The Lower Rhine Plain (German: ''Niederrheinisches Tiefland'') is one of the

natural regions of Germany This division of Germany into major natural regions takes account primarily of geomorphological, geological, hydrological, and pedological criteria in order to divide the country into large, physical units with a common geographical basis. Politic ...

and lies on either side of the

Rhine The Rhine ( ) is one of the List of rivers of Europe, major rivers in Europe. The river begins in the Swiss canton of Graubünden in the southeastern Swiss Alps. It forms part of the Swiss-Liechtenstein border, then part of the Austria–Swit ...

north of the city of

Düsseldorf Düsseldorf is the capital city of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany. It is the second-largest city in the state after Cologne and the List of cities in Germany with more than 100,000 inhabitants, seventh-largest city ...

Geography

The Lower Rhine Plain is bordered in the south by the Lower Rhine Bay and Cologne Lowland, in the southeast by the

Bergisches Land The Bergisches Land (, ) is a low mountain range in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, east of the Rhine and south of the Ruhr. The landscape is shaped by forests, meadows, rivers and creeks and contains over twenty artificial lakes ...

, to the east and northeast by the Westphalian Basin and in the west by the

Netherlands , Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...

. The Lower Rhine Plain is an extensively terraced landscape. The otherwise level terraces are interrupted by various features like the V-shaped valleys, flood plains, old river courses or the

terminal moraine A terminal moraine, also called an end moraine, is a type of moraine that forms at the terminal (edge) of a glacier, marking its maximum advance. At this point, debris that has accumulated by plucking and abrasion, has been pushed by the front e ...

ridges of the Lower Rhine Heights. The height of the terrain is under 100m above NN almost everywhere.

Geology

The Lower Rhine Plain is the northern half of the geological structure known as the Lower Rhine Bay (''Niederrheinische Bucht''). Its geology was probably a result of deposition in the last 30 million years, which has given rise to sediments and layers of sedimentary rock in this plain up to 1,300 m thick.

Climate

Annual precipitation in the area is between 700 and 750mm and the average annual temperature is between 9.5 and 10.5 °C. The area benefits from a 'North Atlantic' climate with mild winters and a long

growing season A season is a division of the year marked by changes in weather, ecology, and the amount of daylight. The growing season is that portion of the year in which local conditions (i.e. rainfall, temperature, daylight) permit normal plant growth. Whi ...

References

{{Authority control Regions of North Rhine-Westphalia Rhine

Geography

Geology

Climate

See also

References