Zittau and Oderwitz basins
The Zittau and Oderwitz basins form a basin landscape in the Saxon and Polish eastern Upper Lusatia and on the northern border of the Czech Republic . It is an arable, open cultural landscape that belongs to the large landscape of the Central European low mountain range and plains . The basins bear the name of the two villages with the largest elevations of the basins Zittau and Oderwitz . The German part of the basin landscape is now a protected landscape area .
Position and extent
The basins cover an area of 137 square kilometers and run essentially along the valleys of the Lausitz Neisse , Mandau and Landwasser . In the basin area are the communities of Kottmar (partially), Oderwitz , Mittelherwigsdorf , Olbersdorf and Bertsdorf-Hörnitz , the Großhennersdorf district of the city of Herrnhut , and the city of Zittau . The Oderwitzer basin is at an altitude of about 300 meters above sea level, the Zittau basin, however, only at an altitude of 240 meters above sea level. In the north, the Berzdorf Basin joins the Zittau Basin.
Geomorphologically, the Zittau Basin extends east to the Jizera Mountains foothills ; it includes the town of Hrádek nad Nisou in the Czech Republic and includes the open-cast mining landscape around Bogatynia in Poland .
geology
The basins were created by volcanism in the Neogene and were lowered by up to 100 meters in the Pleistocene by tectonic subsidence processes. Pleistocene sedimentation deposited gravel , sands , loess and basalt tuff and formed the overburden of the basin. In places, lignite was also formed between the individual sediment layers through organic deposits. A special feature of these coal deposits is their small size and the greater thickness of 40 to 60 meters, which in some places can be up to 100 meters. Other rocks that can be found in the Zittau and Oderwitz basins are limonite and bituminous shale .
The basins are bounded by many mountains that were also formed by volcanism during the transition from Paleogene to Neogene .
use
Lignite mining
Due to the relatively large deposits of brown coal , the first mining attempts were made as early as 1799, in which the coal was extracted in tunnels underground. In Oderwitz , two excavations carried out in 1835 showed that the extraction of lignitic brown coal was very complicated due to numerous geological disturbances . The funding was then stopped again.
In Olbersdorf , two lignite seams were found in which the upper seam was 10 to 15 meters thick, while the lower seam was 50 meters thick. From 1810 to 1913, the upper seam was excavated underground . From 1910 onwards, coal mining took place in the open pit , but this was stopped again in 1938.
The large-scale mining of Olbersdorf lignite did not take place until 1947, in order to supply the industry in and around Zittau with raw lignite. A total of 21.5 million tons of coal were mined until the mine was closed in 1991. The 38 meter deep open pit was flooded between September 15, 1996 and March 2, 1999. As part of the 2nd Saxon State Garden Show in Olbersdorf in 1999, the open-cast mining landscape was renovated and greened and today forms the Olbersdorfer See recreation area .
The Hercules open- cast lignite mine near Bogatynia , which supplied the Hirschfelde power plant , was expanded into a large open- cast mine and the Polish Turów power plant was built near Seitendorf (Zatonie) . The opencast mine has now reached the Neisse and has swallowed up all the places northwest, west and southwest of Reichenau.
Agriculture
Due to the fertile loess loam soils of the two basins, cattle breeding and agriculture are predominant today, at least in Germany. Due to intensive agriculture, however , the groundwater has a high nitrogen load .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Federal Agency for Nature Conservation: Zittau and Oderwitz basins. (No longer available online.) January 15, 2010, formerly in the original ; Retrieved April 17, 2010 . ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
literature
- The south-eastern Upper Lusatia with Zittau and the Zittau Mountains (= values of the German homeland . Volume 16). 2nd Edition. Akademie Verlag, Berlin 1971, p. 79.
- Hermann Preßler: Contributions to the knowledge of the Zittau brown coal . Zittau 1843 ( digitized version )
Coordinates: 50 ° 55 ′ 0 ″ N , 14 ° 45 ′ 0 ″ E