How did glaciation shape the sandy lowlands of Lower Saxony?

The sandy lowlands of Lower Saxony were primarily shaped by glacial action, which deposited extensive layers of sand and gravel across the region west of the Elbe River.1

During the Pleistocene Epoch, southward-moving ice sheets—notably during the Saale Glacial Stage—buried the previous landscape under thick deposits of glacial drift, including sands and clays. In areas outside of the terminal moraines, meltwater from these retreating ice sheets laid down broad sheets of outwash sands.23

These glacial processes resulted in a landscape characterized by relatively poor, sandy soils that were historically dominated by heath and bog, such as the Lüneburg Heath. While the morainic belts contain fragments of former glacial features, such as Wilseder Hill, the western portion of the North German Plain is generally flatter and more monotonous than the regions to the east, where more complex morainic uplands and troughs were formed by the later Weichsel Glacial Stage.431