Gorges de la Dordogne
The Gorges de la Dordogne are a French gorge landscape in the Corrèze department belonging to the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region . They were cut by the Dordogne into the eastern high plateau of the Limousins .
geography
The Gorges de la Dordogne, German gorges of the Dordogne , stretch around 80 kilometers from Bort-les-Orgues in the north to Argentat in the south. They form the border between the Corrèze department in the west and the Cantal department in the east.
Several dams have been built in the ravines , including (downstream, north to south):
- Barrage de Bort-les-Orgues
- Barrage de Marèges , built between 1932 and 1935
- Barrage de l'Aigle
- Barrage du Chastang
- Barrage d'Argentat .
Hydrography
The Dordogne rises in the Monts Dore through the confluence of the Dore and the Dogne and then generally flows in a south-westerly direction towards the Aquitaine Basin . Compared to the plateau landscape of the Dordogne limousine located at 500 to 700 meters , the river has cut a good 250 meters like a gorge. At the Barrage du Chastang, for example, it is at 263 meters above sea level, whereas the plateau here reaches heights of up to 539 meters.
Right tributaries of the Dordogne, which cross the leveling area of the Dordogne - in places also like a canyon - in a north-south direction are (arranged from northeast to southeast) Diège , Triouzoune , Vianon , Luzège , Sombre and Doustre . Left tributaries are (from north to south) the Rhue , Sumène , Auze , Glane and Maronne , all of which drain from the huge stratovolcano of the Cantal in a westerly direction to the Dordogne.
geology
In the gorges, the Dordogne flows through the crystalline basement of the western Massif Central . Upcoming rocks are mica schist , paragneiss , leuco granite and sediments of the Upper Carboniferous .
The Dordogne begins its course below the Barrage de Bort-les-Orgues in the gneisses and leptynites of the lower gneiss cover . Immediately south of Bort-les-Orgues, the Dordogne briefly enters an Upper Carboniferous coal basin of the north-northeast- trending Sillon houiller - the 16 kilometer long and 3 kilometer wide coal basin of Champagnac-Ydes . It then changes again to the terran of the lower gneiss cover, which begins with the Ussel granite - a peraluminous sub-carbonic granite - and then changes into characteristic migmatites and paragneiss. Shortly before the mouth of the Luzège, the rocks of the Massif de Millevaches (here called Chaîne corrèzienne ) appear at a fault contact ( Ambrugeat fault - the lower gneiss cover has slid to the southeast compared to the Massif de Millevaches ). The Chaîne corrèzienne begins with mica slates of the parautochthonous mica slate unit , then, after crossing the right- shifting Pradines fault, a leuco granite follow in the central area and finally parautochthonous mica slate again. At Argentat, the north-northwest trending, cataclastic Argentat Fault runs through, where the lower gneiss cover of the Limousin in the west is pushed obliquely to the northwest opposite the parautochthonous bulge of the Massif de Millevaches. At the Argentat Fault, a small Upper Carboniferous coal basin is touched again - the Argentat Basin .