Elbhöhen-Wendland Nature Park
The Elbhöhen-Wendland Nature Park is a German nature park east of Lüneburg in Lower Saxony. An earlier name is Elbufer-Drawehn Nature Park , but in a different area delimitation.
geography
After an area expansion in 2006, the nature park covers large parts of the Lüchow-Dannenberg district ; it also includes a small area in the Lüneburg district . According to the new delimitation, however, the Elbe valley lowlands are left out (see now: Lower Saxony Elbe Valley Biosphere Reserve ). The Elbhöhen-Wendland Nature Park has an area of approx. 1160 km² and is one of the most sparsely populated areas in Germany.
The former Elbufer-Drawehn nature park comprised two very different large landscapes that gave it its name:
- the Drawehn ridge in the west of the Lüchow-Dannenberg district
- the banks of the Elbe in the north of the Lüchow-Dannenberg district and partly in the Lüneburg district
Both landscapes were shaped by the ice ages . As a terminal moraine from the penultimate Ice Age , the Hohe Drawehn is an accumulation of rock debris that remained on the edge of a glacier ice edge. The Elbe Valley, on the other hand, was shaped as a meltwater runoff from the last Ice Age .
The vegetation of the Wendland-Elbhöhen nature park depends on the relief and quality of the soil. The higher, sandy Podzol soils of the Drawehn, especially the Hoher Drawehn, were extensive heathlands until the 18th century. Today they are often covered by pine forests after reforestation. There are remains of natural deciduous forest vegetation on loamy soils, especially in the Göhrde . The better soils have been converted into arable land. The Lüchower Niederterrasse is part of the Elbe glacial valley and is characterized by now drained and cultivated lowlands (compare natural spatial main units of Germany : Wendland and Altmark ). The eastern end of the nature park is formed by the large drifting sand hill of the Gartower Forest . There, after the fire in the Lüneburg Heath , the Nemitzer Heath emerged from 1975 on areas that had not been reforested .
history
This park was founded in 1968. On June 1, 2006, the protected area of the nature park was enlarged to 116,033 hectares and thus almost doubled. The category nature park does not represent a strict nature reserve in Germany, but primarily has a tourist character.