Preface: Quaternary and Tertiary landscapes and their sediments in Hesse, Germany – a guidebook to selected field trips on geology, geomorphology and geoarchaeology
Quaternary and Tertiary landscapes and their sediments in Hesse
This guidebook compiles the field trips offered for the first Central
European Conference on Geomorphology and Quaternary Sciences, to be held in
Giessen, Germany, from 23 to 27 September 2018. The conference
was organized for the first time as a joint meeting of the German
Association on Geomorphology (AKG, Deutscher Arbeitskreis für
Geomorphologie) and the German Quaternary Association (DEUQUA, Deutsche
Quartärvereinigung), following the motto “Geomorphology and quaternary
sciences: connecting disciplines”.
Giessen and its wider surroundings are located in Hesse and offer a great
diversity of landscapes. The lithology comprises rocks from the Palaeozoic to
the Quaternary, including the Miocene Vogelsberg massif as the largest
volcanic complex in central Europe. The rivers Lahn, Main and Rhine dominate
the fluvial system of Hesse, and their Quaternary history is visible in a
large variety of sediments and landforms. Soils of the region represent an
alternating climate history of the region, reaching back to the Tertiary,
and thick loess deposits in the Wetterau region allowed the development of
fertile soils, used by farmers in the Neolithic.
The aforementioned geo-tidbits demonstrate what is offered by one pre-conference and
three post-conference day field trips, which provide a geological,
geomorphological and geoarchaeological overview of the area, with a focus on
the Quaternary. I wish to thank all authors for their contributions to this
guidebook. Stefanie Menges is thanked for her editing work and Lisette Diehl
for providing some of the figures. Finally, I would like to express my
gratitude to the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the Hessian Agency for
Nature Conservation, Environment and Geology (HLNUG), who provided financial support for this publication.

Figure 1Field trips and their routes offered for the Central
European Conference on Geomorphology and Quaternary Sciences, Giessen, Germany.
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