Palatinate Forest

The Palatinate Forest (/pəˈlætɪnɪt/; German: Pfälzerwald [ˈpfɛltsɐvalt] ^ⓘ), sometimes also called the Palatine Forest, is a low-mountain region in southwestern Germany, located in the Palatinate in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate. The forest is a designated nature park (German: Naturpark Pfälzerwald) covering 1,771 km² and its highest elevation is the Kalmit (672.6 m).

Together with the northern part of the adjacent Vosges Mountains in France it forms the UNESCO-designated Palatinate Forest-North Vosges Biosphere Reserve.

The Palatinate Forest, together with the Vosges south of the French border, from which it has no morphological separation, is part of a single central upland region of about 8,000 km² in area, that runs from the Börrstadt Basin (a line from Winnweiler via Börrstadt and Göllheim) to the Burgundian Gate (on the line Belfort–Ronchamp–Lure) and which forms the western boundary of the Upper Rhine Plain. This landscape forms, in turn, the eastern part of the very extensive eastern scarplands of France, which, on German soil, take in large parts of the Palatinate and the Saarland, with older (e.g. on the Donnersberg) and younger strata (muschelkalk, e.g. the Westrich Plateau).

While the boundaries of the Palatinate Forest are comparatively clearly defined to the north and east, the transition to neighbouring landscapes to the west and south is less sharp.

To the north, the Palatinate Forest is adjoined by the North Palatine Uplands, including the Donnersberg (686.5 m). This is where the bunter sandstone formations typical of the Palatinate Forest end, being replaced by other types of rock such as those of the Rotliegendes. This results in a clear geomorphological separation of the two landscape areas, which runs approximately along a line from Eisenberg via Göllheim and Börrstadt to Otterberg near Kaiserslautern.

The hill country between the Haardt and the Upper Rhine Plain, where Palatine wines are grown, is known as the Weinstrasse. The German Wine Route runs through this zone of hills.

The St. Ingbert-Kaiserslauten Depression runs up to the northwestern Palatinate Forest from west-southwest to east-northeast into which the Forest descends in a clear escarpment, especially into the boggy lowland of the Landstuhl Bruch west of Kaiserslautern.

To the west of the Großer Hausberg, the Westrich Plateau separates from the Palatinate Forest at the sharp southern boundary of the Landstuhler Bruch in a comparatively smooth transition. It reaches comparable heights in the transition area, but as a muschelkalk plateau it has a significantly different relief and is no longer fully forested. It not only stretches around the western edge of the Palatinate Forest, but also further south around the Vosges. From the area of Lemberg in Lorraine, it also forms the watershed between the Moselle and the Upper Rhine; the southern part of the region being drained completely via the Moder system to the Upper Rhine.