Another large polder was originally planned in the Markermeer. Its main purposes are to improve flood protection and create additional land for agriculture. Much of the modern land reclamation has been done as a part of the Zuiderzee Works since 1918. After World War II, the eastern polder was chosen as the next project, but Marken was not wholly ignored; on October 17, 1957 a 3.5 km long dike was closed, running south of the now former island to the North Holland mainland. Construction of this dike, known later as the Houtribdijk or Markerwaarddijk, progressed slowly, lasting from 1963 to 1975, after which it also served as an important road connection between the north of North Holland and the eastern Netherlands. [2] The Dienst der Zuiderzeewerken (Zuiderzee Works Department), the government body responsible for overseeing the construction and initial management, was set up in May 1919. This project was extensively debated until plans were abandoned in the early 2000s, as environmental issues were viewed differently than in the 1920s. Lelystad is approximately 3 metres below sea level. The original post-war designs had called for a 410 km² polder, yet many different proposals were later put forth in an effort to combine the benefits of both the Markerwaard and Markermeer, all to no avail. The eastern polder was planned to be the first, and the encircling dike began to take form in 1951. The Zuiderzee Works is a man-made system of dams and dikes, land reclamation and water drainage work, in total the largest hydraulic engineering project undertaken by the Netherlands during the twentieth century. The Dutch people inhabiting the region had at first built primitive dikes to protect their settlements from the sea. Many environ- mental geological items are relevant for land recla- mation. About half the total surface area of polders in north-west Europe is in the Netherlands. Once the ground had settled, the smaller ditches were replaced with underground drainage tubes, which would be used for the normal drainage of the polder. It replaced the Wieringermeer, the body of water south of Wieringen, and also the name of the new polder. Several years after this was completed, the various plots were distributed among private parties, with priority given to the early pioneers who had been in the polder since the start. It can be sand or cement. The Delta Works is a series of construction projects in the southwest of the Netherlands to protect a large area of land around the Rhine-Meuse-Scheldt delta from the sea. In 1936 work started on a large land reclamation project; the Noordoostpolder. All three were built with extra capacity with the future southern polder in mind. Windmills were used throughout the high medieval and early modern periods; the horizontal or panemone windmill first appeared in Greater Iran during the 9th century, the vertical windmill in northwestern Europe in the 12th century. Its history goes back to 1270, when a dam was constructed in the Rotte, after which people settled around it for safety. These last three were incorporated into the new municipality of Dronten on January 1, 1972. The pumping mechanism itself was based on a variation of Archimedes' screw, as designed by A. Baldwin Wood. In the closing days of World War II, the Nazis detonated explosives severely damaging the Wieringermeer dike. Click here to start a new topic. These had been considered major obstacles to completing the dam but proved not to be so. In the Wieringermeer the first was rye, but the later polders plant wheat, then barley, and finally oats. ; Assume good faith In 2012, plans emerged to create the Marker Wadden,[4] a group of islands designed to establish nature reserves in the north of the Markermeer. After only a couple of years this landscape of shallow pools, islets and swamps became a popular resting and foraging area for many species of waterfowl, to the extent that it rapidly turned into a nature reserve of national significance. In contrast, the south-eastern part is dominated by extensive forests. Marken would remain a peninsula, unlike on the original project. When construction started in 1959 on a new dike it had not yet been decided whether this would be the northern dike of Southern Flevoland or the southern dike of the Markerwaard, but the choice eventually fell to the former and another chance for the Markerwaard had passed. That meant the tidal currents of the Zuiderzee were still present. (a) Give two methods used to reclaim lend in Kenya. Land reclamation in the Netherlands has had a long history. The most important of these was the main dam, the Afsluitdijk (enclosure dam), running from Den Oever on Wieringen to the village of Zurich in Friesland. From 1200 to 1900 AD the Dutch reclaimed 940,000 acres (380,000 ha) of land from the sea and 345,000 acres (140,000 ha) by draining lakes, a total of 1,285,000 acres (520,000 ha), but lost 1,400,000 acres (570,000 ha) of land to the Zuiderzee. The encircling dikes were both closed in December 1940, and the pumping stations started draining in early 1941. The first settlements were Ens, Marknesse and Kraggenburg (1949), followed by Luttelgeest (1950), Bant (1951), then Creil and Rutten (1953), and finally Espel, Tollebeek, and Nagele (1956). It had a population of 1,810 as of 2012 and is located in forms a peninsula in the Markermeer and was formerly an island in the Zuiderzee. The best land is used for vegetables; the next best for rye and other grain; and the worst land is forested. The first solution was a form of government called an openbaar lichaam or "public body", a complicated arrangement which incorporated both the government body in charge of the actual development and an appointed committee responsible for public governance. It was intended to build a south-western polder, to be called the Markerwaard, at several times during the project, but other polders took precedence. Its main purposes are to improve flood protection and create additional land for agriculture. The pilot Polder Andijk, or Test Polder Andijk, Proefpolder Andijk in Dutch, is a polder established in 1926 - 1927 in the Zuiderzee near the village of Andijk. The potential damage in lives, property and rebuilding costs is compared to the potential cost of water defences. Two were built for the Wieringermeer, the Leemans, a diesel powered station, near Den Oever and the Lely, an electrically powered one, near Medemblik. Parts of it have been built; in 1941 it was decided to begin work on the first section of dike, but the German occupiers stopped construction that same year. The fens in the UK, once marshland, now mostly rural agricultural land. Machines, sometimes made specifically for the Zuiderzee Works, were increasingly used for this and the final polders. With almost a third of the country lying below sea level, the Netherlands is famously known as a ‘low country,’ and has a long history of land reclamation. This new land led to an identity change for towns including Lemmer, Vollenhove, Blokzijl due to losing their direct access to the sea and Kuinre was completely cut off from open water. (5mks) 2. Welcome! They feared higher water levels as a result of the closure. The necessary cooperation among all ranks to maintain polder integrity gave its name to the Dutch version of third way politics—the Polder Model . Changing agricultural needs and increased motorised mobility meant many farming villages were unnecessary and the number of towns was eventually reduced to two. The Markerwaard is the name of a proposed, but never built, polder adjoining the IJsselmeer in the central Netherlands. The existing ecological and recreational value of the Markermeer was considered by many to be equal or superior to any potential such value the Markerwaard would offer. In many cases, this is done using dikes. Soon attention turned towards the next project: Eastern Flevoland (Oostelijk Flevoland), which at 540 km² was the largest of the new polders. Wieringermeer is a former municipality and a polder in the Netherlands, in the province of North Holland. In the late 1970s, the project was revised down leaving wide bordering lakes between the polder and North Holland. It still needed to be brought up to its full height, and a road linking Friesland and North Holland remained to be built. The amount of agricultural land did not increase; it diminished as a result of the building of Lelystad (a city envisioned to eventually house at least 100,000 inhabitants.) Recently, land reclamation took place in the Netherlands because there were too many floods entering the land. Lelystad is a municipality and a city in the centre of the Netherlands, and it is the capital of the province of Flevoland. The Wieringermeer and later polders were divided into plots of about 50 acres (20 ha). It consisted of a large dam connecting the northern tip of North Holland with the western coast of Friesland and the creation of initially four polders in the northwest, the northeast, southeast (later split in two), and southwest of what would be renamed the IJsselmeer (IJssel-lake). As the polder became more populated, the demand for representation increased until finally on July 1, 1941 the municipality of Wieringermeer was established. The Dutch have a long history of reclamation of marshes and fenland, resulting in some 3,000 polders [5] nationwide. Water control boards are the independent local government bodies responsible for maintaining this system. As such they are the oldest democratic institution in the country. Much of the land irrigated in humid areas throughout the world is used for the production of paddy rice, although irrigation of vegetable crops, usually with overhead sprinkler systems, also is practised on a considerable acreage. Since its northeastern dike, the aforementioned Knardijk, already existed, only 70 km of the dike remained to be built. Land reclamation uses the same process, which is sped up. (5mks) This was usually done near urban and harbour areas since the 14th century. Only one pumping station ('gemaal'), the diesel powered De Blocq van Kuffeler, needed to be built because of the hydrological union of the two Flevolands; once the polder was finished it would simply join the previous three in maintaining the water-level of both polders. The Netherlands has a coastline that is constantly changing with erosion caused by wind and water. As a result of flooding disasters, water boards called waterschap (when situated more inland) or hoogheemraadschap (near the sea, mainly used in the Holland region) [7] were set up to maintain the integrity of the water defences around polders, maintain the waterways inside a polder, and control the various water levels inside and outside the polder. This area is now home to Lelystad and Almere; the latter is the fastest growing city in the Netherlands (in part because of its proximity to Amsterdam). The development of using windmills for pumping water in the 15th century allowed draining of water from significant bodies of water. Around 17% of the country’s current land area has been reclaimed from the sea or lakes. for agricultural purposes, industrial use or port expansions. The city, built on reclaimed land, was founded in 1967 and was named after Cornelis Lely, who engineered the Afsluitdijk, making the reclamation possible. The government started developing official plans to enclose the Zuiderzee. The debate on whether to build the Markerwaard continued for years. You're placing something into a water source to make land appear. This was the first step in rejoining the island of Wieringen to the North Holland mainland. After the first infrastructure was put in place, the reed was burnt and replaced by rapeseed, turning the newborn polder into a yellow sea of flowers in spring. The original 1891 plan called for the largest, southeastern polder to be built after the Wieringermeer, but it was decided in 1932 to give precedence to the northeastern one, which was smaller and therefore considered easier. Urk was then and is still today a fishing community and it served as a natural construction-island for both dikes as well as a base of operations for the later exploitation of the polder. Two dikes, totaling 55 km in length, steadily grew in the IJsselmeer, one from Lemmer in Friesland to the island of Urk, the other from Vollenhove in Overijssel to Urk. Three were built: the Wortman (diesel powered) at Lelystad-Haven, the Lovink near Harderwijk and the Colijn (both electrically powered) along the northern dike beside the Ketelmeer. 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