Bodengeographischer Beitrag Zur Quantitativen Naturraumbewertung und Ihre Anwendung in der Landesplanung

Abstract

Geography has only partially satisfied the demand of the ‘Reichsarbeitsgemeinschaft für Raumforschung’ (a working group for regional planning, established by the German Government in 1936), to divide Germany into smaller units which were better to handle and offered an appropriate standard for regional planning. The result, the Classification of the Natural regions of Germany resp. its detailed elaboration, the Geographical Survey of the German ‘Länder’ (the main administrative subdivisions of Germany) has been given nearly no attention by regional planners.

The main arguments of regional planners are: deductive working methods, no theoretical basis of general validity, a wide range of judgement for the planner in the determination of limits, and unused cartographic representation of consents.

Pedology deals with one of the main methodic mistakes in the planning of natural regions by not considering the geo-factor soil as a partial factor soil texture, but as a part common to all those factors from which the planning of natural regions deducts its ecologically homogeneous units with the help of ‘complex analysis’.

A classification of natural regions corrected in this manner has advantages for practical work as it contains half of the number of units.

• 1. inductive working methods.

• 2. accurate determination of limits; the reasons for limit determinations de not remain hidden.

• 3. representation of the unit contents by soil associations.

• 4. evaluation by standard values (structure of yields; yields/ha; crop distribution patterns).

• 5. the contents offer an adequate basis for further practical or scientific questioning. The correctness of this concept is proved with practical examples from the area covered by the topographical sheet Braunschweig, scale 1: 200000.