East Hesse Highlands

The East Hesse Highlands (German: Osthessisches Bergland) describes a heavily wooded range of hills lying mainly in the German state of Hesse, but also extending a little way into Lower Saxony to the north, Thuringia to the east and Bavaria to the southeast. The region is sandwiched between the West Hesse Depression to the west, the Weser Uplands to the north, the Thuringian Basin to the northeast, the northwestern edge of the Thuringian Forest to the east, the Spessart to the south and the Wetterau to the southwest.

The East Hesse Highlands forms a natural region (no. 35 or D47) and is both part of the European Central Uplands as well as the Rhine-Weser watershed. It includes the Vogelsberg-Meißner Axis,[1] also known as the Hessian Central Uplands,[2] the East Hesse Depression and the Rhön.

The West and East Hesse Highlands together form the Hesse Highlands and correspond to the geological unit of the Hesse Depression in its wider sense, because geologically recent layers of Zechstein and Bunter sandstone, and in places even younger Muschelkalk rocks, from the lower Jurassic and Tertiary periods have been preserved here.[3]

  1. ^ Dickinson, Robert E (1964). Germany: A regional and economic geography (2nd ed.). London: Methuen, p. 512. ASIN B000IOFSEQ.
  2. ^ Elkins, T H (1972). Germany (3rd ed.). London: Chatto & Windus, 1972, p. 223. ASIN B0011Z9KJA.
  3. ^ Dierck Henningsen (1986), Einführung in the Geologie the Bundesrepublik Deutschland (in German) (3. ed.), Stuttgart: Ferdinand Enke Verlag, pp. 49–54, ISBN 3-432-88513-X