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Flussbegradigung - Referat
Human Interventions into Nature and their Consequences
Human beings form their surroundings and feel free to intervene in nature. Up to now various interventions have taken place. The most of them were not thought in-depth and not checked thoroughly and accuratly enough. So people are not completely aware of their acts when they intervene in this complicate and complex system.
Using the example of river straightening I would like to point this out. Already in 1812 plans to straighten the Rhine existed. Already in former times people did not accept any limitations by nature. One decided to straighten the river that before this measurement had meandered through the Upper Rhine Lowlands. As a consequence of this meandering it came to the appearence of diverse islands which represents for the navigation a thorn in their side. On account of this danger for shipping and also because the flow velocity was very little one declared to built a side canal out of concrete.
People focused the aim of river straightening because of different advantages, for example to set the malaria problem an end and to win new useful areas. However the substantial main reasons were the floodwater precaution and secondly to improve the canalisation of the water, that means enabling also bigger ships to travel on this river.
Besides these advantages quite a few problems appeared which still have consequences for us today. In this passage I would like to discuss one of them. After the straightening the most of the islands have been destroyed in order to create space for the ships. Thus the velo-city has been strengthened by the canalisation, the erasion of the isles and of course what I have not mentioned, yet, by the shortening of the length between Basel and Bingen for 82 kilometres. Consequently the sedimentation is stopped and also bigger ships have now the opportunity to use this river. Problematic remains the fact that through the rised flew velocity also the speed of the floodwave rises dramatically. This is so serious that this wave unites itself with the one of the Neckar such that it gets double power. This concerns especially the settlers which settled on the drainaged areas. The floodwater endangers these settlements regularly.
In conclusion one can constate that we shifted the problem from the south to the north but we have not succeeded in solving it, yet. There are already a few flood-control retention basins and there are plans which demand flooding areas in order to diminish the speed of the waves but they are still under construction.
Dieses Referat wurde eingesandt vom User: luckynighthwak
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