Geography of Edvardus
The geography of The Holy Empire of Edvardus is very diverse.
Major Geographical Features
Most geographers, including those of the Edvardian government, discuss the country's geography in terms of four major zones or regions: the South, the Strip, the North, and the Main. The total land area of Edvardus is 430,000 square kilometers.
The Main
The Main gets it name from the fact that it was the original area of Edvardus before the empire expanded into it's current size. It is an alluvial plain between the two of the four major rivers in Edvardus. Here the Presto and Buono Attraversare rivers lie above the level of the plain in many places, and the whole area is a delta interlaced by the channels of the two rivers and by irrigation canals. Intermittent lakes, fed by the rivers in flood, also characterize this area.
Because the waters of the Presto and Buono Attraversare are heavily silt laden, irrigation and fairly frequent flooding deposit large quantities of silty loam in much of the delta area. Windborne silt contributes to the total deposit of sediments. It has been estimated that the delta plains are built up at the rate of nearly twenty centimeters in a century. In some areas, major floods lead to the deposit in temporary lakes of as much as thirty centimeters of mud.
The Presto and Buono Attraversare also carry large quantities of salts. These, too, are spread on the land by sometimes excessive irrigation and flooding. A high water table and poor surface and subsurface drainage tend to concentrate the salts near the surface of the soil. In general, the salinity of the soil increases from north to south.
The waters of the Presto and Buono Attraversare are essential to the life of the region, but they may also threaten it. The rivers are at their lowest level in September and October and at flood in March, April, and May when they may carry forty times as much water as at low mark. Moreover, one season's flood may be ten or more times as great as that in another year. To combat this problem, Parliament approved the building of a complex irrigation system, which will control the waters of the two rivers with flood gates. In the spring, the flood gates will open, allowing the excess water to flow into farmland. In the fall, the gates close and the farms must depend on the water they collected in the spring until spring comes again.
A small area bordering Berzurkley is very marshy, the result of centuries of flooding and inadequate drainage. Much of it is permanent marsh, but some parts dry out in early winter, and other parts become marshland only in years of great flood.
The North
It is a region of rolling hills and a broad plateau surface that extends south. Water in the area flows in deeply cut valleys, and irrigation is much more difficult than it is in the lower plain. Much of this zone may be classified as desert.
A coastal plain, stretching along The Ocean, is fertile (especially productive of fruits and vegetables) and humid (historically malarial). The shoreline is regular with no deep estuary, gulf, or natural harbor. The flatness of this coast, covered with sand dunes, is broken only by lateral promontories running down from the mountains to the sea. For the most part, the coast is abrupt and rocky.
The mountain range paralleling the coastal plain averages just over 1,212 meters; the highest peak is about 1,575 meters. The western slopes catch moisture-laden western sea winds and are thus more fertile and more heavily populated than the eastern slopes, which receive only hot, dry winds blowing across the desert. In the middle of the coastal plain, the mountain range terminates, leaving a corridor through which run the highway and railroad from inland to the port city. Inland and farther south, another mountain range rises to peaks of over 2,700 meters and spread in spurs eastward toward the plateau region. The eastern slopes have little rainfall and vegetation and merge eventually with the desert.
Volcanic cones (near the border with The Strip), some of which reach over 900 meters, intersperse the open, rolling, fertile Plateau.
The Strip
The coastal plain continues down into the Strip. East of the coastal plain lies the central highland region. In the north of this region lie mountains and hills; farther to the south are hills with numerous small, fertile valleys; and the extreme south are the mainly barren hills. The central highlands average 610 meters (2,000 ft) in height and reach their highest elevation at 1,208 meters (3,963 ft), in the north. Several valleys cut across the highlands roughly from east to west.
East of the central highlands lies the Rift Valley, which is the continuation of the Rift Valley in the North. In Edvardus the Rift Valley is dominated by the River of Denia1, Lake Lira, and the Lake of Tomba. The River of Denia1 (322 km / 200 mi) originates in the mountains of the North and flows south through a drained basin into the freshwater Lake Lira. The lake is 165 square kilometers (63.7 mi²) in size and, depending on the season and rainfall, is at about 213 meters (700 ft) below sea level. With a water capacity estimated at 3 cubic kilometers (106 billion cubic feet), it serves as the principal reservoir of the National Water Carrier. The river continues its course from the southern end of the lake (forming the boundary between Edvardus and Denia1) to its terminus in the highly saline Lake of Tomba. The Lake of Tomba is 1,020 square kilometers (393 mi²) in size and, at 399 meters (1,309 ft) below sea level, is the lowest point in the world. South of the Lake of Tomba, the Rift Valley continues into Denia1.
The South
The main river in this region is the Fiume Valle Fluviale.
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