Elm-Lappwald Nature Park

The Elm-Lappwald Nature Park (German: Naturpark Elm-Lappwald) is a nature park in southwest Lower Saxony, east of Brunswick in central Germany. It is dominated by the forested hill ranges of the Elm, Lappwald and Dorm as well as the region known as the Helmstedt Bowl (Helmstedter Mulde).

The nature park has an area of about 470 square kilometres (180 sq mi) and lies within the districts of Helmstedt and Wolfenbüttel. It is bordered to the west by the city of Brunswick and to the north by Wolfsburg. The A 2 motorway from Hanover to Berlin cuts through the northern part of the park. Within the nature park are the following hill ranges, landscapes and forests:

From a landscape point of view the nature park belongs to the Eastphalian Uplands. It is located between the highlands of the Harz to the south and the Lüneburg Heath on the North German Plain to the north. Climatically the park lies in the transition zone between the maritime and continental zones.

The nature park was founded in 1977 thanks to cooperation between the districts of Helmstedt and Wolfenbüttel and the city of Brunswick. The Elm-Lappwald Nature Park has since become part of the UNESCO and European Geopark of Harz–Brunswick Land–Eastphalia.

The last ice age ( the Weichselian glaciation) around 12,000 years ago deposited a layer of loess up to 3 metres thick in the southern part of the Helmstedt Bowl and in the entire Schöppenstedt Basin, on which fertile black and brown earths were formed. During periods of thaw, the ice sheets created the detailed shape of the land. A thick deciduous vegetation developed in the time after the ice age and covered the whole area of the present-day park. Their species matched the soil conditions. For example, in the northern part of the park oak and hornbeam woods alternated with beech and oak woods and with carrs on the wet,peaty areas (fens). In the southern part, beech forests predominated.

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