Marker Wadden Islands
Lake Marken, Flevoland, the Netherlands
Inventing a new engineering technique to bring a dead lake back to life. Lake Marken, or Markermeer, lies in the center of the Netherlands. The conditions of this lake became ecologically very poor because of plans to turn the lake into a polder. Though these plans were suspended in the 1990s, many dams and dikes were already built by then. So, the lake lacked natural shores. As a result a 30-centimeter layer of sediment on the lake bed turned the water increasingly murky, making life difficult for many aquatic species. As fish populations dropped, the birds also disappeared, leaving an area devoid of wildlife. In March 2016, Natuurmonumenten (a Dutch nongovernmental organization for nature conservation) and Rijkswaterstaat, with input from dredging experts, nature conservationists, engineering firms, universities, and landscape architects, began restoring an area in the northeastern portion of the lake. The project team added 1,000 hectares of new habitat, including islands constructed from sand, clay, and silt—an engineering first at this scale. The islands’ harbor opened in 2018; but from the start, the team has provided visitors and researchers many opportunities to visit these new islands. Remarkably, wildlife began returning to the site as soon as construction started; biodiversity has exploded.
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