Ore Mountains Basin
The Ore Mountains Basin is a natural area in Saxony within the natural region of the Saxon Loess Field . In the north it borders on the Mulde-Lösshügelland natural area and in the south on several natural areas of the Saxon Uplands and Central Uplands . The Obere Pleißeland , which is directly to the east around the cities of Werdau and Crimmitschau, is also included .
The Erzgebirge basin is a settlement focus in Saxony and also a historically important industrial area.
Outline history
The natural area mapping and classification, which was continued until the 1990s, according to the system of the manual of the natural spatial structure of Germany of the former Federal Institute for Regional Studies, differentiated the areas of this natural area within the Erzgebirgsvorland region (No. 45) into an Ore Mountains Basin natural area (No. 451) and Upper Pleißeland (No. 452), which in turn was assigned to the Loessbörden within the greater region of the North German Lowlands . The working group “Natural Balance and Territorial Character” of the Saxon Academy of Sciences in Leipzig, which until 2001 was concerned with the development of a basis for the regional development planning of the Free State of Saxony, rearranged this in part, so that the term “Ore Mountain Basin” was not used in this understanding, which was later largely adopted by the state authorities is congruent with that of the "Erzgebirge Basin" according to the aforementioned regulatory system , for example used by the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation .
geography
As a hill country located at heights between 230 and 497 m above sea level, morphologically it is actually only a basin in the area between the metropolitan areas of Zwickau and Chemnitz . In this section, the area is bounded by the northern edge of the Ore Mountains in the south and by the Rabenstein ridge in the north. For the rest of the area, the term "basin" refers to a fossil sedimentary basin, the Vorerzgebirge depression , which is characterized by sedimentary rocks of the Rotliegend . Their reddish color is based on the iron-containing mineral hematite .
Except in many waterlogged areas, the soils can be described as valuable for agriculture. Due to their reddish color, the Rotliegend soils heat up relatively strongly. That is why the ice cover melts earlier, especially in spring, and harvesting can also take place relatively early in late summer or autumn. With increasing altitude, the proportion of loess in the soil and thus fertility decreases quickly. The potential natural vegetation is the high colline grove-oak-beech forest.
Especially in the winter months, when the high pressure subsides and the south current begins, the Ore Mountains foehn sets in , which then makes the basin 3 to 7 degrees warmer than the surrounding areas. In the 20th century, the air was heavily polluted with smoke gases due to dense settlement and early industrial use, which led to corresponding damage to the trees; until the 1990s, the waters were also heavily polluted; The legacies of the extraction of non-ferrous and precious metals, nickel, iron and uranium ore as well as hard coal, which have been intensively pursued over generations, shape the landscape in many places and soils contaminated with arsenic or heavy metals.
The rivers in the western part of the Upper Pleißeland drain over the Pleiße to the Weißen Elster and finally to the Saale . All more central places drain over the Zwickauer Mulde to the Mulde - the eastern of them via the detour of the Chemnitz . With a catchment area of around 140 square kilometers, the Lungwitzbach (flows into the Zwickauer Mulde near Glauchau) is one of the largest rivers in the Ore Mountains Basin. The extreme east finally drains via the Zschopau to the Freiberger Mulde . What the larger rivers have in common is a striking south-north orientation.
Individual evidence
- ↑ BfN map services ( memento from December 19, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) (in the "Landscapes" map service, landscape profiles can be clicked, which mostly describe sub-areas of a main unit)
- ^ Ore Mountains Basin (EGB) - map of the natural regions and natural spaces in Saxony ( memento from March 20, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) at www.umwelt.sachsen.de (PDF, 859 kB). Landscape structure according to the State Development Plan 2013, Saxon Ministry of the Interior. Interactive map of the Landschaftsforschungszentrum eV, Dresden
- ↑ Profile of the Ore Mountains Basin , Saxon State Office for Environment, Agriculture and Geology (pdf)
- ↑ Profile of the SächsLfULG, p. 4f, 11