Our Alcarria

What´s Alcarria? The Alcarria is a natural Spanish region, located in the southern sub plateau, which cover most part of Guadalajara´s province, northeast of Cuenca and a small area of southeast of Madrid. It´s name comes from Arabic that means: high and satin ground with little grass

Alcarria’s formation We are going to talk about the different stratums that form the Alcarria from the dared observation of the Badiel’s Valley in Muduex. We climbed one of the two slopes of the valley. This is a great example in order to understand Alcarria’s relief.

Paleozoic and the triasic’s orogeny. On this period the sediments deposited in the lakes or seas inside the peninsula, for example the Alcarria’s formation. After that, an orogeny happened making these sediments vertical and giving new sea. This orogeny moved all deposits thaty the last lake or sea gave us; these deposists were gravel, clay, limestone, forming the lacustrine of Alcarria.

Mesozoic, the ground goes up. In the Mesozoic era, the Earth began two kinds of movement: the first one had as consequence the formation of many mountain’s chains also called the second Orogeny; the second movement which however was a part of the second orogeny ended with a rising of the earth.

Cenozoic, filling the rivers. About 10 millions years ago “La Alcarria” was an intricated system of lakes, nevertheless the waters of these lakes weren’t very deep. Under these lakes a lot of sedimentary rocks formed. In the superior Miocenich all the lakes were filled by the rocks, and this formed the actual mountains.

Badiel valleý’s relief We climbed the gloomy slope from the road, which was 809 meters and as we walked we were measuring the height of the different stratums. The erosion of all layers took place in periglacial climate. This type of climate occurs in areas where temperatures range from a few degrees below 0 º C and 10 ° C.

Badiel valley’s relief At the foot of the slope there is a base of clay and sand, in the 870 meters there is a landslide of limestones. In 920 meters the limestones are, where the slope has been drained clays above.

Badiel valley´s relief At 945m we can see hillside phenomenon and under them we can see clays, finally before of the thick limestones’ stratum we can find at 950m an original clay marls stone and at last it is the great stratum of limestones. At 980 we can see limestones and at 985 metres we can see hillside phenomenoms again. The last stratum is limestone which extends from 995 m to m, where we find the moor, here, holm oak, sunflowers' growing and also limestone’s field are abundant.

Vegetation of the High- Flat Plateau. Holm Oak

Oak

Black Poplar

Repopulation Pines

Gall Oak

Thyme

Rosemary

Lavender

This is the end of our project IES Brianda de Mendoza (Guadalajara) – Liceo Scientifico Statale Leon Battista Alberti (Nápoles) Enero 2012 – Abril 2012