Height of a place

The ups and downs of the Earth’s surface – mountains, hills, plains, depressions – are called relief; the ocean floor is uneven too. The height of a place above sea level is its absolute height, and the vertical height of one place above another is the relative height. Sea level is taken as 0: for example, Tashkent is roughly 400–480 m above sea level and Uzbekistan’s highest peak, Hazrati Sulton, stands at 4643 m. Places below sea level are written with a minus sign: the Mingbuloq depression in the Kyzylkum is –12 m. According to the textbook, heights in our country are counted from a mark at Kronstadt, a town on an island in the Baltic Sea. On a plan or map, relief is shown by contour lines – lines joining points of the same absolute height – and a slope stroke (bergstrich) shows the downhill side. Height is measured with a level (nivelir) and today also by satellites.