Geoecology › Research › Landscape laboratories › Landscape Laboratory Kaiserpfalz

The catchment area of the Röstbach is located in the south-west of Saxony-Anhalt, in the transition area from the large Unstrut-Helme-Ried to the Unstrut breakthrough valley through the Triassic land. Together with its tributaries, the Röstbach drains the eastern part of the Finne and flows into the Unstrut at the edge of the village of Memleben.

The area is part of the old lowlands and therefore has a very long history of utilisation. This is documented, among other things, by the immediate neighbourhood of the site where the Nebra Sky Disc was found and the Kaiserpfalz of Memleben. Due to the favourable climatic and soil conditions, arable farming predominates here. The former floodplains of the Unstrut were dyked and meliorated in the 1960s with the aim of permanently opening up the fertile floodplain soils for agricultural use in addition to flood protection. The soil mosaic is therefore very diverse and ranges from alluvial brown soils to black and parabrown soils in the transition to the Finne and rendzines in the higher areas. The landscape mosaic there is still quite small-scale and diverse.

Due to the good accessibility and rounding off of the terrain, the diversity of the landscape and the long-standing cooperation with the local agricultural business and the municipal administration, the geoecology department has been carrying out field internships there since 2006. The focus is on working with meteorological, pedological and hydrological field measurement and sampling methods. This serves as a basis for analysing the local and catchment area-specific water and substance balance as well as evaluating the effects of land use on soil condition, runoff formation and water quality.

Partners on site:

• Agrargesellschaft Wohlmirstedt mbH
• Municipal administration Kaiserpfalz