Hanau-Seligenstadt Basin

The Hanau-Seligenstadt Basin is a subbasin of the Upper Rhine Graben southeast of Frankfurt am Main (Hesse, Bavaria, Germany).

The Hanau-Seligenstadt Basin is located in the eastern part of the Lower Main lowlands. The river Main crosses the basin between Aschaffenburg and Offenbach am Main. The largest cities of the area are Hanau, Seligenstadt and Dieburg.

The Hanau-Seligenstadt Basin is a Cenozoic graben. As a subbasin of the Upper Rhine Graben it belongs to the European Cenozoic Rift System, a fracture zone crossing Europe from the North Sea to the Mediterranean.

The Hanau-Seligenstadt Basin is separated from the Upper Rhine Graben to the west by a horst block. The Spessart mountains form its eastern margin. To the south it is bounded by the Odenwald mountains. Towards the north the graben margins converge. The basin sediments rest on top of the Variscan basement and Permian to Triassic rocks. Oligocene to Quaternary basin sediments reach more than 280 m in thickness. Marine, limnic and finally terrestrial clays, marls, limestones and sands with interbedded basalt layers dominate within the Oligocene and Miocene. The Pliocene and Quaternary river deposits consist of sand, gravel and silt, in Pliocene also lignite. The recent landscape is formed by river terraces.

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