Vistula - Geography

Geography

The reaches of the Vistula are composed of three stretches: upper, from its sources to the city of Sandomierz; centre, from Sandomierz to the mouth of Narew and Bug; and bottom, from mouth of Narew till Vistula's own delta at the Baltic.

The Vistula river basin covers 194,424 km² (in Poland 168,700 km²); its average altitude rising to 270 m above sea level. In addition, the majority of its river basin (55%) is located at heights of 100 to 200 m above sea level; over 3/4 of the river basin ranges from 100 – 300 m in altitude. The highest point of the river basin lies at 2655 m (Gerlach Peak in the Tatra mountains). One of the features of the river basin of the Vistula is its asymmetry - in great measure resulting from the tilting direction of the Central-European Lowland toward the north-west, the direction of the flow of glacial waters, as well as considerable predisposition of its older base. The asymmetry of the river basin (right-hand to left-hand side) is 73-27%.

The most recent glaciation of the Pleistocene epoch, which ended around 10,000 BC, is called the Vistulian glaciation or Weichselian glaciation in regard to north-central Europe.