Thursday 26 May 2016

Wadden Sea

In the Wadden Sea up to 6.1 million birds can be present at the same time. That's a lot of birds!

The Wadden Sea in Denmark
This postcard was sent by Rebekka

The Wadden Sea (DutchWaddenzeeGermanWattenmeerLow GermanWattensee or WaddenzeeDanish:VadehavetWest FrisianWaadseeNorth Frisiandi Heef) is an intertidal zone in the southeastern part of the North Sea. It lies between the coast of northwestern continental Europe and the range of Frisian Islands, forming a shallow body of water with tidal flats and wetlands. It is rich in biological diversity. In 2009, the Dutch and German parts of the Wadden Sea were inscribed on UNESCO's World Heritage List and the Danish part was added in June 2014. - in: wikipedia

The Wadden Sea in Germany
This postcard was sent by Michèle

The Wadden Sea is famous for its rich flora and fauna, especially birds. Hundreds of thousands of waders (shorebirds)ducks, and geese use the area as a migration stopover or wintering site, and it is also a rich habitat for gulls and terns. However, the biodiversity of Wadden Sea today is only a fraction of what was seen before exploitation by humans; for birds, larger species such as geese, eaglesflamingospelicans, and herons used to be common as well. Some species that are regionally extinct are still available here. - in: wikipedia

The Wadden Sea in Germany
This postcard was sent by Elisabeth and Lisa

The Wadden Sea is one of the world's seas whose coastline has been most modified by humans, via systems of dikes and causeways on the mainland and low-lying coastal islands. The Wadden Sea stretches from Den Helder in the Netherlands in the northwest, past the great river estuaries of Germany to its northern boundary at Skallingen north of Esbjerg in Denmark along a total length of some 500 km and a total area of about 10,000 km2. Within the Netherlands it is bounded from the IJsselmeer by the Afsluitdijk. - in: wikipedia

The Wadden Sea in the Netherlands
This postcard was sent by Kim

The word wad is Dutch for "mud flat" (Low German and GermanWattDanishVade). The area is typified by extensive tidal mud flats, deeper tidal trenches (tidal creeks) and the islands that are contained within this, a region continually contested by land and sea. The landscape has been formed for a great part by storm tides in the 10th to 14th centuries, overflowing and carrying away former peat land behind the coastal dunes. The present islands are a remnant of the former coastal dunes. - in: wikipedia

The Wadden Sea in the Netherlands
This postcard was sent by Jet

Although the Wadden Sea is not yet listed as a transboundary Ramsar site, a great part of the Wadden Sea is protected in cooperation of all three countries. The governments of the Netherlands, Denmark and Germany have been working together since 1978 on the protection and conservation of the Wadden Sea. - in: wikipedia


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