What Wetlands Can Teach Us: Reconstructing Historical Water-Management Systems and Their Present-Day Importance Through Giscience
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What wetlands can teach us: reconstructing historical water-management systems and their present-day importance through GIScience Rowin J. Van Lanen & Menne C. Kosian Water History ISSN 1877-7236 Water Hist DOI 10.1007/s12685-020-00251-7 1 23 Your article is protected by copyright and all rights are held exclusively by Springer Nature B.V.. This e-offprint is for personal use only and shall not be self-archived in electronic repositories. If you wish to self-archive your article, please use the accepted manuscript version for posting on your own website. You may further deposit the accepted manuscript version in any repository, provided it is only made publicly available 12 months after official publication or later and provided acknowledgement is given to the original source of publication and a link is inserted to the published article on Springer's website. The link must be accompanied by the following text: "The final publication is available at link.springer.com”. 1 23 Author's personal copy Water History https://doi.org/10.1007/s12685-020-00251-7 What wetlands can teach us: reconstructing historical water‑management systems and their present‑day importance through GIScience Rowin J. Van Lanen1,2 · Menne C. Kosian3 Received: 29 April 2019 / Accepted: 26 June 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020 Abstract Wetland environments are amongst the most dynamic landscapes of Europe. Because of their distinct geomorphological characteristics, they are strongly susceptible for changes in climate, demography, economy and politics. At the same time, these regions refect areas of long-term human-landscape interactions and outstanding preservation conditions. Large parts of the northern and western Netherlands can be regarded as typical examples of such wetlands. After becoming covered by vast peat marshes over time, these areas were largely reclaimed during the last millennium, which has resulted in a typical landscape consist- ing of polders and elaborate water-management systems (e.g. canals, dikes, fenlands). This is especially true for the western wetlands, which also are part of the delta of two of the largest European rivers, the Rhine and Meuse. In this area, processes of fooding, fuvial activity and sea-level changes have greatly infuenced the landscape, resulting in a very dynamic environment for local inhabitants. Already in the Middle Ages (AD 1050– 1500), elaborate organisations and hydraulic systems were set up in these parts in order to ensure water safety and promote water drainage. Through time, these organisations, the so-called waterboards, have greatly infuenced the spatial layout of these wetlands and, in doing so, collected huge amounts of data on water management. For the frst time, recent digital developments in geosciences and humanities allow us to diachronically unravel the complex interplay between natural and cultural dynamics in such wetlands. In this paper, we present a Historical Geographical Information System (HGIS) designed for modelling heritage in wetland areas. The HGIS specifcally focuses on water-management systems in the wetlands of the western Netherlands. We show that (1) our HGIS and GIScience- methodology facilitates an integrated and multi-proxy approach towards studying historical water-management systems, and (2) the developed system is highly suited for unravelling the complex interplay and interdependencies between drainage systems, waterboards and engineering works. Additionally, it becomes clear that by combining information on the past with the present, the HGIS is an extremely useful tool for modern-day policymaking facing future challenges. Keywords Wetlands · Historical water-management systems · Historical geographical information systems (HGIS) · Historical maps and archival data · Giscience Extended author information available on the last page of the article Vol.:(0123456789)1 3 Author's personal copy R. J. Van Lanen, M. C. Kosian Fig. 1 Division of low-lying Holocene and relatively higher Pleistocene soils in the present- day Netherlands Introduction The present-day importance of wetlands has been underlined by several international trea- ties: e.g. the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, the Ramsar Convention and the Kyoto Protocol (for more information see: Reference section). Additionally, there is also an increasing awareness of the heritage values these areas refect through their excellent preservation conditions and long-term history of human-landscape interaction (e.g. Van Beek et al. 2015). Large parts of the Netherlands can be regarded as typical wet- land areas. Situated in the north-western part of the European mainland, the country is a generally low-lying coastal and fuvial region. It can be divided between dynamic Holo- cene soils in the west and north, and generally more stable, higher Pleistocene soils in the south and east (Fig. 1). Throughout the Holocene, this landscape has developed through dynamic interactions between to natural and cultural processes (e.g. Stouthamer and Ber- endsen 2000; Stouthamer and Berendsen 2007; Vos 2015; Stouthamer et al. 2015; Pierik 2017). Because of its low-lying nature, small rises in sea or groundwater levels during the Holocene have resulted in signifcantly wetter conditions. Consequently, during the Holo- cene large scale marshes and bogs developed and continued to expand in the coastal areas and later more land inwards. By ca. 7000–6000 cal. BC, substantial parts of the western and northern Netherlands became overgrown by peat (Petzelberger et al. 1999; Vos 2015). Initial forcing factors behind these increasingly wetter landscapes were natural, such as precipitation surplus, poor drainage and, especially near the coast, rising sea levels. How- ever, from the Iron Age (800–12 BC) onwards, human interactions with the natural land- scape became increasingly important. In peat areas, human modifcations such as drainage 1 3 Author's personal copy What wetlands can teach us: reconstructing historical… (mainly for agricultural activities) led to land subsidence due to continuous soil oxidation (Vos and Van Heeringen 1997; Van Tielhof and Van Dam 2006; De Bont 2008). In other parts, deforestation contributed to groundwater level rises (e.g. Buishand and Velds 1980; Dolman 1988; Bork et al. 1998, 2003; Spek 2004; Groenewoudt et al. 2007; Erkens 2009). First human impacts had a primarily local scale. Mires and bogs continued to cover vast parts of the Netherlands, creating very inaccessible and inhabitable environments (Van Lanen et al. 2015, 2016; Van Lanen 2017; Vos et al. 2018). This situation remained more or less unchanged until the tenth to twelfth centuries when the frst large-scale land rec- lamation started in the western Netherlands (e.g. Van de Ven 2003; De Bont 2008; Abra- hamse et al. 2012). From that moment onward, what is now often regarded as the typical ‘Dutch landscape’ consisting of dikes and polders (so-called: Veenweide; fenlands) started to develop. In this paper, we defne ‘polders’ as a (often reclaimed) tract of land with its own localized water-management system. Current wetlands in the Netherlands are characterized by this long history of human- landscape interaction. This is especially true for the wetlands of the western Netherlands, which, besides being reclaimed very early, are also part of the delta of the Rhine and Meuse (Figs. 2, 3). In this paper we will focus on these western wetlands, which are roughly Fig. 2 The research area just before the start of the great reclamations (ca. AD 800). The green areas are the river basins of the Rhine system with the river Vecht to the north, and the river Lek in the south. The orange areas in the east are the higher grounds of the ice-pushed ridges and in the west yellow depicts the sea barrier (dunes). The extensive peat area is depicted in brown. Adapted from: Vos et al. (2018) 1 3 Author's personal copy R. J. Van Lanen, M. C. Kosian Fig. 3 Overview of the study area (red framework), including place names (in bold), landscape regions, provinces (in capitals) and important watercourses (in italic) mentioned in the text located in the present-day provinces of Noord- and Zuid-Holland (between the river Lek in the south and river IJ in the North; Figs. 2, 3). Human impact on the natural landscape in this area has been signifcant and not without consequences. During reclamation, canals were dug deep into the marshes in order to drain them of water and increase their agricul- tural potential. However, since these peatlands consisted mainly of water, draining them often resulted in severe soil subsidence (Van de Ven 2003; Willemse 2018). This subsiding in turn increased the risk of fooding in these areas. As a result, over time local inhabitants have designed elaborate technical and organisational water-management systems in order to preserve the balance between agricultural activities and water safety. Many of these sys- tems have greatly infuenced the layout of the landscape, and it is not uncommon that some them (at least in part) remain in function until today. Consequently, knowledge on these systems not only improves our understanding of past human-landscape interactions and the heritage value of these landscapes, but can also help to improve present-day governance and policymaking. However, unravelling these water-management systems and the com- plex interplay between cultural and natural factors behind them is challenging. In this paper we present a tool which has been specifcally designed to spatially analyse water-management systems in wetland areas using an integrated approach. By applying a Historical Geographical Information System (HGIS; for more information see section “Modern environmental challenges, HGIS and GIScience”) on water-management systems in the western Netherlands, we help to unravel the diachronic complexity behind the devel- opment of these wetlands. The main focus of this paper is methodological: presenting a 1 3 Author's personal copy What wetlands can teach us: reconstructing historical… new method to spatially analyse wetlands by means of GIScience (compare section “Mod- ern environmental challenges, HGIS and GIScience).