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Dieren en planten

Animals   Seals   Harbour seal   Food choice   Reproduction of harbour seals   Population in the Wadden Sea   Grey seal   Plants   Flora on tidal flats   Fauna in tidal areas   Benthic fauna   Fish   Birds   

Water en land

Water and land   Landforms   Coastal areas   Tidal flats and shallows   Biotope   Peat bog   Wadden Sea region   Dutch wadden region   German wadden region   Danish wadden region   Wadden Sea   

Mens en Milieu

Man and the environment   Water currents   Sea currents   Tides and water levels   Matter and materials   Nutrients   Phosphoric compounds   Nitrogen compounds   Ecology   Ecosystems   Fisheries   Fisheries by sort   Pelagic fisheries   Flatfish fisheries   Recreation and tourism   Coastal recreation   Aquatic sports   Pollution   Wadden Sea   Heavy metals   Copper   Arsenic   

Wadden Sea region

The wadden region extends from Den Helder in the Netherlands via Germany to the Danish peninsula Skallingen. In total, it is more than 500 kilometers long and 310,000 hectare large. Almost as large as the entire province of South Holland. The area consists of around 30% of the Dutch, 20% of the Danish and 60% of the German coasts and includes around fifty islands and large sandbanks.

  • The formation of the wadden region

    Just like a large part of the Netherlands, the wadden region was formed by various glacial and interglacial periods. Each glacial period changed the appearance of the region. Only since ten thousand years ago, when the ice from the last glacial period began te melt, did the wadden region as we know it today start to take shape. Because the North Sea was almost totally dry, the wind blew tremendous amounts of sand in the direction of the Dutch, German and Danish coast. This formed a long practically unbroken row of dunes.

    Behind these dunes lay the peat bogs, which were protected by the wall of dunes. The seawater continued to rise as the ice melted and regularly rammed these coastal dunes with great force. Slowly but surely, openings cut through the dunes and the water reached the peat bogs.

    During storms, large pieces of bogs were washed away. Channels formed a path for the seawater to follow. During the following thousands of years, storms were responsible for widening and lengthening the channels, until they eventually crossed paths. Slowly but surely, a sea formed behind the long row of dune islands: the Wadden Sea.

    Elsewhere in this encyclopedia, you can read how the various periods of development more precisely occurred.

  • With a little help from man

    The wadden region took thousands of years to look like it does today. Nature did most of the work, particularly when it comes to the Wadden Sea. However, people have also played a major role and are still doing that to this very day.

    In order to provide safe ground to live on, the higher and dryer parts of the bogs were raised. These mounds are known as terps. Around the terps and fields, dikes were built to protect man, cattle and crops from floods. Later on, polders were created. You now see large grazers such as cows and horses on these lands. New salt marshes have even formed on the seaside of the present dikes. Some of them formed naturally but most of them had help from humans. That is true for the shapes of the channels, which are continually filling with mud and often need to be dredged. In that way, the wadden region is formed both naturally and by man.