Most of the Ries UNESCO Global Geopark area lies in the state of Bavaria, with a smaller part in the state of Baden-Würtemberg comprising the Ries Crater, situated between the Swabian and Franconian Alb in southern Germany. The geopark covers an area of 1,749 km² with around 162,500 inhabitants. Some 15 million years ago, a meteorite collided with Earth in this very place, leaving an i...
Celebrating Earth Heritage The Bergstraße-Odenwald UNESCO Global Geopark is situated in the southwest of the Federal Republic of Germany, 50 km south of the city of Frankfurt, between the Rhine valley in the west and the Main valley in the east. The region is located between the rivers Rhine (W), Main (N) and Neckar(S), and the Odenwald hills in the centre. It covers an area of 3500 km...
Celebrating Earth Heritage The Harz, Braunschweiger Land UNESCO Global Geopark is located in Northern Germany and encloses the Harz Mountains and the northern situated "Braunschweiger Land" up to the Flechtingen Ridge. The Harz Mountains are composed of Paleozoic sediments and magmatic rocks. They have been extensively documented over the past 1,000 years in historical accounts of mi...
Celebrating Earth Heritage The Swabian Alb UNESCO Global Geopark is located in the federal state of Baden-Württemberg, about 40 kilometers south of Stuttgart and is the only UNESCO Global Geopark in this federal state. Its boundaries correspond with the natural area Swabian Alb. In the northern part the so called Alb escarpment, a steep slope of approximately 400 m in height, and in the so...
Celebrating Earth Heritage TERRA.vita UNESCO Global Geopark is located in northwestern Germany in the transitional zone between the northern lowlands and the northwestern hill country, approximately 100 kilometers from the North Sea coast and some 35 kilometers east of the Dutch border. The Geology of TERRA.vita is characterized by an exceptionally complete record of the past 300 Million years...
Celebrating Earth HeritageOld iron mine in the thuringian forest in Ruhla townThe geological history of the region starts with the amalgamation of the supercontinent Pangaea during the Variscan Orogeny and has acontinuous record until the Breakup of Pangaea in the Late Triassic. The variscan basement is exposed in the Ruhla Crystalline Complex (RCC) which is part of the Mid German Crystalline Rise...
Celebrating Earth Heritage Located in the middle of Central Europe, at the northwestern part of the ‘Rheinish Slate Mountains’, the rolling Eifel highlands are a hilly land-scape with deep, glacially carved valleys cut into old Devonian sediments (360-415 million years old). Volcanoes dot the landscape, with 350 known eruption centers, and give the area its name – Vulkaneifel UNESCO Global Geop...
