Mountain slide on the Hirschkopf

Bergrutsch am Hirschkopf nature reserve IUCN Category IV - Habitat / Species Management Area
Lower slope of the landslide
location	Mössingen in the district of Tübingen , Baden-Württemberg
surface	39.4 ha
Identifier	4145
WDPA ID	162384
Geographical location	48 ° 23 '  N , 9 ° 4'  E Coordinates: 48 ° 22 '43 "  N , 9 ° 3' 58"  E
Sea level	from 570 m to 820 m
Setup date	March 16, 1988
administration	Regional Council Tübingen

Bergrutsch am Hirschkopf is a nature reserve (NSG number 4.145) in the area of ​​the city of Mössingen in the Tübingen district in Baden-Württemberg . With an ordinance of March 16, 1988, the Tübingen Regional Council placed the area at the Albtrauf under nature protection.

The mountain slide has been recognized as an important geotope and geopoint of the UNESCO Geopark Swabian Alb since July 2016 .

location

On April 12, 1983, a landslide occurred at the Hirschkopf in a north-south extension of around 1000 meters. Back then, geologists spoke of an event of the century. The nature reserve is about two kilometers west of the Talheim district of the city of Mössingen.

The nature reserve is located in the natural area 101- foreland of the central Swabian Alb within the main natural unit 10- Swabian Keuper-Lias-Land . It is enclosed by approximately 2.646 hectare conservation area no. 4.16.009 Albrand and is also part of the 3,568 hectare FFH area no. 7,620,343 Albtrauf between Mossingen and Gönningen and the 3,167 hectare FFH area no. 7,520,311 Albvorland at Mossingen and Reutlingen . It is also part of the 39,597 hectare bird sanctuary No. 7422441 Middle Swabian Alb . The area of ​​the landslide with adjoining areas along the Albtrauf was also set as a Schonwald with 17.5 hectares under the name Dreifürstenstein .

Protection purpose

The main protection purpose is the maintenance of the extensive landslide with inaccessible rock areas, scree slopes and gravel areas as an area for undisturbed, natural repopulation ( succession ) of rare plants and animals (biological zero zone). It is a unique natural event as a research object for geological, biological and regional studies.

Landslide on April 12, 1983

causes

Heavy rainfall in the spring of 1983, especially in the days before the slide, were the primary triggering factors. Earthquake activities were not recorded before or during the sliding movement and are therefore excluded as primary triggering factors. The rainwater seeped away on the slope ledge through the strong fissures of the White Jura with crevices and cracks and its additional water-permeable layers up to 30 meters thick ornate tone. This swelled up with the immensely ingress of water and turned into a greasy layer. As a result of the increase in its own weight, the slope ledge could no longer hold it on the softened ground. The debris lying in front of the slope ledge, old landslide material from earlier landslides, also erupted down into the valley, so that the whole slope started moving. The forest drifted below the slope towards the valley.

Landslide

In the absence of eyewitnesses, the exact time and duration of the sliding process are unknown. The main slide must have occurred between 9 a.m. and 2 p.m. Individual groups of trees, which drifted from the plateau onto clods of terrain and remained standing vertically, showed that the Alb eaves slipped and did not fall as a landslide.

“The path that the forest ranger took that morning ends in front of a 20-meter-deep abyss. Including thousands of trees, criss-cross in a newly created landscape. (...) And the once wooded, accessible Alb eaves turned into a bare steep wall with huge clod fragments. (...) And again and again the mighty background noise of crashing trees, falling rocks and rumbling in the ground. "

Immediate effects

Over a width of 600 meters, the entire wooded steep slope on the edge of the Swabian Alb had slipped over 1,000 meters into the saddle between Hirschberg and Farrenberg. At the end of April 1983, the slide area reached over 50 hectares. In total, 5 to 6 million cubic meters of rubble weighing 9 to 10 million tons were removed. In the following spring of 1984, the area on the western edge was extended by a last major sliding movement. Of the forest areas that were destroyed, approximately 46 hectares were Mössinger Stadtwald, 4 hectares were small private forest. The trees that were destroyed on average 90 years old, with a total of 10,000 solid meters, consisted of 70% deciduous forest (beech, ash, maple, elm) and 30% coniferous forest (fir, spruce). In addition, around 4.5 kilometers of forest trails and 1 kilometer of hiking trails were destroyed.

The landslide area can be visually divided into 4 zones:

1. The newly formed steep wall with the sagging clods
2. The wooded strip below that runs through the slide like a footbridge
3. Then the initially vegetation-free scree slope (called "gravel desert")
4. The pushed together forest with the sliding tongue spreading down the valley

Two days later, "a real mass migration into the endangered area began. The authorities had great difficulty in keeping the sensation-hungry people away from the landslide and immediately declared the affected and dangerous forest area a restricted area." The following weekend 16./17. April, sunny weather attracted "according to police estimates (...) up to 5000 visitors to visit the damaged area". Some of them came from all over Germany and could only be prevented from entering the restricted area by a large police presence, including a dog squadron.

The first summer - 1983

In the "gravel desert" there was initially neither a humus layer nor plants or animals, apart from the few drifted areas with original vegetation. One spoke of a "biological zero zone". In spite of direct sunlight, several small ponds formed, which were fed by surface water and formed larger water areas in the depressions of the stone desert from week to week. They held out, although the soil temperature rose sharply in the gravel desert with no vegetation. It was favored by the reflection of the light-colored rock, did not cool down to normal at night and so rose to 58 degrees Celsius.

Coltsfoot settled around these wet spots , first in the edge areas and later in the vicinity of the two to three meter high rubble towers. "From week to week the vegetation increased visibly. (...) Sometimes you had the impression that the plants were germinating directly from the rock, very little humus was necessary for development. (...) In the first year there were When looking at the entire slide area, the following resettlers included: Coltsfoot, wild carrot , rough dandelion , blue dead nettle, fragrant white root, real bedstraw and stonecrop. "

In June spiders, field wasps and tiger beetles could be seen, including the Trochosa robusta from the family of wolf spiders . As the first permanent residents of the small bodies of water in the scree which stood next to the aquatic insects Gelbbauchunke one in the Red List as endangered strongly considered.

See also

• List of nature reserves in the Tübingen district

literature

• Regional Council Tübingen (ed.): The nature reserves in the administrative district of Tübingen . Thorbecke, Stuttgart 2006, ISBN 978-3-7995-5175-5 .

Web links

Commons : Bergrutsch am Hirschkopf nature reserve  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Profile of the nature reserve in the LUBW's list of protected areas

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Armin Dieter: 15 years of observations in the Mössing mountain slide - a landscape is changing . 5th edition. Verlag Tübinger Chronik, Tübingen 1998, ISBN 3-9801276-9-9 , p. 10-30 .
2. ↑ Armin Dieter: 15 years of observations in the Mössing mountain slide - a landscape is changing . 5th edition. Verlag Tübinger Chronik, Tübingen 1998, ISBN 3-9801276-9-9 , p. 12 . : "This is how April 12th 1983 turned out to be"
3. ↑ Armin Dieter: 15 years of observations in the Mössing mountain slide - a landscape is changing . 5th edition. Verlag Tübinger Chronik, Tübingen 1998, ISBN 3-9801276-9-9 , p. 45 .
4. ↑ Armin Dieter: 15 years of observations in the Mössing mountain slide - a landscape is changing . 5th edition. Verlag Tübinger Chronik, Tübingen 1998, ISBN 3-9801276-9-9 , p. 14 .
5. ↑ Armin Dieter: 15 years of observations in the Mössing mountain slide - a landscape is changing . 5th edition. Verlag Tübinger Chronik, Tübingen 1998, ISBN 3-9801276-9-9 , p. 15 .
6. ↑ Armin Dieter: 15 years of observations in the Mössing mountain slide - a landscape is changing . 5th edition. Verlag Tübinger Chronik, Tübingen 1998, ISBN 3-9801276-9-9 , p. 31 .
7. ↑ Armin Dieter: 15 years of observations in the Mössing mountain slide - a landscape is changing . 5th edition. Verlag Tübinger Chronik, Tübingen 1998, ISBN 3-9801276-9-9 , p. 34 .
8. ↑ Armin Dieter: 15 years of observations in the Mössing mountain slide - a landscape is changing . 5th edition. Verlag Tübinger Chronik, Tübingen 1998, ISBN 3-9801276-9-9 , p. 35 .
9. ↑ Armin Dieter: 15 years of observations in the Mössing mountain slide - a landscape is changing . 5th edition. Verlag Tübinger Chronik, Tübingen 1998, ISBN 3-9801276-9-9 , p. 41 .
10. ↑ Armin Dieter: 15 years of observations in the Mössing mountain slide - a landscape is changing . 5th edition. Verlag Tübinger Chronik, Tübingen 1998, ISBN 3-9801276-9-9 , p. 35 .
11. ↑ Armin Dieter: 15 years of observations in the Mössing mountain slide - a landscape is changing . 5th edition. Verlag Tübinger Chronik, Tübingen 1998, ISBN 3-9801276-9-9 , p. 42 .