Eppinger Gäu
The Eppinger Gäu is a landscape within the Kraichgau natural area in Baden-Württemberg . It takes its name from the town of Eppingen in the Heilbronn district .
General description of the location
The gently undulating hill country of the Eppinger Gäus is part of the Lein-Elsenz hill country in the southeast of the Kraichgau. It is bordered in the northwest by the back of the Eichelberg, in the southeast the Eppinger Hardt, which belongs to the neighboring natural area Stromberg and Heuchelberg, stands out with a clear step . There is no clear border in the west and east.
The Gaulandschaft is characterized as a fertile, loess-covered Muschelkalk - Keuper area. It is mainly used for agriculture , has few forests and belongs to the old settlements .
Historical view
The Gau was the name for a landscape-enclosed settlement area of the Teutons . The word is still used today as a general term for regions as a landscape or administrative unit .
There is no evidence that the word Gau already corresponded to an administrative division in Germanic times; it is likely to be a misinterpretation of historical research of the 18th and 19th centuries.
Geological subsoil
Rocks of the Upper Triassic (Triassic = Earth Middle Ages, 225 to 191 million years) form the geological subsurface: Muschelkalk and Keuper layers . A blanket of loess and loess clay covers a large part of the Eppinger Gäus.
Surface shape
It is assumed that with the beginning of the Quaternary (around 2 million years ago) the rough landscape structures of the Eppinger Gäus already existed. During the Pleistocene (around 2 million to 10,000 years ago) these structures were overprinted, that is, primarily through the loess deposition. Wind shifted dust particles from the dry Rhine riverbed to the east into the Eppinger area.
The alternation of full and hollow forms characterize the landscape of the Eppinger Gäus. Between the loess-covered ridges and peaks with heights between 220 and 260 m above sea level, deep hollows are usually cut.
climate
The Kraichgau and also the Eppinger Gäu as a subunit have a transitional position between maritime and continental climates. Winds from the west and southwest bring humid air masses all year round. A precipitation maximum in the summer months and a second, weaker precipitation maximum in the winter months show the transition position. The mean annual rainfall is 700–750 mm.
The mean monthly temperatures in the most extreme months of January and July are 0 degrees Celsius and 18 degrees Celsius. If you look at the so-called growth climate, it becomes clear that the Eppinger Gäu represents a favored landscape. A warm fruit climate encompasses the whole area, in some cases there is even a more favorable wine-fruit climate.
vegetation
The “natural” vegetation , that is, the vegetation that would appear without human influence, is the beech forest . Agricultural use has pushed the forest back to small island-like areas.
ground
Soil is understood to mean "the conversion product that arises from inorganic and organic substances in the contact area of the atmosphere , hydrosphere , biosphere and lithosphere and can serve as a location for higher plants." (Bischoff, p. 286)
In large parts of the Eppinger Gäus, nutrient-rich soils developed on loess and its weathering products . But to consider is that after grubbing incipient erosion of susceptible loess areas gave rise to even flat ground, calcareous soils.
Natural systematics
In the systematics of the handbook of the natural spatial structure of Germany , the Eppinger Gäu appears with the code number 125.13 as a sub-unit of the Kraichgau natural area (125), which in turn forms a main unit of the Neckar- and Tauber-Gäuplatten natural area (125) in the south-west German layer level country .
literature
- Ralf Bischoff: Eppinger Gäu and Eppinger Hardt - a natural spatial view. In: Around the Ottilienberg. Contributions to the history of the city of Eppingen and the surrounding area. Volume 3. Heimatfreunde Eppingen , Eppingen 1985, pp. 279-289.
- Peter Rothe : The geology of Germany. 48 landscapes in portrait. Primus, Darmstadt 2005, ISBN 3-89678-526-5 , pp. 133ff.
Individual evidence
- ^ Josef Schmithüsen : The natural space units on sheet 161 Karlsruhe . In: Federal Institute for Regional Studies (ed.): Geographical land survey 1: 200 000 . Reise- und Verkehrsverlag, Stuttgart 1952 ( PDF, 5.2 MB [accessed on January 7, 2015]).