Misplaced Pages

Salpausselkä

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.
(Redirected from Salpausselkä Ridges) Extensive ridge system in Southern Finland For the ski jumping hill, see Salpausselkä (ski jump).
This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these messages)
This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.
Find sources: "Salpausselkä" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (August 2017) (Learn how and when to remove this message)
You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Finnish. (June 2023) Click for important translation instructions.
  • Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Misplaced Pages.
  • Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article.
  • You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Finnish Misplaced Pages article at ]; see its history for attribution.
  • You may also add the template {{Translated|fi|Salpausselät}} to the talk page.
  • For more guidance, see Misplaced Pages:Translation.
You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Russian. (February 2024) Click for important translation instructions.
  • Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Misplaced Pages.
  • Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article.
  • You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Russian Misplaced Pages article at ]; see its history for attribution.
  • You may also add the template {{Translated|ru|Салпаусселькя}} to the talk page.
  • For more guidance, see Misplaced Pages:Translation.
(Learn how and when to remove this message)
Salpausselkä ridge system
Animation about the formation of Salpauselkä

Salpausselkä (Finnish: [ˈsɑlpɑu̯sˌselkæ]; "Bar Ridge") is an extensive ridge system left by the ice age in Southern Finland. It is a large terminal moraine formation that formed in front of the Baltic ice lake during the Younger Dryas period about 12,250–10,400 years ago. All together the formation is close to 500 km (310 mi) from end to end, and the ridges can be as tall as 80 m (260 ft) in some places.

It runs from Hanko hundreds of kilometers to the east. It traps the extensive river and lake systems of Central Finland known as Finnish Lakeland (Finnish: Järvi-Suomi, "Lake Finland") and forces the water to flow through few breaches in the ridge. The Vuoksi River flows from lake Saimaa into Lake Ladoga (Finnish: Laatokka) in Russia. From there the water subsequently flows through river Neva into the Gulf of Finland, bypassing the Salpausselkä. The Kymi River flows from Päijänne into the Gulf of Finland. An artificial breach from the Lakeland is the Saimaa Canal, from Saimaa at Lappeenranta into the Gulf of Finland at Vyborg.

Salpausselkä has been used for transportation because of the easy terrain for centuries; later on both railways and highways have been built to follow it. It is also an important source of clean groundwater filtering from the lakes on the upper side (north) of the ridge, for the communities built alongside the ridge. The south side of the Salpausselkä has been inhabited for more than 10,000 years.

There are also formations called Second and Third Salpausselkä, which are similar in form but smaller. They are situated north of the main Salpausselkä, and were formed later respectively.

See also

References

  1. ^ Scheffel, Richard L.; Wernet, Susan J., eds. (1980). Natural Wonders of the World. United States of America: Reader's Digest Association, Inc. pp. 332-333. ISBN 0-89577-087-3.

Categories: