By P.H. Nienhuis
This e-book offers the environmental historical past of the Delta of the lowland rivers Rhine and Meuse, an ecological tale on evolving human–environmental family dealing with weather swap and sea-level upward push. It bargains a mix of in-depth ecology and environmental historical past, facing exploitation of land and water, using every thing nature supplied, the improvement of fisheries and agriculture, alterations in biodiversity of upper vegetation, fish, birds, mammals and invasive exotics. it's the first entire booklet written in English at the built-in environmental historical past of the Delta, from prehistoric occasions as much as the current day. It covers the l- acy of human intervention, the inescapable destiny of reclaimed, however subs- ing and sinking polders, ‘bathtubs’ attacked by way of a variety of floods, reclaimed within the heart a long time and unwittingly uncovered to the emerging sea point and the expanding amplitude among low and high water within the rivers. The river channels, constricted and controlled among embankments, misplaced their flood plains, silted up, degraded and incised. Cultivation of raised lavatory deposits ended in oxidation and compacting of peat and clay, leading to revolutionary subsidence and flooding; arable land needed to be became grassland and wetland. For millennia muscular power and wind and water powers moulded the rustic into its simple shape. From 1800 onwards, acceleration and scaling up by way of steam strength and electrical energy, and exponential popu- tion progress, led to the erection of human constructions ‘fixed forever’, and critical strain at the environment.
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Extra info for Environmental History of the Rhine–Meuse Delta: An ecological story on evolving human–environmental relations coping with climate change and sea-level rise
Sample text
According to Tacitus, in his book Germania (as cited by Bouwer (2003), ‘these creatures were belligerent, went out shooting, and wasted a lot of time over vanity, sleeping and eating’. For the Romans, the provinces of Germania Inferior were conquered countries. Although little is known about the Roman economy in the outer areas of the empire, it is obvious that agricultural practice was rather important. e. all the conquered areas beyond Rome) was an indispensable source of income for the Roman emperors to pay their gigantic armies (Bouwer, 2003).
Wild boar live not only in broadleaved woodland, but also in reed marshes, and alder-brake. The animals are omnivores, rooting in litter for nuts, roots, fungi, small animals and carrion (cf. Chapter 19). 3 2 Prehistory and Early History of the Delta From Hunters to Settlers As said before, during the New Stone Age a gradual change from hunters to settlers took place in river land. An increasing number of excavations reveal that the entire basins of Rhine and Meuse were sparsely populated in pre-Roman times.
The profiles showed an almost closed hardwood floodplain forest with small open spots in the vegetation, either caused by minor human activities or by natural grazing. , 1997a). Palynological studies of deposits in a residual channel and flood basin of a former Rhine tributary revealed reed marshes similar to the present-day vegetation dominated by Phragmites australis and Typha angustifolia. After river activity ceased, the flood basin changed into an eutrophic mire with a vegetation development largely resembling the patterns of present-day processes of growing solid by peat formation, a succession of reed and sedge swamps, and eventually alder and willow coppice.