[1][2] Its eastern boundary, running from Albersweiler in the Queich valley via Bad Bergzabern, Wissembourg in Alsace and Niederbronn-les-Bains to Saverne is the edge of the Rhine Graben.

In the west the hills transition smoothly into the landscape region of the Westrich Plateau; from there the younger rock strata of the muschelkalk cover the bunter sandstone that dominates the Wasgau.

[3][4][5][6] A central sub-region of the Wasgau is the Dahn-Annweilerer-Wasgauer Felsenland, which extends from the Queich valley near Annweiler in the northeast to the area of the Falkensteinerbach stream and Zinsel du Nord near Baerenthal and Philippsbourg in the southwest.

[7] The Wasgau is drained mostly towards the east by left-hand tributaries of the River Rhine, namely the Queich, the Lauter (called the Wieslauter in its upper reaches) and the Saarbach, which continues as the Sauer in North Alsace.

The water of the Zinsel du Nord near Baerenthal in the Pays de Bitche was used during the 18th and 19th centuries for processing iron in the ironworks and blast furnaces.

[8] Even the Étang de Hanau, a pond a few miles east of Bitche in Éguelshardt has become a major tourist centre with swimming facilities, boat rentals and camping.

Splash dams (ecluses) were constructed, for example on the Wieslauter stream, as part of the timber rafting industry, that was practised until the end of the 19th century.

Due to its small-scale relief, the uplands of the Wasgau are characterized by considerable diversity of forms with rather isolated individual peaks - particularly the conical hills or Kegelberge - which reach an average height of 400–500 metres above sea level.

The highest peaks are in the northern and central Wasgau (such as the Wegelnburg, 572 m, and the Mohnenberg, 547 m), especially near the edge of the Rhine trough (e.g. the Grand Winterberg, 581 m, and the Rehberg, 577 m), while the bunter sandstone block in the west and south descends from about 500 m (Wasenkoepfel, 526 m and Großer Eyberg, 513 m) to an average of about 350–400 m at the Saverne.

[10] During the formation of the Upper Rhine Graben in the Paleogene period (66–23.8 million years ago), these rock strata experienced tectonically induced displacements that have had a significance impact on the appearance of the landscape of the Wasgau today.

Due to the synclinal-anticlinal structure of the hills on the left bank of the Rhine which runs from southwest to northeast, these bulges in the northern and central parts of the Wasgau, i.e. in the region of the South Palatine Saddle (Südpfälzer Sattel) are particularly prominent, with the result that their surface layers were more heavily eroded.

This resulted in erosion surfaces and broad valleys, as are particularly characteristic of the northeastern Wasgau, for example, in Gossersweiler and Völkersweiler, also in Hauenstein, Busenberg or Fischbach bei Dahn.

This rock country extends from Annweiler in the northeast roughly to the stream of the Falkensteiner Bach at Phillipsburg in the southwest and forms the actual core area of the Wasgau.

For this reason, younger rocks of the Middle and Upper Bunter form the surface of the hills, whilst Rehberg and Trifels beds only occur in deep V-shaped valleys.

During the time from 1871 to 1919, when Alsace and parts of Lorraine temporarily belonged to Germany, the Vosges was generally referred to as the Wasgenwald in order to emphasise the distance from the Roman-Latin term.

Other rock forms are pinnacles (Felstürme, e. g. the Hundsfelsen near Waldrohrbach; the Hühnerstein near Hauenstein) and blocks (Felsklötze, e. g. Lindelbrunn near Vorderweidenthal; Fleckenstein near Hirschthal and Lembach), which are mainly found on top of conical hills.

From a botanical perspective many rock regions form biotopes with particularly hardy and undemanding sandstone vegetation, that is mainly composed of mountain pine, common heather and simple grasses (e. g. wavy hair-grass), and, in wet areas, also mosses and ferns.

Amongst the other attractions of the Wasgau are the Biosphere House with its adjacent tree walk in Fischbach, the Südliche Weinstraße Wildlife Park in Silz, the German Shoe Museum, the Glass Shoe Factory in Hauenstein and the administrative centre of the North Vosges Nature Park in La Petite-Pierre (German: Lützelstein), which has an exhibition of the Palatine Forest-North Vosges Biosphere Reserve.

[21] The biosphere reserve includes not only the actual forest-covered mountains, but also densely populated areas along the edge of the Rhine Graben and the Westrich Plateau.

Exceptions are upland villages such as Climbach in the eastern Hochwald, Lviv in the Palatinate and in Lorraine, and, in the southwest, the tourist destination of La Petite-Pierre; the latter settlements being in the high, plateau-like, transition region between the red sandstone landscape of the Wasgau and the limestone formations of the Westrich Plateau.

On the other side of the border, the well-developed departement road, the D 662, along the western edge of the Wasgau, links Bitche with Niederbronn-le-Bain and Haguenau in the Rhine plain.