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The Renggbach flood in Lucerne 1475 in D. Schilling's Luzerner Chronik (ZHBL Sondersammlung S 23 fol, Schilling 1513). The fences symbolise the actually submerged wattle work employed for riverbank retainment
Source publication
Technical infrastructures for water supply since antiquity have long been investigated by engineers, archaeologists, and historians, while hydraulic structures in rivers and brooks, in service before 1700, have hardly received any attention. The urgency for a better understanding of late medieval and early modern hydraulic activity in streams has r...
Context in source publication
Context 1
... 50 (Neweklowsky 1952;Rohr 2007). They served to prevent drift loads and ships from attaining certain spots, e.g., pillars of bridges or canals, and for collecting driven logs 51 (Stolz 1936;Wetter 2017). (2) Light stream works The lightest hydraulic structures to be considered stream works were fascine works, wattle fences, and light timber weirs (Fig. 5). The former two were 45 StAF CT (1481b), fol. 92r-v; Rudella (1568) applied for riverbank protection. Both required spaced rows of vertical stakes or ...
Citations
... The role of history in integrated river management is particularly evident in interdisciplinary research settings such as the Institute of Social Ecology in Vienna [17][18][19] or in the new Priority Program 2361 "On the way to the fluvial Anthroposphere" [20]. The numerous publications on the environmental history of rivers in recent years are also striking evidence of this [21][22][23][24][25][26]. With regard to the wide range of topics and studies in environmental-historical river research prior to 2017, two review essays are still highly recommended [27,28]. ...
... The agricultural areas of the Inn valley-as well as the Etsch valley in Southern Tyrol-were increasingly threatened with transformation into marshland. The phenomenon of rising riverbeds was also recorded on other, predominantly Alpine rivers in the 18th century such as the Rhône [71], the Linth [72], and the Salzach [73], but also on the Alpine Rhine [74,75] and Upper Rhine [22]. ...
The first systematic attempts to straighten the River Inn in Tyrol for shipping and land reclamation date back to the middle of the 18th century. A dedicated hydraulic engineering authority—the so-called Main Ark Inspection—was established to realize this challenging task. The one-man authority was unable to straighten the Alpine river through the period of its existence up to 1792. The reasons for this were by no means related to a lack of technical resources and knowledge. On the contrary, a micro- and environmental-historical analysis of the attempts to straighten the River Inn highlights the complexity of the causes, which were mutually reinforcing and multifactorial. In this paper, four key causes are examined in more detail: (1) the social organization of water engineering, (2) social conflicts between riparian communities among themselves and with the hydraulic engineering authority, (3) conflicts between Tyrol and Bavaria at the wet border downstream of Kufstein, and (4) increased bedload discharge into the main river by tributaries. To illustrate the causes mentioned above, historical river maps are analyzed in great detail, drawing on contemporaneous written sources. The approach thereby highlights the overall complexity of pre-modern hydraulic engineering in all its facets, be they social, technical, natural, administrative, or organizational. To conclude, the results of this environmental history research are embedded and discussed in the context of integrated river management in the Anthropocene.
... As shown by fluvial geomorphological studies, hydroengineering infrastructure such as watermills impacted floodplain morphology and stratigraphy due to its direct influence on river flood regimes and their hydrosedimentary connectivity [43,48,49]. Starting in the early 18th century, channel engineering for navigation, flood protection and the prevention of avulsion represent a massive intervention in Central European floodplains as well [50][51][52]. ...
... Ice drift, disastrous floods [122], channel displacement [123] and droughts [95,124] have a remarkable impact on fluvio-cultural units [125]. Riverine societies have developed techniques to control and exploit extreme events and protect (agri)culture from floods: damming, river straightening and canalisation [42,52,69,79], drainage systems and plantings against erosion [87,90]. Situations in the upper courses of rivers [93] and on smaller rivers, for which the term 'flood culture' has been suggested, seem to be particularly dynamic [126]. ...
... Hydropower installations with water wheels, ponds, diversion channels and dams had a significant impact on sediment flux, flow rate, water temperature, groundwater tables and fish migration, as well as navigability [10,36,43,52,162]. In the early medieval period, vertical undershot constructions with no need for large dams prevailed in Central Europe [163]. ...
Floodplains represent a global hotspot of sensitive socioenvironmental changes and early human forcing mechanisms. In this review, we focus on the environmental conditions of preindustrial floodplains in Central Europe and the fluvial societies that operated there. Due to their high land-use capacity and the simultaneous necessity of land reclamation and risk minimisation, societies have radically restructured the Central European floodplains. According to the current scientific consensus, up to 95% of Central European floodplains have been extensively restructured or destroyed. Therefore, question arises as to whether or when it is justified to understand Central European floodplains as a ‘Fluvial Anthroposphere’. The case studies available to date show that human-induced impacts on floodplain morphologies and environments and the formation of specific fluvial societies reveal fundamental changes in the medieval and preindustrial modern periods. We aim to contribute to disentangling the questions of when and why humans became a significant controlling factor in Central European floodplain formation, and how humans in interaction with natural processes and other chains of effects have modified floodplains. As a conclusion, we superimpose emerging fields of research concerning the onset of the Fluvial Anthroposphere and provide 10 specific thematic objectives for future multidisciplinary work.
... There are nonetheless common elements in this global historical evolution of flood maps: (i) beginning as maps simply describing events that had occurred (calamity maps); (ii) development as a preventive tool, with maps of susceptibility to flooding predominating; (iii) present and future as predictive maps, according to different future scenarios, including parameters such as global change and associated uncertainties. The regions, countries and continents that have stood out in the historical development of flood maps would include the following: European countries (EXCIMAP, 2007;Longoni and Wetter, 2019), North America (FEMA, 2009) and China (Zhao et al., 2018), along with many others in Asia. The reason why risk mapping has reached maximum development in these countries may be related to their leadership in flood risk analysis and assessment studies in general (Díez- Herrero and Garrote, 2020), where maps are one of the main products and outputs. ...
Flood maps group different types of cartographies related to flooding and the components and variables of flood risk and its mitigation measures. This paper analyses the most important facts in the development of flood mapping in Spain and assesses the current. While 60/2007 EU Directive has been an important step for mapping risk, future developments must: (i) overcome the concept of return period; (ii) incorporate other aspects of the European Directive, basically vulnerability and susceptibility to flooding from rainwater, also the effect of climate change on flood hazards; (iii) include scenarios for the consequences of climate change; (iv) incorporate risk cartography as a key element of ‘green infrastructure’, like tool in spatial planning; (v) Reduce the map representation scale; (vi) incorporate new elements within risk maps to improve emergency management; (vii) improve public-private cooperation; (viii) facilitate the legal use of hazard and risk maps in administrative and court processes.
... Large-scale corrections and straightening of the Bavarian part of the river for navigation did start in 1806, but major engineering took only place from the second half of the 19 th century onwards. Therefore, large parts of the river morphology could be assumed to have been still close to its natural state when the Topographical Atlas of Bavaria has been recorded from 1812 onwards (Eckoldt, 1998;Longoni & Wetter, 2019;Schielein, 2010;Schielein, 2012;Sommerwerk et al., 2009). Anyway, from 1806 to 1888, the flow distance of the Danube Thalweg between the mouth of the river Iller and Kelheim has been reduced artificially from 211 km to 172 km or 18.4% according to Eckoldt 1998, which gave a first specific idea of ratios of flow distance change for our study. ...
... Concerning the first two key questions, it has to be stressed, that floodplains and flow patterns of almost all European rivers have heavily been transformed during the late Holocene, especially due to flood loam deposition, but also due to hydro-engineering (Beauchamp et al., 2017;Brown, 1997;Brown et al., 2018;Hoffmann et al., 2009;Hoffmann, 2010;Houben et al., 2013;Longoni & Wetter, 2019;Notebaert et al., 2018). In general, a decrease of channel sinuosity during the last two millennia has been observed for many European rivers , which tends to result in higher pre-modern flow and navigation distances. ...
Rivers form major traffic arteries in pre-modern Central Europe and accurate regional to supra-regional network models of inland navigation are crucial for economic history. However, navigation distances have hitherto been based on modern flow distances, which could be a significant source of error due to modern changes in flow distance and channel pattern. Here, we use a systematic comparison of vectorized old maps, which enlighten the fluvial landscape before most of the large-scale river engineering took place, and modern opensource geodata to deduce change ratios of flow distance and channel patterns. The river courses have been vectorised, edited and divided into comparable grid units. Based on the thalweg, meandering and braided/anabranching river sections have been identified and various ratios have been calculated in order to detect changes in length and channel patterns. Our large-scale analytical approach and Geographic Information System (GIS) workflow are transferable to other rivers in order to deduce change ratios on a European scale. The 19th century flow distance is suitable to model pre-modern navigation distances. As a case study, we have used our approach to reconstruct changes of flow pattern, flow distance and subsequent changes in navigation distance and transportation time for the rivers Altmühl, Danube, Main, Regnitz, Rednitz, Franconian and Swabian Rezat (Southern Germany). The change ratio is rather heterogeneous with length and travel time changes of the main channel up to 24% and an extensive transformation of channel morphology in many river sections. Based on published travel time data, we have modelled the effect of our change ratios. Shipping between the commercial hubs Ulm and Regensburg, to give an example, was up to 5 days longer based on pre-modern distances. This is highly significant and underlines the necessity for river-specific correction values to model supra-regional networks of pre-modern inland waterways and navigation with higher precision.
Highlights:
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Systematic comparison of old maps and modern geodata to deduce river-specific length correction values to improve supra-regional network models of pre-modern inland navigation.
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Large-scale analytical approach and transferable GIS workflow for flow distance reconstruction with case studies in Southern Germany.
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Length changes of navigated fairways result in pre-modern period travel times up to 24% higher in corrected models.
This paper analyses the flood protection history of the Gürbe River (Switzerland), a 29-km-long tributary of the Aare River. The upper reach of the river has the character of a mountain torrent and an exceptionally difficult flooding situation. For centuries, riparian communities were only able to take small protective measures. In the mid-nineteenth century, the flood protection strategy changed: between 1855 and 1881, the Gürbe River was channelised and stabilised by a torrent control system. Although the situation improved, flood damage could not be prevented as intended. Therefore, dozens of consecutive projects were implemented—without interruption until today. This paper examines why small watercourses are useful case studies, which protection measures were taken at the Gürbe River, how they corresponded to the prevailing flood protection philosophy, whether they were linked to floods and how flood protection influenced land use. The Gürbe regulation, its consecutive projects and the connected drainages had far-reaching effects: They allowed an intensive agricultural use of the valley floor, the construction of roads, a railway, and new settlements. Consequently, the social and economic pressure on the hazard area increased steadily over the decades. It created a vicious circle: the more that protective structures were built, the more important and profitable flood prevention became, and the more structures were raised. A reevaluation finally took place in the late twentieth century, based on increasing environmental awareness, and fostered by a catastrophic flood. However, the implementation of new projects proved to be difficult due to conflicting interests.
