Physical Geography: the branch of geography dealing with natural features and processes.
Physical Features of Europe
- Mountain Alps - This mountain range is one of the largest in Europe. The Winter Olympics have been held here several times, which brings a lot of tourism, along with the other industries of farming, cheese-making, and woodworking.
- Ural River - This river flows through Russia and Kazakhstan. It has a positive affect on the area. It provides water, energy, transportation, agriculture of melons and watermelons, and fish for local cities.
- Great Hungarian Plain - This plain covers the southern and eastern part of Hungary. It doesn't have a huge affect on the area although it provides agriculture and raising animals for food in local eatery.
- Ural Mountains - This is a mountain range that runs approximately from north to south through western Russia. These have both advantages and disadvantages for the area. They tend to add to the problem of flooding and have been a factor in a few radiation incidents, but they also provide coal, oil, and natural gas for the local cities.
- Baltic Sea - This sea in located between Northern and Central Europe and is classified as Mediterranean. This is a very popular spot for tourism, including quite a few resort towns and piers, which brings in quite a bit of money for the area.
- Bay of Biscay - This bay is on the west coast of France. It is again, a popular vacation spots, especially for people interested in seeing the unique marine life and seabirds. It is also known for having many naval events take place there, therefore bringing in even more tourism.
- Italian Peninsula - This is the smallest peninsula of three in southern Europe, which includes almost half of Italy. This means it brings tourism to the area.
- North European Plains - This plain is located in North Europe and is a positive feature of Europe. It is used mostly for commercial farming with very little natural vegetation.
- Black Sea - The Black Sea has both negative and positive features including a passageway that can be used to smuggle illegal goods, vacation resorts, fishing, transportation, and oil exploration.
- Norwegian Sea - The Norwegian Sea is known for fishing, whaling, oil, gas, early exploration, and the sea monster phenomenon. This brings extra money into the area.
- North Sea - The North Sea has a positive affect on Europe for it's fishing, source of fossil fuels, wing, and wave power, along with it's recreation/tourism.
- Caspian Sea - The Caspian Sea although called a sea is really a large, enclosed body of water. It doesn't necessarily have either a positive or negative feature, the only important feature is transportation to other countries.