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West Hesse Depression
The West Hesse Depression (german: Westhessische Senke) is part of the West Hesse Highlands and Lowlands region in the north of the German state of Hesse. Like the East Hesse Depression, it is a series of separate depressions that form a natural corridor and have been an important historical trade route.Dickinson, Robert E (1964). ''Germany: A regional and economic geography'' (2nd ed.). London: Methuen, p. 512. . Geography and geology Geographical location The West Hesse Depression runs along the valleys of the Schwalm, Eder, Fulda, Esse and Diemel roughly from Alsfeld in the south to Bad Karlshafen in the north. It separates the East Hesse Highlands (major regional group 34 or D46), including the Knüll hills and Kaufungen Forest in the east, from the West Hesse Highlands (35 or D47), including the Kellerwald and Habichtswald in the west and is itself part of the West Hesse Highlands, within which it is included as geographical unit 343. Its southern boundary is fo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
West Hesse Highlands
The West Hesse Highlands (german: Westhessisches Bergland), also known as the West Hessian Lowlands and Highlands (''Westhessisches Berg- und Senkenland''), are a heavily forested region of the Central Uplands in Germany. These highlands lie mainly within the state of Hesse, between that part of the Rhenish Massif right of the Rhine in the west, the Weser Uplands to the north, the Hessian Central Uplands to the east and the Wetterau to the south. The West Hesse Highlands form one of the major natural regions of Germany (Natural Region No. 34 or D46) and are part of the Central European Uplands as well as being the watershed between the Rhine and the Weser. They comprise a line of hill ranges in the west, running north-northeast to south-southwest on the shoulder of the Rhenish Massif and include the Kellerwald, and a fault trough in the east, the West Hesse Depression. The West and East Hesse Highlands, together referred to as the ''Hesse Highlands'', combine to form the geolog ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hessian Central Uplands
The Hessian Central Uplands are an area of volcanic highland in Central Hesse in Germany.Elkins, T H (1972). ''Germany'' (3rd ed.). London: Chatto & Windus, 1972, p. 223. . It is also referred to as the Vogelsberg- Meissner Axis.Dickinson, Robert E (1964). ''Germany: A regional and economic geography'' (2nd ed.). London: Methuen, p. 512. . The Hessian Central Uplands include the Vogelsberg mountain range, the largest contiguous region of basalt in Europe as well as numerous volcanic outcrops, large and small, within the state of Hesse. The uplands are bounded to the west and east by the West West or Occident is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from east and is the direction in which the Sun sets on the Earth. Etymology The word "west" is a Germanic word passed into some ... and East Hesse Depressions respectively, two major natural corridors running roughly north-to-south through the state. Further north, the upland ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cainozoic
The Cenozoic ( ; ) is Earth's current geological era, representing the last 66million years of Earth's history. It is characterised by the dominance of mammals, birds and flowering plants, a cooling and drying climate, and the current configuration of continents. It is the latest of three geological eras since complex life evolved, preceded by the Mesozoic and Paleozoic. It started with the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, when many species, including the non-avian dinosaurs, became extinct in an event attributed by most experts to the impact of a large asteroid or other celestial body, the Chicxulub impactor. The Cenozoic is also known as the Age of Mammals because the terrestrial animals that dominated both hemispheres were mammalsthe eutherians (placentals) in the northern hemisphere and the metatherians (marsupials, now mainly restricted to Australia) in the southern hemisphere. The extinction of many groups allowed mammals and birds to greatly diversify so that l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Palaeozoic
The Paleozoic (or Palaeozoic) Era is the earliest of three geologic eras of the Phanerozoic Eon. The name ''Paleozoic'' ( ;) was coined by the British geologist Adam Sedgwick in 1838 by combining the Greek words ''palaiós'' (, "old") and ''zōḗ'' (), "life", meaning "ancient life" ). It is the longest of the Phanerozoic eras, lasting from , and is subdivided into six geologic periods (from oldest to youngest): # Cambrian # Ordovician # Silurian # Devonian # Carboniferous # Permian The Paleozoic comes after the Neoproterozoic Era of the Proterozoic Eon and is followed by the Mesozoic Era. The Paleozoic was a time of dramatic geological, climatic, and evolutionary change. The Cambrian witnessed the most rapid and widespread diversification of life in Earth's history, known as the Cambrian explosion, in which most modern phyla first appeared. Arthropods, molluscs, fish, amphibians, reptiles, and synapsids all evolved during the Paleozoic. Life began in the ocean but eve ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Magma
Magma () is the molten or semi-molten natural material from which all igneous rocks are formed. Magma is found beneath the surface of the Earth, and evidence of magmatism has also been discovered on other terrestrial planets and some natural satellites. Besides molten rock, magma may also contain suspended crystals and gas bubbles. Magma is produced by melting of the mantle or the crust in various tectonic settings, which on Earth include subduction zones, continental rift zones, mid-ocean ridges and hotspots. Mantle and crustal melts migrate upwards through the crust where they are thought to be stored in magma chambers or trans-crustal crystal-rich mush zones. During magma's storage in the crust, its composition may be modified by fractional crystallization, contamination with crustal melts, magma mixing, and degassing. Following its ascent through the crust, magma may feed a volcano and be extruded as lava, or it may solidify underground to form an intrusion, such as a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lias Group
The Lias Group or Lias is a lithostratigraphic unit (a sequence of rock strata) found in a large area of western Europe, including the British Isles, the North Sea, the Low Countries and the north of Germany. It consists of marine limestones, shales, marls and clays. ''Lias'' is a Middle English term for hard limestone, used in this specific sense by geologists since 1833. In the past, geologists used ''Lias'' not only for the sequence of rock layers, but also for the timespan during which they were formed. It was thus an alternative name for the Early Jurassic epoch of the geologic timescale. It is now more specifically known that the Lias is Rhaetian to Toarcian in age (over a period of 20 million years between ) and thus also includes a part of the Triassic. The use of the name "Lias" for a unit of time is therefore slowly disappearing. Subdivisions In southern England, the Lias Group is often divided into Lower, Middle and Upper subgroups. In Southern England the Lias is d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Keuper
The Keuper is a lithostratigraphic unit (a sequence of rock strata) in the subsurface of large parts of west and central Europe. The Keuper consists of dolomite, shales or claystones and evaporites that were deposited during the Middle and Late Triassic epochs (about ). The Keuper lies on top of the Muschelkalk and under the predominantly Lower Jurassic Lias or other Early Jurassic strata. The Keuper together with the Muschelkalk and the Buntsandstein form the Germanic Trias Group, a characteristic sequence of rock strata that gave the Triassic its name. "Muschelkalk (geology)", Britannica Online Encyclopedia, October 2010, webpage: EB-39 Exposure The Upper Triassic is well exposed in Swabia, Franconia, Alsace and Lorraine and Luxembourg; it extends from Basel on the east side of the Rhine into Hanover, and through England into Scotland and north-east Ireland; it appears flanking the central plateau of France and in the Pyrenees and Sardinia. The Keuper sequence is li ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Muschelkalk
The Muschelkalk (German for "shell-bearing limestone"; french: calcaire coquillier) is a sequence of sedimentary rock strata (a lithostratigraphic unit) in the geology of central and western Europe. It has a Middle Triassic (240 to 230 million years) age and forms the middle part of the tripartite Germanic Trias, that give the Triassic its name, lying above the older Buntsandstein and below the younger Keuper. The Muschelkalk (" mussel chalk") consists of a sequence of limestone and dolomite beds. In the past, the time span in which the Muschelkalk was deposited could also be called "Muschelkalk". In modern stratigraphy, however, the name only applies to the stratigraphic unit. Occurrence The name ''Muschelkalk'' was first used by German geologist Georg Christian Füchsel (1722-1773). In 1834, Friedrich August von Alberti included it into the Triassic system. The name indicates a characteristic feature of the unit, namely the frequent occurrence of lenticular banks composed o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Subsidence
Subsidence is a general term for downward vertical movement of the Earth's surface, which can be caused by both natural processes and human activities. Subsidence involves little or no horizontal movement, which distinguishes it from slope movement. Processes that lead to subsidence include dissolution of underlying carbonate rock by groundwater; gradual compaction of sediments; withdrawal of fluid lava from beneath a solidified crust of rock; mining; pumping of subsurface fluids, such as groundwater or petroleum; or warping of the Earth's crust by tectonic forces. Subsidence resulting from tectonic deformation of the crust is known as tectonic subsidence and can create accommodation for sediments to accumulate and eventually lithify into sedimentary rock. Ground subsidence is of global concern to geologists, geotechnical engineers, surveyors, engineers, urban planners, landowners, and the public in general.National Research Council, 1991. ''Mitigating losses from land subsi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tectonic Uplift
Tectonic uplift is the geologic uplift of Earth's surface that is attributed to plate tectonics. While isostatic response is important, an increase in the mean elevation of a region can only occur in response to tectonic processes of crustal thickening (such as mountain building events), changes in the density distribution of the crust and underlying mantle, and flexural support due to the bending of rigid lithosphere. Tectonic uplift results in denudation (processes that wear away the earth's surface) by raising buried rocks closer to the surface. This process can redistribute large loads from an elevated region to a topographically lower area as well – thus promoting an isostatic response in the region of denudation (which can cause local bedrock uplift). The timing, magnitude, and rate of denudation can be estimated by geologists using pressure-temperature studies. Crustal thickening Crustal thickening has an upward component of motion and often occurs when continental crus ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bunter Sandstone
The Buntsandstein (German for ''coloured'' or ''colourful sandstone'') or Bunter sandstone is a lithostratigraphic and allostratigraphic unit (a sequence of rock strata) in the subsurface of large parts of west and central Europe. The Buntsandstein predominantly consists of sandstone layers of the Lower Triassic series and is one of three characteristic Triassic units, together with the Muschelkalk and Keuper that form the Germanic Trias Supergroup. The Buntsandstein is similar in age, facies and lithology with the Bunter of the British Isles. It is normally lying on top of the Permian Zechstein and below the Muschelkalk. In the past the name Buntsandstein was in Europe also used in a chronostratigraphic sense, as a subdivision of the Triassic system. Among reasons to abandon this use was the discovery that its base lies actually in the latest Permian. Origin The Buntsandstein was deposited in the Germanic Basin, a large sedimentary basin that was the successor of the smal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
