Soil and Root Trail

It features various stations designed to raise visitors’ awareness of one of the most important fundamental organs of plants and the animal kingdom.

The trail, which was installed directly below the treetop walk in Kalten Tal, is divided into various stations. Visitors are led through a root tunnel into the realm of roots. This is followed by a look at the soil profile and thus into the “heart” of the forest habitat.

Another focus is on a wide variety of beetles and insects—such as the dung beetle and the earthworm—that live on and in the soil and play important roles. The structural stability of trees is also addressed, focusing on the physical forces acting on the roots, particularly during extreme weather conditions.

Topics already covered on the Treetop Trail are revisited on the Soil and Root Trail and examined from a completely different perspective.

In conjunction with the HarzWaldHaus, the Wildcat Trail—Forest Adventure Trail, and the Treetop Trail, the Soil and Root Trail offers a unique opportunity to help people understand the diverse functions of the forest in an active and hands-on way. The focus of the Ground and Root Trail is on raising visitors’ awareness of the “unassuming” ground—as well as the roots within it—as a unique habitat, and on encouraging them to use the resource of soil responsibly.

From “Roots to the Treetops”—or, to put it even more succinctly, “No Roots, No Treetops”—this initiative offers ideal opportunities to inspire people of all ages to think about their relationship with nature in a long-term, holistic, and sustainable way and to act accordingly in the future. For, as Bada Dioum, a Senegalese environmental expert, aptly put it at the UN Conference: “In the end, we will only preserve what we love, we will only love what we understand, and we will only understand what we are taught.”