Geochores (

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

gé "the earth" and ''chora'' "area") are relatively large landscape areas with similar – but owing to their size not fully uniform – characteristics. They therefore consist of a tapestry of smaller landscape units, which can be hierarchically grouped: *

Physiotope Physiotope is the total abiotic matrix of habitat present within any certain ecotope. The physiotope is the landform, the rocks and the soils, the climate and the hydrology, and the geologic processes which marshalled all these resources together in ...

s or

geotope A geotope is the geological component of the abiotic matrix present in an ecotope. Example geotopes might be an exposed outcrop of rocks, an erratic boulder, a grotto or ravine, a cave, an old stone wall marking a property boundary, and so forth. ...

s form the base unit (''tope'' from the Greek, τόπος, "place"). These are objects whose features are assessed as homogenous and which cannot sensibly be subdivided into smaller landscapes. Their area depends on the distribution pattern of their features and on the purpose or aim of the classification, but in general they are between 0.1 and 5 hectares in area. * Nanogeochores or nanochores are the simplest level of physiotopes. **Example: Ameisenberg near

Oybin Oybin ( hsb, Ojbin) is a municipality in the Görlitz district, in Saxony, Germany, located very close to the border of the Czech Republic. Following the defeat of the Protestant armies by the Habsburgs in the Battle of the White Mountain in 162 ...

is part of the Oybin Rock Region (microgeochore) * Microgeochores are small scale landscape units with an average area of 12 km². In terms of biotopes or woodland or agricultural land which is managed in a certain way, they form a tapestry of nanogeochores. They cover areas which are similar mainly in terms of their geological origins, rocks, topographical elevation or relief energy. They are a good example of the how geological and topographical history affects the resulting landscape structure. **Example: Hochwald Ridge and Oybin Rock Region * Mesogeochores are simply formations and groups of microgeochores. Their association is based on similarities of climate, topography such as mountains, valleys and hills or associated features from the

Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( , often referred to as the ''Ice age'') is the geological Epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was fina ...

(ice age). They are oriented towards the management and relative size of the microgeochores of which they comprise. **Example:

Zittau Mountains The Zittau Mountains (german: Zittauer Gebirge, cs, Žitavské hory), formerly also called the Lusatian Ridge (''Lausitzer Kamm''), refer to the German part of the Lusatian Mountains that straddle the Saxon- Bohemian border in the extreme sout ...

Zittau Basin Zittau ( hsb, Žitawa, dsb, Žytawa, pl, Żytawa, cs, Žitava, :de:Oberlausitzer Mundart, Upper Lusatian Dialect: ''Sitte''; from Slavic languages, Slavic "''rye''" (Upper Sorbian and Czech: ''žito'', Lower Sorbian: ''žyto'', Polish: ''żyto' ...

* Macrogeochores or major landscapes - as natural region major units - are simply groupings of mesogeochores, whose cohesiveness is based e.g. on geological foundations, on climatic conditions or vegetation (e. g. hpnV). They are "regional" in size. **Example:

Lusatian Mountains The Lusatian Mountains ( cs, Lužické hory; german: Lausitzer Gebirge; pl, Góry Łużyckie) are a mountain range of the Western Sudetes on the southeastern border of Germany with the Czech Republic. They are a continuation of the Ore Mountains ...

or Upper

Lusatian Highlands The Lusatian Highlands''Upper Lusatia''
at www.silvaportal.info. Accessed on 10 July 20 ...

Literature

* Haase, G. and K. Mannsfeld (eds., 2002): Naturraumeinheiten, Landschaftsfunktionen und Leitbilder am Beispiel von Sachsen (= Forschungen zur Deutschen Landeskunde 250). - Flensburg. {{ISBN, 3-88143-072-5 Ecosystems