The Eifel is a low mountain range in western Germany and eastern Belgium. It occupies parts of southwestern North Rhine-Westphalia, northwestern Rhineland-Palatinate and the south of the German-speaking Community of Belgium.
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The Eifel is bordered by the river Moselle in the south and the Rhine in the east. In the north it is limited by the hills of the High Fens (Hohes Venn), in the west by the Ardennes of Belgium and Luxembourg.
There are several distinct chains within the Eifel.
Since 2004 about 110 km² of the Eifel have been protected as the Eifel National Park nature reserve.
The Eifel and its western continuation into Belgium, the Ardennes, are a part of the Variscan mountain belt and belong to the Rhenish Massif (Rheinisches Schiefergebirge).
The Eifel consists mainly of Devonian slates, sandstones and limestones, laid down in an ocean south of the Old Red Continent[2] and folded and overthrust in the Variscan orogeny. The Eifel geological structures like main folds and overthrusts can be traced in a SW-NE direction far beyond the Rhine valley.
In the Tertiary and Quaternary geological era, the Eifel was a site of extensive volcanic activity. Some of the hills are volcanic vents. The peculiar circle-shaped lakes (maar) of the volcanic regions formed in volcanic craters. The last volcanic eruptions in the Laacher See volcanic site took place around 10,000 years ago and generated a huge volume of volcanic ash, now found in thin ash layers in contemporaneous sediments throughout Europe. The volcanism of the Eifel is thought to be partly caused by a hotspot or mantle plume, a place where hot material from deep in the mantle rises to the surface, and partly by melt-ascent at deep fractures in the Earth's crust.[3] Research has shown that the volcanism is still active; the Eifel region is rising by 1–2 mm per year. Historically, the Eifel volcanoes had inactive phases of 10,000 to 20,000 years between active phases, suggesting there is a possibility of future eruptions.
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EIFEL, a district of Germany, in the Prussian Rhine Province, between the Rhine, the Moselle and the frontier of the grand duchy of Luxemburg. It is a hilly region, most elevated in the eastern part (Hohe Eifel), where there are several points from 2000 up to 2410 ft. above sea-level. In the west is the Schneifels or Schnee-Eifel; and the southern part, where the most picturesque scenery and chief geological interest is found, is called the Vorder Eifel.
The Eifel is an ancient massif of folded Devonian rocks upon the margins of which, near Hillesheim and towards Bitburg and Trier, rest unconformably the nearly undisturbed sandstones, marls and limestones of the Trias. On the southern border, at Wittlich, the terrestrial deposits of the Permian Rothliegende are also met with. The slates and sandstones of the Lower Devonian form by far the greater part of the region; but folded amongst these, in a series of troughs running from south-west to north-east lie the fossiliferous limestones of the Middle Devonian, and occasionally, as for example near Biidesheim, a few small patches of the Upper Devonian. Upon the ancient floor of folded Devonian strata stand numerous small volcanic cones, many of which, though long extinct, are still very perfect in form. The precise age of the eruptions is uncertain. The only sign of any remaining volcanic activity is the emission in many places of carbon dioxide and of heated waters. There is no historic or legendary record of any eruption, but nevertheless the eruptions must have continued to a very recent geological period. The lavas of Papenkaule are clearly posterior to the excavation of the valley of the Kyll, and an outflow of basalt has forced the Uess to seek a new course. The volcanic rocks occur bath as tuffs and as lava-flows. They are chiefly leucite and nepheline rocks, such as leucitite, leucitophyre and nephelinite, but basalt and trachyte also occur. The leucite lavas of Niedermendig contain haiiyne in abundance. The most extensive and continuous area of volcanic rocks is that surrounding the Laacher See and extending eastwards to Neuwied and Coblenz and even beyond the Rhine.
The numerous so-called crater-lakes or maare of the Eifel present several features of interest. They do not, as a rule, lie in true craters at the summit of volcanic cones, but rather in hollows which have been formed by explosions. The most remarkable group is that of Daun, where the three depressions of Gemiind, Weinfeld and Schalkenmehren have been hollowed out in the Lower Devonian strata. The first of these shows no sign of either lavas or scoriae, but volcanic rocks occur on the margins of the other two. The two largest lakes in the Eifel region, however, are the Laacher See in the hills west of Andernach on the Rhine, and the Pulvermaar S.E. of the Daun group, with its shores of peculiar volcanic sand, which also appears in its waters as a black powder (pulver).
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