Geography > ESSAY > Zuiderzee Enclosure Dam (Netherlands). Best Case Study Essay. Zero plagiarism (All)

Zuiderzee Enclosure Dam (Netherlands). Best Case Study Essay. Zero plagiarism

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Introduction In the whole of Europe, the Netherlands has the greatest deltas with a long history in dam building and creating new land. For a long time, the Dutch tried to prevent the sea and floods from swallowing their land (Ligtvoet & van Minnen 23). It started with the Frisians who built mounds so that they could save lives some 2000 years ago and the Zealanders who built dikes after the 1134 floods. The Dutch used windmills in the 17th century to drain lakes such as the Beemster. After the steam engine invention in the 19th century, it was now possible to drain larger lakes such as the Haarlemmermeer. However, of all the reclamations, the largest reclamation was the Dutch Zuiderzee project work on 170,000 hectares in the 20th century. The Zuiderzee Enclosure Dam, the Afsluitdijk, was mostly for agricultural land to prevent flooding. Building this dam shortened the coastline considerably (Ligtvoet & van Minnen 22). Today, Zuiderzee, the sea, is a lake called Ijsselmeer that supplies fresh water. From the 14th century, the Dutch built dikes that protected the land against the sea on the parts of the land with no dunes. However, sometimes the sea would break through the dikes and cause a lot of damage. This is because there were no regular emergency, disaster response services. There were many water related emergency disasters. For example, the largest water disaster in the recent history was in 1953, in which almost 200,000 people lost their lives (Afsluitdijk Project). The delta work closed most of the inlets in the south west of the Netherlands that protect the hinterland from high floods. There were two open inlets since they were at the port entrance of Rotterdam and Antwerp. The dikes rise along the Antwerp route, and a storm surge barrier closes the Rotterdam route in case of severe storm. This prevents a large country area from flooding. There are rivers that experience intense flooding in the Netherlands. In the past, ice dams caused dike breaches. When the thawing occurred, water started to accumulate behind the ices dams. Today, only icemelts and rainfall cause extreme water levels especially in the alpine region. For instance, this was the case in 1993 and 1995 where there were serious high water levels threatening the dikes. They almost breached in 1995, but the government evacuated 200,000 people as a precaution (Dankers & Feyen 13). The Netherlands is also extremely sensitive to climate change. Events such as Peak River discharges are common, and they require measures that are preventive and precautionary. These are mostly areas lying below the Amsterdam Ordnance Datum (NAP). This is because about 59% of the Dutch land surface is prone to flooding (Afsluitdijk Project). The areas encompass lands within and outside the dike rings and the 'river forelands' (Afsluitdijk Project). There is also a 55% of land located within the dike rings, where dams, dunes, dikes and artificial structures protect them. 30% of the Dutch land surface falls below the NAP and the other 30% of the total land, which is above the NAP, is prone to flooding from the rivers. However, there is a 45 area outside the dike rings. This means that there is no protection from dikes, dunes dams and the artificial structures (Trevor, 23).

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