Geography and Environment of Slovenia

Slovenia is a central European country with a surface area of 12,153 square miles. To the southwest, Slovenia has a 28-mile coastline on the Adriatic Sea. There are basically six topographies: the Alps, including the Julian Alps, the Kamnik-Savinja Alps, the Karavanke chain and the Pohorje Massif to the north and northeast; the pre-Alpine hills of Idrija, Cerkno, Skofja Loka and Posavje spreading across the entire southern side of the Alps; the Dinaric karst (a limestone region of underground rivers, gorges, and caves) below the hills and encompassing the "true" or "original" Karst Plateau (from which all karst regions around the world take their name) between Ljubljana and the Italian border; the Slovenian Littoral, 28 miles of coastline along the Adriatic Sea; the "lowlands," comprising about one-fifth of the territory in various parts of the country; and the essentially flat Pannonian Plain to the east and northeast. Slovenia is predominantly hilly or mountainous; about 90% of the surface is more than 700 feet above sea level. Forest, some of it virgin, covers just under half of the country, making Slovenia one of the greenest countries in the world. Agricultural land (fields, orchards, vineyards, pastures, etc.) account for 43% of the total. Major rivers are the Drava, Sava (which meets the Danube in Belgrade), Soca, and Mura.

Detailed geography