europe lies north of the conterminous United
States (north of the 49th parallel).
• Scotland lies in the same general latitude as Hudson
Bay, and Norway has many communities located as far
north as the northern mainland of Canada.

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 Location
Europe has 13 landlocked states:
• Andorra • Luxembourg
• Austria • Switzerland
• Belarus
• Macedonia
• Czech Republic
•
• Moldova
Slovakia
• Hungary • San Marino
• Liechtenstein • Vatican City

Most places in Europe are no more than 640 km (400 miles) from
the sea. By contrast, parts of the U,S, interior are more than 1600
km (1000 miles) from salt water.
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 Physical Geography -- Landforms
• Western Uplands (Northwestern Highlands)
• Hard, geologically ancient rock
• Shaped by glaciation – thin soils, fjords
• Scandinavia, Iceland, Scotland, Ireland, Brittany, Portugal Spain
• North European Plain (Lowland)
• Extensive region, a prominent feature of Europe; includes parts of France,
Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Poland, the Baltic states,
Belarus and Russia
• Rich in natural resources; coal, natural gas, potash, salt, iron ore, Largest
cultivated region
• Most densely populated of Europe's land regions
• Central Uplands
• Lower and less rugged than mountain regions, geologically older
• Important deposits of metals and coal
• Alpine Mountains
• High mountains, rugged plateaus, steeply sloping land
• The Alps, the Pyrenees, the Apennines, Dinaric Alps, and the Carpathians
• Highest peak is Mont Blanc –4807 meters (15,771 feet)
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• 10
Active volcanoes in southern Europe: Mt. Aetna, Mt. Vesuvius
 Population Geography
• Europe’s 2003 population was 582,800,778.
• Generally highly literate and skilled.
• Europe is the third largest population cluster,
after East Asia and Southern Asia.
• Extremely high population densities are found in
western European countries, especially Belgium,
the Netherlands and Luxembourg – Benelux.
• Population densities are not as high in Eastern
and Southern Europe.
• Nordic Europe, with the exception of Denmark, is
sparsely populated.

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 Urban Geography
• Europe is among the most highly urbanized
regions of the world.
• Europe's proportion of urban population has
grown from 54% in 1950 to 73% in 2003.
• Western European countries have a higher
percentage of population living in cities than
Eastern Europe.
•The most urbanized •The least urbanized
countries are: countries are:
–Belgium – 97% –Bosnia-Herzegovina – 40%
–Iceland – 94% –Albania – 46%
–United Kingdom – 90% –Moldova – 46%
–Germany – 86%
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–France --- 74% 12
 Urban Geography
The urban system of many European countries follows the law of
the primate city.
According to the law of the primate city, a country’s leading city
is “disproportionately large and exceptionally expressive of
national capacity and feeling.” (Mark Jefferson, 1939).
Examples:
 Paris personifies France
 London personifies the UK
 Amsterdam personifies the Netherlands
 Warsaw personifies Poland
 Athens personifies Greece
 Vienna personifies Austria
 Stockholm personifies Sweden

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 Urban Geography

• The trend in European urbanization is toward

U.S. style suburbanization.
• European city-scapes differ from North
American cities due to:
– Long histories
– Scarce land
– Strong government control of urban land
development
• The internal spatial structure of the European
metropolis consists of the central city and its
suburban ring, as in London.
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 Cultural Geography

• The cultural geography of Europe

is very diverse and complex.
• Europe is a cultural mosaic, based
on language and religion.

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 Language Groups
• Indo-European Family (Major group, detail in
next slide)
• Urallic Family
– Finnic
• Northwest (Finnish, Karelian, Estonian)
• Lapp
• Ugrian (Hungarian)
• Altaic Family – Turkish, in Turkish foothold in
Europe
• Semitic Family – Maltese, spoken on island of
Malta
• Basque Family – spoken by the Basques of
Southwestern France and Northern Spain
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 Indo-European Family of Languages
• Teutonic (Germanic) – English, German-Dutch (Dutch, Flemish
and German) and Scandinavian (Swedish, Norwegian, Danish and
Icelandic).
• Romanic (Latin) – French (French and Walloon), Spanish (Castilian
and Catalan), Portuguese (Portuguese and Galician), Italian (Italian
and Sardinian), Romansch (Rhaeto-Romanic), Romanian (Romanin
and Vlakh). Romania, an outlier of the Roman empire, managed to
retain its Romance language.
• Slavic – Western Slavic (Polish, Czech and Slovak), Eastern Slavic
(Russian, Ukrainian,Byelo-Ruthenian), Southern Slavic (Slovene,
Serbo-Croat, Bulgarian)
• Baltic – Latvian and Lithuanian
• Illyrian -- Albanese
• Hellenic -- Greek
• Celtic – Irish, Gaelic, Welsh, Breton
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 Religion
• The predominant religion in Europe is Christianity.
• Islam is the predominant religion of Albania, and
is the religion of many immigrants to
northwestern Europe from the Middle East and
North Africa.
• Religion as a unifying (centripetal) cultural force
has been unable to overcome the disunifying
(centrifugal) force of nationalism in Europe.

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 Major Industrial Regions of
Europe
The “Four Motors of Europe” are:
• Southeastern France’s Rhone-Alpes region (anchored by
Lyon).
• Northern Italy’s Lombardy (anchored by Milan).
• Northeastern Spain’s Catalonia (anchored by Barcelona).
• Southern Germany's Baden-Württemburg (anchored by
Stuttgart).
Other important European industrial regions:
• Sweden:
• Switzerland:
• Poland:
• Austria:
• Italy: Venice
• Spain: Bilbao
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Ukraine: Donbas
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 SPATIAL INTERACTION

• Movement across geographic space

• Involves contact of people in two or more places
for the purposes of exchanging goods or ideas
• Principles
– Complementarity
– Transferability
– Intervening opportunity
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 The British Isles: Four regions
The South – London is the center.
• London is Europe’s largest city (7,650,944 people)
and the world’s ninth largest
• Metropolitan London has a conurbation area of
12,000,000 inhabitants, one of the worlds largest.
• 20,000,000 of the 59,800,000 total UK population
(33.4%) live in the South region.
• The Green Belt (1944) is a zone for recreation and
farming set aside to surround London in order to
stem and channel the city’s vast urban sprawl
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 The British Isles: Four regions

• The North (North of Bristol-Norwich line)

– Dominated by economic stagnation following the
decline of the industrial base of the country.
– 50,000 jobs were lost in the 1980s.
– Revitalization efforts have met with limited success.
Long term impact uncertain.
– Suffering cities:
• Manchester
• Leeds
• Sheffield
• Birmingham
• Liverpool
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 The British Isles: Four regions

• Scotland and Wales

– Rugged, remote highland territories.
– Southern Wales (Cardiff-Swansea) is a
depressed industrial region.
– Scotland’s industrialization focused on the
Clyde and Firth of Forth because of nearby
coal, iron ore and the excellent port of
Glasgow.

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 The British Isles: Four regions
• Northern Ireland
– Part of the United Kingdom
– Capital city Belfast
– Comprises six counties: Antrim, Armaugh, Down, Fermanagh,
Londonderry, and Tyrone.
– Historical religious conflict between the Catholics and Protestants
– Religious make-up:
• Catholic 35%
• Presbyterian 29%
• Church of Ireland 24%
• Methodist 5%
– Devolution (1976): the disintegration of a nation state as a result of
reviving regionalism; the redistribution of authority and the
restructuring of the political framework of the United Kingdom;
among the proposals under consideration is the creation of a
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federal state in Britain and Northern Ireland. 24
 Mountain Europe: Switzerland
and Austria
• Both are landlocked countries framed by
the Alps.
• Both capitalize on their environments as
winter resort destinations for the rest of
Europe and the world.
• While having similar environments, their
historical experiences are quite different.

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 MEDITERRANEAN EUROPE
• Six Countries: Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece, Malta,
Cyprus
• A discontinuous region, lying on three peninsulas, two
occupied singly by Greece and Italy, one shared by Spain
and Portugal.
• Separated by mountains and water from the Western
European core.
• Common cultural heritage dating from Greco-Roman
times .
• Mediterranean climate – dry summer subtropical
– HOT - DRY SUMMERS
– WARM/COOL - MOIST WINTERS
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 EASTERN EUROPE
(REGIONAL IDENTIFIERS)
• EUROPE’S LARGEST REGION
• ADJOINS 3 OF 4 OTHER EUROPEAN REGIONS
• CONTAINS THE MOST COUNTRIES
• INCLUDES EUROPE’S LARGEST STATE -- UKRAINE
• INCORPORATES EUROPE’S POOREST COUNTRY --
ALBANIA
• IN 1990, NONE OF ITS STATES COULD MEET THE CRITERIA
FOR MEMBERSHIP IN THE EU
• REACHES INTO THE RUSSIAN ZONE OF INFLUENCE

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 COUNTRIES FACING THE BALTIC SEA
• POLAND
– A CLASSIC NATION-STATE
– TRADITIONALLY AGRARIAN - WHEAT
– POST WWII INDUSTRY - SILESIA
– WARSAW - PRIMATE CITY
• LITHUANIA
– LOST INDEPENDENCE IN 1940, REGAINED IN 1991
– KALININGRAD - A RUSSIAN EXCLAVE
• LATVIA
– SIMILAR HISTORY TO LITHUANIA
– CONSTITUTE BARE MAJORITY IN OWN COUNTRY
• BELARUS: RUSSIA’S CLOSEST ALLY
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 THE LANDLOCKED CENTER

• CZECH REPUBLIC
– The regions most “westernized” country.
– PRAGUE- a classic PRIMATE CITY
• SLOVAKIA
– THE LEAST DEVELOPED, MOST RURAL PART OF
“CZECHOSLOVAKIA”
• HUNGARY
– A NATION-STATE OF 10 MILLION
– BUDAPEST- A CLASSIC PRIMATE CITY
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COUNTRIES FACING THE BLACK SEA

• BULGARIA: LIBERATED BY RUSSIA IN 1878

• ROMANIA: A FORMER ROMAN PROVINCE;
RAW MATERIALS (COAL, IRON ORE, OIL,
NATURAL GAS)
• MOLDOVA: AGRICULTURAL
• UKRAINE: LARGEST AND MOST POPULOUS;
AGRICULTURAL AND NATURAL RESOURCES
AVAILABLE
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 COUNTRIES FACING THE ADRIATIC
SEA
• SLOVENIA: FIRST TO SECEDE; ETHNICALLY MOST
HOMOGENEOUS
• CROATIA
• BOSNIA: CENTRALLY POSITIONED
• SERBIA: LARGEST AND MOST POPULOUS
• MACEDONIA: 65% MACEDONIAN, 21% ALBANIAN
• SERBIA-MONTENEGRO: INCLUDES SERBIA, KOSOVO,
VOJVODINA, AND MONTENEGRO
• ALBANIA: REMNANT OF TURKISH OTTOMAN EMPIRE; 70%
MUSLIMS; LOWEST ECONOMIC RANKING IN EUROPE

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