Rosandra Valley
The Rosandratal (Italian Val Rosandra , Slovenian Dolina Glinščice ) is a valley along the Rosandra river in the Italian municipality of San Dorligo della Valle near Trieste . It is the only cut into the valley of the Trieste Karst and was declared a nature park in 1996.
geography
The Rosandratal is located in the municipality of San Dorligo della Valle east of the port city of Trieste. The northern part of the valley extends over the border to Slovenia .
geology
The Rosandratal is part of a karst landscape . It is located in the western part of the Trieste Karst and forms the only valley cut of the plateau.
The valley was formed due to the erosion caused by the surface water of the Rosandra River. In the vicinity of the village of Bottazzo the river forms an approx. 30 meter high waterfall, which clearly shows the transition from the permeable rock on the mountain to the impermeable marl in the valley. The waterfall forms the beginning of the Rosandra valley. The adjoining valley gully cuts through the karst plateau from northwest to southeast and follows the course of the Rosandra River, which extends through numerous large and small waterfalls and lakes to the Adriatic Sea.
Flora and vegetation
The knowledge about the biological diversity of the Rosandratal valley that has been collected so far can be summed up in a few numbers: more than 1,000 types of fungus, 988 vascular plants, approx. 300 lichens, approx. 150 deciduous and liverworts, approx. 100 myxomycetes , which together approx. 2,700 units surrender. The terrestrial plants show a high biodiversity both in quantity and quality: among them there are many rare or endemic species - sometimes the only known population in Italy - and many others which are rare in the Karst, but in large areas such as in the Mediterranean region or in the foothills of the Alps.
The Rosandratal reflects the history of the karst vegetation, but also has many peculiar areas. The geomorphology of the valley forms a 'unicum' in the Trieste Karst: in the past, as it is today, agriculture was limited to small areas of flysch rock, e.g. B. in Botazzo. The pasture areas are almost completely deserted these days, mainly because of the steep and stony slopes. The valley also preserves features of the prehistoric karst: the vegetation of the rocks and scree, the wetlands along the river, the vertical cliffs with cyanobacteria . The landscape of the Rosandra Valley is therefore different from that of the rest of the Karst in the vicinity of Trieste. Alpinists who use the steep rock faces for excursions have compared this karst with an "alpine" landscape. That one is all the more reminiscent of the Dinaric valleys in Dalmatia. The macro landscape with its erosion, hedges and bushes, the almost bare surfaces, the geological structures and much more is similar to the landscape in Croatia. In this way, areas of the M. Carso are reminiscent of the hinterland of Rijeka .
The connection between vegetation and other physical factors can be seen much more clearly in the Rosandra Valley than in the Alps, in which the orography and the occurrence of many different rocks make the situation more difficult. This simplicity is due to the very simple development of the relief and the two only rocks, limestone and flysch. With limestone, the layers on the left-hand slopes (M. Carso) are embedded according to the slope direction, while on the right-hand slopes (M. Stena) they are opposite to the slope and there is an extraordinary symmetry in the vegetation. On the left-hand slopes, scree slopes with hedge landscapes predominate, partly interrupted by tufts of grass, while on the right-hand slopes you can find alternating forests and vertical rock walls with cyanobacteria. The heathland dominates the flat areas between the M. Stena and the M. Carso.
The flysch has opposite properties: the rock is firm and impermeable to water (the only agricultural use on this soil is near Botazzo), the landscape takes on softer forms, the plant cover is denser, the flowering of the plants is insulated in time distributed and therefore the green color dominates the landscape. The limestone, on the other hand, houses an interrupted vegetation with brightly colored flowers, which occur concentrated and in certain time periods (yellow flowers in spring, pink-violet in autumn). The sandy marl is reminiscent of an “Appennine” landscape, while the limestone is reminiscent of a “Balkan” one. Already Posphichal (1897) describes in his monumental work on the flora of the then Austrian coastal area the sandstone hills as "phlegmatic", the areas with limestone as "dramatic". In the Rosandra Valley, the phlegmatic predominates in the upper part, the drama in the lower part.
history
As a natural connection between the sea and the hinterland, the Rosandratal was already used as a transit route for trade in prehistoric times.
The finds discovered in various caves are evidence of the presence of man in the Mesolithic and later in the Neolithic . The two castellieri on the heights of Monte San Michele and Monte Carso go back to the Iron Age , where the remains of the walls can still be seen today. One of the remains from the Roman period is the 14-kilometer aqueduct from the 1st century, which probably supplied the city of Trieste with water until the 6th or 7th century.
In the Middle Ages, the border between the Trieste territory and the Venetian areas of Istria ran through the Rosandra Valley, where numerous disputes between the two parties took place. In 1382 Trieste and its neighboring areas came under the Habsburg protectorate. The Rosandratal also remained Austrian until 1918.
After the First World War , the area was annexed to Italy and part of the Veneto region . After the Second World War , another border ran through the Rosandra Valley: most of the territory remained under Italy, while the northern area was assigned to Yugoslavia.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the Rosandra Valley was discovered by alpinists and developed into a popular destination for mountaineers and climbers. In 1929 the mountaineer Emilio Comici from Trieste founded a climbing school and gave the first mountaineering courses. In 1933 the Mario Premuda refuge was built by the Italian mountaineering association Club Alpino Italiano , which is now the seat of the Emilio Comici climbing school .
In 1996 the valley and its surroundings were declared a natural reserve of Riserva naturale regional della Val Rosandra .
literature
- Franco Cucchi, Alessio Mereu, Sara Oberti, Chiara Piano, Anna Rossi, Luca Zini: Geology and Geomorphology of the “Rosandra” Valley for a Cultural Enhancement. In: Il Quaternario - Italian Journal of Quaternary Sciences , Vol. 18, No. 1, 2005, pp. 185-196 ( PDF ).
- Pier Luigi Nimis, Livio Poldini, Stefano Martellos: Guida illustrata alla flora della Val Rosandra (Trieste). Edizioni Goliardiche, Trieste 2006, ISBN 88-7873-039-4 .
Web links
- Rosandratal (Italian)
- Portal to the Flora del Rosandratales (German)
Coordinates: 45 ° 36 '59 " N , 13 ° 52' 47" E