The West Hesse Highlands (‹See Tfd›German: Westhessisches Bergland), also known as the West Hessian Lowlands and Highlands (Westhessisches Berg- und Senkenland), are a heavily forested region of the Central Uplands in Germany. These highlands lie mainly within the state of Hesse, between that part of the Rhenish Massif right of the Rhine in the west, the Weser Uplands to the north, the Hessian Central Uplands[a] to the east and the Wetterau to the south.
The West Hesse Highlands form one of the major natural regions of Germany (Natural Region No. 34 or D46) and are part of the Central European Uplands as well as being the watershed between the Rhine and the Weser. They comprise a line of hill ranges in the west, running north-northeast to south-southwest on the shoulder of the Rhenish Massif and include the Kellerwald, and a fault trough in the east, the West Hesse Depression.
The West and East Hesse Highlands, together referred to as the Hesse Highlands, combine to form the geological unit known as the Hesse Depression[b] (Hessischen Senke), in its wider sense. Here, geologically young layers of Zechstein and Bunter sandstone, and in places even younger rocks like Muschelkalk, of the Jurassic, Paleogene and Neogene periods, have been preserved.[1]
Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).
- ^ Dierck Henningsen (1986), Einführung in die Geologie der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (in German) (3. ed.), Stuttgart: Ferdinand Enke Verlag, pp. 49–54, ISBN 3-432-88513-X