Palatinate Forest  The Palatinate Forest ( ), sometimes also called the Palatine Forest, is a low-mountain region in southwestern Germany, located in the Palatinate in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate. The forest is a designated nature park () covering 1,771 km2 and its highest elevation is the Kalmit (672.6 m). Together with the northern part of the adjacent Vosges Mountains in France it forms the UNESCO-designated Palatinate Forest-North Vosges Biosphere Reserve. The Palatinate Forest, together with the Vosges south of the French border, from which it has no morphological separation, is part of a single central upland region of about 8,000 km2 in area, that runs from the Börrstadt Basin (a line from Winnweiler via Börrstadt and Göllheim) to the Burgundian Gate (on the line Belfort–Ronchamp–Lure) and which forms the western boundary of the Upper Rhine Plain. This landscape forms, in turn, the eastern part of the very extensive eastern scarplands of France, which, on German soil, take in large parts of the Palatinate and the Saarland., with older (e. g on the Donnersberg) and younger strata (muschelkalk, e. g. the Westrich Plateau). The low mountain range of the Palatinate Forest is continued northward by the extensive hilly landscape of the North Palatine Uplands ("Nordpfälzer Bergland"), whose highest point is the volcanic Donnersberg (687 m). In the south it is continued by the northern part of the Vosges Mountains in France. The eastern end of the forest ("Haardt") is adjacent to the Palatinate wine growing region. Here the German Wine Route stretches through the undulating area that lies between the Palatinate Forest and the Upper Rhine valley. The hill country between the Haardt mountains and the Upper Rhine Plain, where Palatine wine is grown, is known as the Weinstraße. The German Wine Road runs through this area. West of Kaiserslautern is the marshy lowland of Landstuhl. The Palatinate Forest can be divided into three areas. The Palatinate Forest is a major (3rd level) natural region within the Palatine-Saarland Scarplands (a 2nd order major region) and runs south as far as the Col de Saverne, i.e. far into French territory, where it continues as the Vosges ridge.