Geography

The Netherlands covers an area of 41,526 sq km, making it the 134th largest country in the world, after Denmark. It is almost exactly twice the size of Wales.

The geography of the Netherlands makes it one of the most unique countries on Earth. This is due to the fact that much of its land was reclaimed from the sea and is below sea level, protected by dikes.

Landscape

The country can be divided into 2 areas:

1. Low Lands

The low and flat lands in the west and north. These lands, including the reclaimed polders and river deltas, make up about half of its surface area and is less than 1 metre (3.3 ft) above sea level, and much of it is actually below sea level.

An extensive range of seawalls and coastal dunes protect the Netherlands from the sea, and levees and dikes along the rivers protect against flooding from rivers. Numerous massive pumping stations keep the ground water level in check.

A substantial part of the Netherlands (for example, all of the province of Flevoland, which contains the largest man-made island in the world) have been reclaimed from the sea. These areas are known as polders. This not only explains why The Netherlands is called "A land won from the sea" but has also led to the famous Dutch saying "God created the world, but the Dutch created the Netherlands".

2. Higher Lands

The higher lands with minor hills in the east and south. Even this portion is mostly flat, only in the extreme south of the country there are some foothills of the Ardennes mountains. This is where Vaalserberg is located, the country's highest point at 322.7 metres (1,053 ft) above sea level. The Vaalserberg is a foothill of the Ardennes mountains.

Floods

In years past, the Dutch coastline has changed considerably due to human intervention and natural disasters. Most notable in terms of land loss are the 1134 storm, which created the archipelago of Zeeland in the south west, and the 1287 storm, which killed 50,000 people and created the Zuiderzee (now dammed in and renamed the IJsselmeer) in the northwest, giving Amsterdam direct access to the sea. The St. Elizabeth flood of 1421 and the mismanagement in its aftermath destroyed a newly reclaimed polder, replacing it with the 72 square kilometres (28 sq mi) Biesbosch tidal floodplains in the south-centre. The most recent parts of Zeeland were flooded during the North Sea Flood of 1953 and 1,836 people were killed, after which the Delta Plan was executed.

The disasters were partially man-made; the people drained relatively high lying swampland for use as farmland. This drainage caused the fertile peat to compress and the ground level to drop, locking the land users in a vicious circle whereby they would lower the water level to compensate for the drop in ground level, causing the underlying peat to compress even more. The vicious circle is unsolvable and remains to this day. Up until the 19th century peat was dug up, dried, and used for fuel, further adding to the problem.

To guard against floods, a series of defences against the water were contrived. In the first millennium, villages and farmhouses were built on man-made hills called terps. Later, these terps were connected by dikes. In the 12th century, local government agencies called "waterschappen" (English "water bodies") or "hoogheemraadschappen" ("high home councils") started to appear, whose job it was to maintain the water level and to protect a region from floods. (The water bodies are still around today performing the same function.) As the ground level dropped, the dikes by necessity grew and merged into an integrated system. In the 13th century, windmills came into use to pump water out of the areas by now below sea level. The windmills were later used to drain lakes, creating the famous polders. In 1932, the Afsluitdijk (English "Closure Dike") was completed, blocking the former Zuiderzee (Southern Sea) off from the North Sea and thus creating the IJsselmeer (IJssel Lake). It became part of the larger Zuiderzee Works in which four polders totalling 1,650 square kilometres (637 sq mi) were reclaimed from the sea.

Delta Works

After the 1953 disaster, the Delta project, a vast construction effort designed to end the threat from the sea once and for all, was launched in 1958 and largely completed in 2002. The official goal of the Delta project was to reduce the risk of flooding in the Zeeland to once per 10,000 years. (For the rest of the country, the protection-level is once per 4,000 years.) This was achieved by raising 3,000 kilometres (1,864 mi) of outer sea-dikes and 10,000 kilometres (6,200 mi) of inner, canal, and river dikes to "delta" height, and by closing off the sea estuaries of the Zeeland province. New risk assessments occasionally show problems requiring additional Delta project dike reinforcements. The Delta project is one of the largest construction efforts in human history and is considered by the American Society of Civil Engineers as one of the seven wonders of the modern world.

Rivers

The country is divided into two main parts by three rivers Rhine (Rijn), Waal, and Meuse (Maas). The south-western part of the Netherlands is actually one big river delta of these rivers. These rivers not only function as a natural barrier, but also as a cultural divide, as is evident in the different dialects spoken north and south of these great rivers and the (previous) religious dominance of Catholics in the south and Calvinists in the north.