Drents Plateau

The Drents Plateau is an area that is mainly located in Drenthe, with foothills in Groningen and Friesland. Roughly speaking, it is located between the cities of Coevorden, Groningen, Steenwijk and Emmen.

The plateau is made up of boulder clay, which was deposited in the penultimate ice age. Above this, in many places, there is a layer of cover sand from the last ice age and local peat. There are few major elevation changes; the entire plateau is mainly between 10 and 20 meters above sea level. The relief is mainly formed by the land ice in the penultimate ice age. In many places, the ice left elongated straight ridges in the landscape; the clearest example of this is the Hondsrug in the northeast of Drenthe. In some places, the ice pushed up the subsurface into small moraines, an example of this is the Havelterberg. After the penultimate ice age, this landscape was affected by streams and rivers, which largely followed the pattern of the ridges formed by the ice. When man also entered the landscape, the relief was influenced by raised arable land and old drifting dunes.

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