The wild landscape, with the naked rock and where the rock hillsides of mountains are dominant. That is the “karst”, deposits on carbonate calcium rocks.

The lack of water in surface and the shortage and the discontinuous character of the ground, condition the development of the natural vegetation and the human agricultural activities.

With them is associated the goats and ovine cattle in small herds which regularly cover the mountain ways and the question in the origin with cheese of Rabaçal - one moreover honoured with the products which are also one of the principal local economic richness.

Nevertheless, the manner as ran out the geological history of the area and, especially, the fact of, at least partially, Jurassic rocks will be covered by the arénites with Carrascal (Cretacico lower) which was, then, differentiated and liberate when the ground of the mountains set up, and implies a clear distinction between two types of landscape.

 In the sectors of the karst exhumed, it appears in all his wild monumentality: naked rock, perforated and ploughed in fields of "lapiás", great scarps, to which the holes ("buracas") and the deposits of gravity give more spectacular; frequent existence of "lapas" and "algares" which establishes the communication between the interior surface and galleries. Caves and monumental karst canyons, like the Rio dos Mouros (Conimbriga), Casmilo ( in the limits of Condeixa, Penela et Soure)

Marks harmoniously inserted in this stony landscape are the walls and the monticules of released rock, the "moroiços", dependent on the task to withdraw the rocks of the fields for the thin agriculture of dry ground which here is practised or practised until very recent times, "arrifes", which arm the terraces and them "peais", small walls which support the olive-trees in the sides of the mountain.

In the sectors in which the exhumation of the karst was not carried out completely, as arrives with the majority of the Plate of Degracias-Alvorge, although some forms of the large-sized karst are present, the depressions of the type "uvala" of Ramalheira and Alvorge, the presence of the covers of the likings, in spite of the surface retention of water does not allow - that continues to miss - is responsible for a greater development of the vegetable cover and for a farm of the more significant ground.