The Lower Saxon Hills[1] (German: Niedersächsisches Bergland) are one of the 73 natural regions in Germany defined by the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN). Geographically it covers roughly the same area as the Weser Uplands (German: Weserbergland) in its wider sense.[2]
The region is part of Germany's Central Uplands with hills ranging up to 528 m above sea level (NN) in height that extend across northeast North Rhine-Westphalia, southern Lower Saxony and northern Hesse. It is classified as region number D 36 by the BfN; its full name being the Niedersächsisches Bergland (mit Weser- und Leine-Bergland (Lower Saxon Hills, including the Weser and Leine Hills).
D 36 is a newly defined region that incorporates 3 geographical units from the old system: numbers 36, 37 and 53, and includes all parts of the Weser Uplands (Weserbergland) in both its narrower and a wider sense. That said, all three elements of the region, despite their misleading names, cover far more than is generally meant in everyday language or in atlases by the term Weserbergland.
In addition the Weser-Leine Hills sub-division (37) includes the whole of the Leine Uplands (Leinebergland), whilst the Harz mountains, admittedly are only partly in Lower Saxony, are clearly older in geological time scale and have been given their own natural region (D37) rather than being grouped with the lower Saxon Hills.
- ^ Elkins, T.H. (1972). Germany (3rd ed.). London: Chatto & Windus. ISBN 0-7010-0087-2.
- ^ However at least one source, Elkins (1968), uses the term to refer to the outcrops of rock to the north, west and southwest of the Harz which roughly corresponds to the eastern half of the BfN's region and extends only as far as the area between the rivers Weser and Leine.