Land Reclamation in the Rhine and Yangzi Deltas: An Explorative Comparison, 1600–1800

Abstract

In the early sixteenth century, the deltas of Rhine and Yangzi faced comparable ecological crises, but neither of these riverine societies was deterred by the mounting challenges. They independently developed divergent ways to not only defend against the encroaching water, but also reclaim new land from the water.This paper aims to examine the factors in the making of that transformation in these two riverine societies and to ask how they took different paths, why, and what were the implications of that divergence. In asking these questions, particular attention will be paid to the significance of technological and institutional breakthroughs in the Dutch case, such as highly efficient windmills for pumping water, the mapping of cadastral The original version of this article was revised: The corrected authors' names should read as "Guanmian Xu" and "Leonard Blussé".

Quantifying the Effects of Sea Level Rise on Estuarine Drainage Systems

“…Historically, the response to these pressures has involved the construction of hard engineering structures such as levees, dykes, seawalls, pumps, and diversion channels to defend vulnerable areas from flooding and/or promote drainage (Day & Templet, 1989). However, the construction, operation, and maintenance of this infrastructure is only viable if it is offset by societal and/or economic returns, such as in the Netherlands (Xu & Blussé, 2019). Consequently, pumped systems are more typically implemented where periodic usage can augment gravity discharge, for example, in parts of Australia (Yang, 2008), the USA (Lang et al., 2010) and Asia (Marfai & King, 2008).…”