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Downland, chalkland, chalk downs or just downs are areas of open chalk hills, such as the North Downs. This term is used to describe the characteristic landscape in southern England where chalk is exposed at the surface. The name "downs" is derived from the Old English word dun, meaning "hill".
The Yorkshire Wolds are hills in the counties of the East Riding of Yorkshire and North Yorkshire in Northern England. They are the northernmost chalk hills in the UK and within lies the northernmost chalk stream in Europe, the Gypsey Race.
The Lincolnshire Wolds are a range of low hills in the county of Lincolnshire, England which run roughly parallel with the North Sea coast, from the Humber Estuary in the north-west to the edge of the Lincolnshire Fens in the south-east. A large part of the Wolds are a designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB), and form the highest land in eastern England between Yorkshire and Kent.
The Dorset Downs are an area of chalk downland in the centre of the county Dorset in south west England. The downs are the most western part of a larger chalk formation which also includes Cranborne Chase, Salisbury Plain, Hampshire Downs, Chiltern Hills, North Downs and South Downs.
The ceremonial county of Lincolnshire is the second largest of the English counties and one that is predominantly agricultural in character. Despite its relatively large physical area, it has a comparatively small population. The unusually low population density that arises gives the county a very different character from the much more densely populated and urbanised counties of south-east and northern England, and is, in many ways, key to understanding the nature of the county.
Somerset is a rural county in the southwest of England, covering 4,171 square kilometres (1,610 sq mi). It is bounded on the north-west by the Bristol Channel, on the north by Bristol and Gloucestershire, on the north-east by Wiltshire, on the south-east by Dorset, and on the south west and west by Devon. It has broad central plains with several ranges of low hills. The landscape divides into four main geological sections from the Silurian through the Devonian and Carboniferous to the Permian which influence the landscape, together with water-related features.
The Greensand Ridge, also known as the Wealden Greensand, is an extensive, prominent, often wooded, mixed greensand/sandstone escarpment in south-east England. Forming part of the Weald, a former dense forest in Sussex, Surrey and Kent, it runs to and from the East Sussex coast, wrapping around the High Weald and Low Weald. It reaches its highest elevation, 294 metres (965 ft), at Leith Hill in Surrey—the second highest point in south-east England, while another hill in its range, Blackdown, is the highest point in Sussex at 280 metres (919 ft). The eastern end of the ridge forms the northern boundary of Romney Marsh.
Kent is the south-easternmost county in England. It is bounded on the north by the River Thames and the North Sea, and on the south by the Straits of Dover and the English Channel. The continent of Europe is 21 miles across the straits.
The London Basin is an elongated, roughly triangular sedimentary basin approximately 250 kilometres (160 mi) long which underlies London and a large area of south east England, south eastern East Anglia and the adjacent North Sea. The basin formed as a result of compressional tectonics related to the Alpine orogeny during the Palaeogene period and was mainly active between 40 and 60 million years ago.
The Geology of Yorkshire in northern England shows a very close relationship between the major topographical areas and the geological period in which their rocks were formed. The rocks of the Pennine chain of hills in the west are of Carboniferous origin whilst those of the central vale are Permo-Triassic. The North York Moors in the north-east of the county are Jurassic in age while the Yorkshire Wolds to the south east are Cretaceous chalk uplands. The plain of Holderness and the Humberhead levels both owe their present form to the Quaternary ice ages. The strata become gradually younger from west to east.
Holmesdale, also known as the Vale of Holmesdale, is a valley in South-East England that falls between the hill ranges of the North Downs and the Greensand Ridge of the Weald, in the counties of Kent and Surrey. It stretches from Folkestone on the Kent coast, through Ashford, Harrietsham, Maidstone, Riverhead/Sevenoaks, Westerham, Oxted, Godstone, Redhill, Reigate, Dorking, Gomshall, and Guildford – west of which it is also called by the local name of "Puttenham Vale" – as it continues through the village of Puttenham, to the market town of Farnham.
The Hampshire Basin is a geological basin of Palaeogene age in southern England, underlying parts of Hampshire, the Isle of Wight, Dorset, and Sussex. Like the London Basin to the northeast, it is filled with sands and clays of Paleocene and younger ages and it is surrounded by a broken rim of chalk hills of Cretaceous age.
A National Character Area (NCA) is a natural subdivision of England based on a combination of landscape, biodiversity, geodiversity and economic activity. There are 159 National Character Areas and they follow natural, rather than administrative, boundaries. They are defined by Natural England, the UK government's advisors on the natural environment.
The Marshwood and Powerstock Vales form a natural region in southwest England reaching to the Dorset coastline.
The Blackmoor Vale and Vale of Wardour area is a natural region in the counties of Dorset, Somerset and Wiltshire in southern England.
The Mid Severn Sandstone Plateau is a rural landscape and one of the natural regions of central England, straddling the border between the counties of Shropshire and Staffordshire. It stretches from the western fringes of the Birmingham conurbation to Telford in the north and Kidderminster in the south. The major feature of the plateau is the valley of the River Severn, which cuts through it from north to south. It consists of Permian and Triassic-age New Red Sandstone getting older as one goes west until one reaches Silurian and Carboniferous-age siltstones and coals west of the river.
The geology of Kent in southeast England largely consists of a succession of northward dipping late Mesozoic and Cenozoic sedimentary rocks overlain by a suite of unconsolidated deposits of more recent origin.
The geology of Surrey is dominated by sedimentary strata from the Cretaceous, overlaid by clay and superficial deposits from the Cenozoic.
The Vale of Wardour encompasses the valley of the River Nadder in the county of Wiltshire, England.
References
- ↑ Natural Areas at www.sssi.naturalengland.org.uk. Accessed on 8 Aug 2017.
- ↑ Biodiversity: The UK Steering Group Report, HMSO, 1995
- 1 2 3 Natural Areas at www.naturalareas.naturalengland.org.uk. Accessed on 4 Apr 2013.