Needse Berg, Neede, Berkelland, Gelderland, Netherlandsi

Regional Level Types
Needse Berg	Hill
Neede	Municipality (Former)
Berkelland	Municipality
Gelderland	Province
Netherlands	Country

The Needse Berg is a 34.6 meter high hill in the hamlet of Lochuizen near Neede in the Dutch province of Gelderland. On top of the hill is De Hollandsche Molen ("The Dutch Mill"). The hill separates the valleys of the Buurserbeek in the north and the Bolksbeek in the south. The higher part of the Needse Berg was a heathland area a hundred years ago.

The Needse Berg is a moraine that was formed about 150,000 years ago during the penultimate ice age, the Saalien. The moraine has been run over by the land ice, deformed and possibly displaced in its entirety. During the last ice age, the Weichselian, the Needse Berg was eroded by solifluction and denudation processes. Aeolian processes have created a zone with belt-cover sand ridges around the foot of the moraine.

The moraine consists predominantly of sandy, silty and clayey marine deposits from the Tertiary (Miocene - Breda Formation). These layers contain shark teeth and whale bones.

On the western edge there are also coarse sandy deposits of the Rhine from before the ice cover (Urk Formation - 'brown river sands'). These river deposits also contain the Needse Clay, which was deposited under warmer conditions, probably during the Holsteinian. The freshwater snail Viviparus diluvianus is very common in this clay. Mammal remains have also been found, including a jaw fragment of a fossil forest elephant or giant elephant (Hesperoloxodon antiquus) and teeth of the fossil vole species Arvicola cantiana cantiana.

When the land ice arrived in the Netherlands, these deposits were pushed up, tilted and folded. In the pushed up 'brown river sands', soils of the moderpodzol type have been formed. Hydrologically speaking, it is an infiltration area.

There are a number of quarries in the moraine. Between 1825 and 1954, sand and clay were extracted here for the manufacture of stones and roof tiles. The excavated layers contained various fossil remains of mammals, including a jaw fragment of a forest elephant.

The now abandoned concept of Needian, a Pleistocene interglacial, is named after layers that were exposed in these quarries. These layers were deposited in a slowly flowing arm of the then Rhine. They stood out in the quarries because of enormous quantities of the freshwater snail Viviparus diluvianus, which was seen as characteristic of this floor. Nowadays, the Needian is equated with the Holsteinien, defined in Germany.

The Geologisch Natuurpad ("Geological Nature Trail") with information boards laid out in the area takes visitors past the characteristics of the nearby deposits from several geological periods. There are large differences in height and humidity on the moraine, which is why there are different plants, such as heath spotted-orchid, Solomon's seal and small-flowered touch-me-not.

Fossils

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Other Databases

Wikipedia:	https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Needse_Berg
Wikidata ID:	Q2675180

References