North German Plain

The North German Plain or Northern Lowland (German: Norddeutsches Tiefland) is one of the major geographical regions of Germany. It is the German part of the North European Plain. The region is bounded by the coasts of the North Sea and Baltic Sea to the north and Germany's Central Uplands (die Mittelgebirge) to the south.

In the west, the southern boundary of the North German Plain is formed by the Lower Saxon Hills – specifically the ridge of the Teutoburg Forest, the Wiehen Hills, the Weser Hills and the Lower Saxon Börde – which partly separate it from that area of the Plain known as the Westphalian Lowland. Elements of the Rhenish Massif also act a part of the southern boundary of the plain: the Eifel, Bergisches Land and the Sauerland. In the east the North German Plain spreads out beyond the Harz mountains and Kyffhäuser further to the south as far as the Central Saxon hill country and the foothills of the Ore Mountains.

It is known that the North German Plain was formed during the era as a result of the various glacial advances of terrestrial Scandinavian ice sheets as well as by periglacial geomorphologic processes. The terrain may be considered as part of the Old or Young Drift (Alt- or Jungmoräne), depending on whether or not it was formed by the ice sheets of the last glacial period, the Weichselian Ice Age. The surface relief varies from level to undulating. The lowest points are low moorlands and old marshland on the edge of the ridge of dry land in the west of Schleswig-Holstein (the Wilster Marsh is 3.5 metres below sea level) and in the north west of Lower Saxony (Freepsum, 2.3 metres below sea level). The highest points may be referred to as Vistula and Hall glaciation terminal moraines (depending on the ice age which formed them) – e.g. on the Fläming Heath (200 metres above sea level) and the Helpt Hills (179 metres). Following the ice ages, rain-fed, raised bogs originated in western and northern Lower Saxony during warm periods of high precipitation (cf the Atlantic warm period). These bogs were formerly widespread but much of this terrain has now been drained or otherwise superseded.

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