Humpback meadows
The humpback meadows are a geomorphological specialty of the alpine area. The largest remnants of these humpback meadows, often leveled by human hands, can still be found in the Alps in the Nieder Werdenfelser Land , i.e. in the region around Mittenwald , Krün and Klais .
The grassy bumps were formed at the end of the Würm Ice Age , when the advancing Isar glacier pushed the gravel of the moraines together to form drumlins , long bumps. Frost and karstification processes further modeled the formations through frequent alternation of thawing and freezing and the meltwater flowing like a network between the arches ( seasonal solifluction ). After the warming of the climate, lichens and mosses first settled , later spirits , birches , and finally mixed mountain forests. The humps formed under spruce trees , where the limestone was relatively protected from solution.
The people cleared the areas and transformed them into a cultural landscape. The first clearing was carried out by monks in the 8th century in order to gain pastureland for cattle. A mowing is first mentioned in a document from 1406 . Up until the 1920s, there were 63,000 hectares in Bavaria with such landscape formations. Today there are still 1200 hectares, of which about 1000 hectares are in the Mittenwald area. Farmers often leveled the humpback meadows in order to be able to work the areas more easily. Before the Second World War, the National Socialists had the Reich Labor Service set up camps at the Barmsee and Tennsee to level the humpback meadows. Plans by the National Socialists to build a large housing estate on the land were not implemented.
Today, two areas of humpback meadows near Mittenwald are under nature protection . Farmers receive funding from the EU if they undertake to cultivate the soil traditionally and to prevent the overgrowth of trees by trees in order to avoid displacement of the species that are typical of the location and need light. More than 200 species of plants grow on the poor grassland with poor, acidic soils , including stemless gentian , red cabbage rose , hawkweed , mountain buttercup , flour primrose , white silver root and yellow salsify .
Web links
- Humpback meadows near Mittenwald Bavaria's most beautiful geotopes, Bavarian State Office for the Environment