Mont Blanc

About Mont Blanc

• It is the highest peak (4,807 metres) in Europe.
• It is located in the Alps and lies along the French-Italian border and reaches into Switzerland.
• It is nicknamed as “the roof of Europe”.
• Its name comes from the perennial snow cap that covers it, meaning literally “the white mountain”.
• The mountain stands in a range called the Graian Alps, between the regions of Aosta Valley, Italy, and Savoie and Haute-Savoie, France.

Key facts about Alps

• The Alps emerged during the Alpine orogeny, an event that began about 65 million years ago as the Mesozoic Era was drawing to a close.
• They are young fold mountains with rugged relief and high conical peaks.
• The Alps arose as a result of the collision of the African and Eurasian tectonic plates in which the Alpine Tethys which was formerly in between these continents disappeared.
• The Alps extend north from the subtropical Mediterranean coast near Nice, France, to Lake Geneva before trending east-northeast to Vienna (at the Vienna Woods).
• There they touch the Danube River and meld with the adjacent plain.
• The Alps form part of France, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia, and Albania. 

Q1: What are Tectonic plates?

These are large, rigid pieces of the Earth’s lithosphere (the outermost shell of the Earth) that move and interact with each other. These plates cover the Earth’s surface and are responsible for shaping its geological features and causing various geological phenomena, such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and the creation of mountain ranges.

Source: France’s highest mountain Mont Blanc is shrinking