In 1820 King George IV of England tasked the Professor of Astronomy and Director of the Observatory at Göttingen University, Carl Friedrich Gauss, to survey the Kingdom of Hanover. The mathematician Gauss used the summit of the Haußelberg as one of the triangulation stations for his land surveys, triangulating it to the Falkenberg, AMSL, further west near Wardböhmen and to the Wilseder Berg, AMSL, to the north. Another triangle was formed by the Haußelberg, the Falkenberg and Breithorn (Breitenhorn), AMSL, south of Unterlüß. It has to be deduced that these points - the Breithorn, Haußelberg and Falkenberg - which are all hidden by woods today, were then on open, unforested hilltops, probably surrounded by heathland. Not until the large, systematic afforestation in the 2nd half of the 19th century did today's wooded hilltops emerge.