Estonia - Wooded meadows (Laelatu, Kalli-Nedrema, Mäepea, Allika, Tagamoisa, Loode, Koiva, Halliste)

Wooded meadows are traditional seminatural communities that few hundred years ago were widespread in the countries around the Baltic Sea but also in other parts of Europe. They are sparse natural wooded areas with regularly mown herb layer where the characteristic appearance and species composition preserves only as a result of traditional agricultural activities: mowing or/and grazing. In terms of appearance and ecological conditions, wooded meadows are similar to parks, yet are considerably older and initially arose from natural communities. Wooded meadows are one of the oldest ecosystems that have arisen through the interactions between man and nature in the forest zone. Most probably the first communities similar to wooded meadows started to appear around the early settlements about 7000-8000 years ago. As a result of wider development of animal husbandry in Estonian areas about 4000 years ago the importance of wooded meadows continuously grew. Historically the distribution of wooded meadows and pastures has been very wide, likely encompassing a large proportion of animal husbandry regions in the temperate zone, but mown wooded meadows were typical only of Northern Europe.

Estonia - Baltic Klint

The North-Estonian limestone escarpment is part of a more extensive landform -the Baltic Klint. The total length of the Baltic Klint is 1100-1200 km; of that 250 km are in mainland Estonia. The limestone cliff begins from the western coast of the Island of Oland in Sweden. From the northern coast of the island it extends under the sea to the Island of Osmussaar and continues on the Pakri Islands. The mainland stretch of the klint starts on Pakri Peninsula. The klint runs through Estonia to Russia where it disappears under younger, Devonian rocks on the southern shore of Lake Ladoga. The Klint is at its highest (55.6 m a.s.l.) at Ontika in eastern Estonia. The North-Estonian Klint enables to study the rocks formed more than 500 million years ago. Starting from the Island of Osmussaar and ending in the Ida-Viru County the evolution of the Cambrian and Ordovician sea and biota may be traced during the course of about 100 million years.