River Rhine Case Study
Where it is located
The River Rhine is located in Europe. It flows through countries such as the Netherlands, France and Germany. Its source is in the Swiss Alps and its mouth is at the North Sea. The River Rhine is 1320km long and the Rhine basin covers 9 countries.
Reasons it flooded
The River Rhine flooded because large areas of it have been urbanized which speeded up the run-off. The water couldn’t drain through surfaces such as concrete. There was low vegetation which reduced the evapotranspiration which meant that there would be less water intercepted so the area would be less able to cope with the floods and there would be a high surface run-off. There had been heavy rainfall almost non-stop for 2 days so the ground had become saturated. There had been high temperatures in the mountains which had melted the snow so a massive amount of water had been released. There had been increasing rainfall over the past century due to global warming. In Holland a lot of the land is below sea level so this had increased the risk of flooding and made flooding problems worse. People had tried to straighten the River Rhine to improve the navigation and speed up the river flow. This unfortunately meant that the River Rhine couldn’t hold as much water as before which increased the risk of flooding and it had also made the Rhine faster which had increased the risk of flash floods. Also a flood surge normally takes 5 days to reach downstream but because of the increased river flow it only took 2. The River Rhine’s floodplain had been narrowed and the river bed had been lowered by the erosion. Dams had been built upstream which had trapped sediment and increased the river flow downstream.
