ABSTRACT
The netherlands and water are very closely related. A large part of the country was created by river and sea sediments that were deposited in the delta of four European rivers: the Rhine, Meuse, Scheldt, and Ems. Thus it can be characterized as a delta area, with more than 75% of its water coming into the Netherlands from rivers that cross national boundaries. It is a small country, with a total area of 41,500 square kilometers, of which 7,500 square kilometers is water, including estuaries, main rivers, and lakes ( Statistics Netherlands 2008a ). The Netherlands was further shaped by its inhabitants as a result of centuries of water level management and land reclamation. It has hundreds of polders, areas of low-lying land in some cases reclaimed from water bodies and protected by dikes, and an extensive and complex system of ditches and waterways regulates groundwater levels in these polders at all times. About a quarter of the Netherlands is below mean sea level (Pilarczyk 2007), where 9 million inhabitants live and two-thirds of the GDP is earned (Deltacommissie 2008; TK 2006). Without flood protection structures in the form of dunes and dikes, about two-thirds of the country would be flooded during storm surges at sea or high discharges in the river (Pilarczyk 2007).
