Dartmoor Training Area
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Integrated Land Management Plan (ILMP)
Environmental
Management
System
(EMS)
Integrated Land Management Plan (ILMP)
Geodiversity
The Dartmoor granite, which forms the principal features of the moor, was intruded through older Devonian and Carboniferous sedimentary rocks some 280 million years ago.
The sandstones and shales of Carboniferous age, fringing the granite, were laid down in relatively shallow seas and have been affected by volcanic activity. The intense pressures of a period of mountain building crumpled and uplifted the sediments which were then heated and chemically altered by the semi-molten granite. These metamorphic changes produced hard durable rock, such as that quarried at Meldon for railway ballast and aggregate. Heat from the granite later caused the mineralisation of the area, with lodes containing tin, copper and other minerals.
In geological terms the present landscape is relatively young. The area of Dartmoor has been a landmass for at least the last 60 million years, and intense weathering of the granite initiated the formation of the landscape during this period. The final development of the surface of the moor, with its tors and clitter (the boulder strewn slopes), took place during periglacial conditions of the Ice Age. The landscape finally reached the form in which we know it today as the climate warmed at the end of the Ice Age some 10-15,000 years ago.
