1.
North Sea
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The North Sea is a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean located between Great Britain, Scandinavia, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France. An epeiric sea on the European continental shelf, it connects to the ocean through the English Channel in the south and it is more than 970 kilometres long and 580 kilometres wide, with an area of around 570,000 square kilometres. The North Sea has long been the site of important European shipping lanes as well as a major fishery, the North Sea was the centre of the Vikings rise. Subsequently, the Hanseatic League, the Netherlands, and the British each sought to dominate the North Sea and thus the access to the markets, as Germanys only outlet to the ocean, the North Sea continued to be strategically important through both World Wars. The coast of the North Sea presents a diversity of geological and geographical features, in the north, deep fjords and sheer cliffs mark the Norwegian and Scottish coastlines, whereas in the south it consists primarily of sandy beaches and wide mudflats. Due to the population, heavy industrialization, and intense use of the sea and area surrounding it. In the southwest, beyond the Straits of Dover, the North Sea becomes the English Channel connecting to the Atlantic Ocean, in the east, it connects to the Baltic Sea via the Skagerrak and Kattegat, narrow straits that separate Denmark from Norway and Sweden respectively. In the north it is bordered by the Shetland Islands, and connects with the Norwegian Sea, the North Sea is more than 970 kilometres long and 580 kilometres wide, with an area of 570,000 square kilometres and a volume of 54,000 cubic kilometres. Around the edges of the North Sea are sizeable islands and archipelagos, including Shetland, Orkney, the North Sea receives freshwater from a number of European continental watersheds, as well as the British Isles. A large part of the European drainage basin empties into the North Sea including water from the Baltic Sea, the largest and most important rivers flowing into the North Sea are the Elbe and the Rhine – Meuse watershed. Around 185 million people live in the catchment area of the rivers discharging into the North Sea encompassing some highly industrialized areas, for the most part, the sea lies on the European continental shelf with a mean depth of 90 metres. The only exception is the Norwegian trench, which extends parallel to the Norwegian shoreline from Oslo to a north of Bergen. It is between 20 and 30 kilometres wide and has a depth of 725 metres. The Dogger Bank, a vast moraine, or accumulation of unconsolidated glacial debris and this feature has produced the finest fishing location of the North Sea. The Long Forties and the Broad Fourteens are large areas with uniform depth in fathoms. These great banks and others make the North Sea particularly hazardous to navigate, the Devils Hole lies 200 miles east of Dundee, Scotland. The feature is a series of trenches between 20 and 30 kilometres long,1 and 2 kilometres wide and up to 230 metres deep. Other areas which are less deep are Cleaver Bank, Fisher Bank, the International Hydrographic Organization defines the limits of the North Sea as follows, On the Southwest
2.
Denmark
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The term Danish Realm refers to the relationship between Denmark proper, the Faroe Islands and Greenland—three countries constituting the Kingdom of Denmark. The legal nature of the Kingdom of Denmark is fundamentally one of a sovereign state. The Faroe Islands and Greenland have been part of the Crown of Denmark since 1397 when the Kalmar Union was ratified, legal matters in The Danish Realm are subject to the Danish Constitution. Beginning in 1953, state law issues within The Danish Realm has been governed by The Unity of the Realm, a less formal name for The Unity of the Realm is the Commonwealth of the Realm. In 1978, The Unity of The Realm was for the first time referred to as rigsfællesskabet. The name caught on and since the 1990s, both The Unity of The Realm and The Danish Realm itself has increasingly been referred to as simply rigsfællesskabet in daily parlance. The Danish Constitution stipulates that the foreign and security interests for all parts of the Danish Realm are the responsibility of the Danish government, the Faroes received home rule in 1948 and Greenland did so in 1979. In 2005, the Faroes received a self-government arrangement, and in 2009 Greenland received self rule, the Danish Realms unique state of internal affairs is acted out in the principle of The Unity of the Realm. This principle is derived from Article 1 of the Danish Constitution which specifies that constitutional law applies equally to all areas of the Danish Realm, the Constitutional Act specifies that sovereignty is to continue to be exclusively with the authorities of the Realm. The language of Denmark is Danish, and the Danish state authorities are based in Denmark, the Kingdom of Denmarks parliament, with its 179 members, is located in the capital, Copenhagen. Two of the members are elected in each of Greenland and the Faroe Islands. The Government ministries are located in Copenhagen, as is the highest court, in principle, the Danish Realm constitutes a unified sovereign state, with equal status between its constituent parts. Devolution differs from federalism in that the powers of the subnational authority ultimately reside in central government. The Self-Government Arrangements devolves political competence and responsibility from the Danish political authorities to the Faroese, the Faroese and Greenlandic authorities administer the tasks taken over from the state, enact legislation in these specific fields and have the economic responsibility for solving these tasks. The Danish government provides a grant to the Faroese and the Greenlandic authorities to cover the costs of these devolved areas. The 1948 Home Rule Act of the Faroe Islands sets out the terms of Faroese home rule, the Act states. the Faroe Islands shall constitute a self-governing community within the State of Denmark. It establishes the government of the Faroe Islands and the Faroese parliament. The Faroe Islands were previously administered as a Danish county, the Home Rule Act abolished the post of Amtmand and these powers were expanded in a 2005 Act, which named the Faroese home government as an equal partner with the Danish government
3.
Germany
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Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a federal parliamentary republic in central-western Europe. It includes 16 constituent states, covers an area of 357,021 square kilometres, with about 82 million inhabitants, Germany is the most populous member state of the European Union. After the United States, it is the second most popular destination in the world. Germanys capital and largest metropolis is Berlin, while its largest conurbation is the Ruhr, other major cities include Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Düsseldorf and Leipzig. Various Germanic tribes have inhabited the northern parts of modern Germany since classical antiquity, a region named Germania was documented before 100 AD. During the Migration Period the Germanic tribes expanded southward, beginning in the 10th century, German territories formed a central part of the Holy Roman Empire. During the 16th century, northern German regions became the centre of the Protestant Reformation, in 1871, Germany became a nation state when most of the German states unified into the Prussian-dominated German Empire. After World War I and the German Revolution of 1918–1919, the Empire was replaced by the parliamentary Weimar Republic, the establishment of the national socialist dictatorship in 1933 led to World War II and the Holocaust. After a period of Allied occupation, two German states were founded, the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic, in 1990, the country was reunified. In the 21st century, Germany is a power and has the worlds fourth-largest economy by nominal GDP. As a global leader in industrial and technological sectors, it is both the worlds third-largest exporter and importer of goods. Germany is a country with a very high standard of living sustained by a skilled. It upholds a social security and universal health system, environmental protection. Germany was a member of the European Economic Community in 1957. It is part of the Schengen Area, and became a co-founder of the Eurozone in 1999, Germany is a member of the United Nations, NATO, the G8, the G20, and the OECD. The national military expenditure is the 9th highest in the world, the English word Germany derives from the Latin Germania, which came into use after Julius Caesar adopted it for the peoples east of the Rhine. This in turn descends from Proto-Germanic *þiudiskaz popular, derived from *þeudō, descended from Proto-Indo-European *tewtéh₂- people, the discovery of the Mauer 1 mandible shows that ancient humans were present in Germany at least 600,000 years ago. The oldest complete hunting weapons found anywhere in the world were discovered in a mine in Schöningen where three 380, 000-year-old wooden javelins were unearthed
4.
Netherlands
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The Netherlands, also informally known as Holland is the main constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It is a densely populated country located in Western Europe with three territories in the Caribbean. The European part of the Netherlands borders Germany to the east, Belgium to the south, and the North Sea to the northwest, sharing borders with Belgium, the United Kingdom. The three largest cities in the Netherlands are Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague, Amsterdam is the countrys capital, while The Hague holds the Dutch seat of parliament and government. The port of Rotterdam is the worlds largest port outside East-Asia, the name Holland is used informally to refer to the whole of the country of the Netherlands. Netherlands literally means lower countries, influenced by its low land and flat geography, most of the areas below sea level are artificial. Since the late 16th century, large areas have been reclaimed from the sea and lakes, with a population density of 412 people per km2 –507 if water is excluded – the Netherlands is classified as a very densely populated country. Only Bangladesh, South Korea, and Taiwan have both a population and higher population density. Nevertheless, the Netherlands is the worlds second-largest exporter of food and agricultural products and this is partly due to the fertility of the soil and the mild climate. In 2001, it became the worlds first country to legalise same-sex marriage, the Netherlands is a founding member of the EU, Eurozone, G-10, NATO, OECD and WTO, as well as being a part of the Schengen Area and the trilateral Benelux Union. The first four are situated in The Hague, as is the EUs criminal intelligence agency Europol and this has led to the city being dubbed the worlds legal capital. The country also ranks second highest in the worlds 2016 Press Freedom Index, the Netherlands has a market-based mixed economy, ranking 17th of 177 countries according to the Index of Economic Freedom. It had the thirteenth-highest per capita income in the world in 2013 according to the International Monetary Fund, in 2013, the United Nations World Happiness Report ranked the Netherlands as the seventh-happiest country in the world, reflecting its high quality of life. The Netherlands also ranks joint second highest in the Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index, the region called Low Countries and the country of the Netherlands have the same toponymy. Place names with Neder, Nieder, Nether and Nedre and Bas or Inferior are in use in all over Europe. They are sometimes used in a relation to a higher ground that consecutively is indicated as Upper, Boven, Oben. In the case of the Low Countries / the Netherlands the geographical location of the region has been more or less downstream. The geographical location of the region, however, changed over time tremendously
5.
World Heritage Site
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A World Heritage Site is a landmark which has been officially recognized by the United Nations, specifically by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Sites are selected on the basis of having cultural, historical, scientific or some form of significance. UNESCO regards these sites as being important to the interests of humanity. The programme catalogues, names, and conserves sites of outstanding cultural or natural importance to the common culture, under certain conditions, listed sites can obtain funds from the World Heritage Fund. The program was founded with the Convention Concerning the Protection of the Worlds Cultural and Natural Heritage, since then,192 state parties have ratified the convention, making it one of the most adhered to international instruments. As of July 2016,1052 sites are listed,814 cultural,203 natural, in 1959, the governments of Egypt and Sudan requested UNESCO to assist their countries to protect and rescue the endangered monuments and sites. In 1960, the Director-General of UNESCO launched an appeal to the Member States for an International Campaign to Save the Monuments of Nubia, the campaign, which ended in 1980, was considered a success. The project cost $80 million, about $40 million of which was collected from 50 countries, the projects success led to other safeguarding campaigns, saving Venice and its lagoon in Italy, the ruins of Mohenjo-daro in Pakistan, and the Borobodur Temple Compounds in Indonesia. UNESCO then initiated, with the International Council on Monuments and Sites, the United States initiated the idea of cultural conservation with nature conservation. The International Union for Conservation of Nature developed similar proposals in 1968, the Convention came into force on 17 December 1975. As of June 2016, it has been ratified by 192 states, including 188 UN member states plus the Cook Islands, the Holy See, Niue, a country must first list its significant cultural and natural sites, the result is called the Tentative List. A country may not nominate sites that have not been first included on the Tentative List, next, it can place sites selected from that list into a Nomination File. The Nomination File is evaluated by the International Council on Monuments and Sites and these bodies then make their recommendations to the World Heritage Committee. There are ten selection criteria – a site must meet at least one of them to be included on the list, up to 2004, there were six criteria for cultural heritage and four criteria for natural heritage. In 2005, this was modified so there is now only one set of ten criteria. Nominated sites must be of outstanding value and meet at least one of the ten criteria. Thus, the Geneva Convention treaty promulgates, Article 53, PROTECTION OF CULTURAL OBJECTS AND OF PLACES OF WORSHIP. There are 1,052 World Heritage Sites located in 165 States Party, of these,814 are cultural,203 are natural and 35 are mixed properties
6.
Lower Saxon Wadden Sea National Park
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The national park has an area of about 345,800 hectares. The National Park organisation is located in Wilhelmshaven, since June 2009 the Lower Saxon Wadden Sea National Park has become a UNESCO World Heritage Site along with the Schleswig-Holstein Wadden Sea and the Dutch Wadden Sea. The habitats to be protected by this include the mudflats. Special attention is given to the wildlife and flora typical of the Wadden Sea of which the forms a part. The coast of the North Sea is unusually flat, the seabed descends in places only a few centimetres per kilometre. Twice daily the tide brings sand, clay and silt into the Wadden Sea, dunes, formed by the wind out of fine grains of sand from the exposed mudflats, characterise the coast. The Wadden Sea is the second most productive ecosystem after the tropical rainforest - only the latter surpasses the Wadden Sea in terms of its living biomass, the forms of life found in the Wadden Sea include diatoms, snails, worms, mussels and shrimp. A typical inhabitant of the sandy mudflats is the lugworm, which lives in a U-shaped tube under the surface of the mud, up to 4,000 animal and plant species specialize in the unusually food-rich habitat of the Wadden Sea. For example, shelduck live on the snails, which are found in hundreds of thousands on the surface of the flats, most of them breed on the island of Amrum. At the same time, the Wadden Sea is a place for breeding birds from northern countries that feed here to build up the fat reserves they need for successful breeding. For example, about 10-12 million waders, geese, ducks, seals may also be observed on the sandbanks of the Wadden Sea and the adjacent salt marshes, sandy beaches and sand dunes. The salt marshes are an area for the pied avocet and terns as well as a habitat for the sea holly. The typical plant of the dunes is the beachgrass, which anchors the dunes with its root system. Since the Ramsar Convention of 1971, the national park regions. The 1982 Lower Saxon regional development programme subsequently set the development of a park for the East Frisian Islands. This idea was taken up in 1983, when plans for a national park began. In early 1984 the cabinet decided to approve the national park in principle, according to the UNESCO man and biosphere programme, the entire national park became recognized as a biosphere reserve in 1992. Initially the national park was protected by a 1986 regulation, this was superseded in 1999 by a law
7.
Hamburg Wadden Sea National Park
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It is an exclave of the city state of Hamburg in North Germany and lies 12.5 km off Cuxhaven in the estuary of the Elbe in the North Sea and includes the islands of Neuwerk, Scharhörn and Nigehörn. It is made up mainly of sand and mixed mudflats with shallow creeks, sand bars, in accordance with a ruling by the Hamburg Parliament on 9 April 1990 the area was reclassified as the Hamburg Wadden Sea National Park. On 5 April 2001 the law was updated and the park area expanded as a result. The total area of the park is 13,750 hectares. The Zone 1 areas are under special protection, thus, for example mudflat hiking and horse and carriage rides are only permitted on designated routes. Within the national park there are about 2,000 species of animal, of particular note are the common seal and the gray seal. Due to the influx of sediment, there is a high concentration of food for young fish. The national park is therefore an important resting and moulting area for seabirds, for example, shelducks live on the snails that are found in hundreds of thousands on the surface of the mudflats. About 200,000 eider ducks also spend their moulting season here, most of them breed on the island of Amrum. At the same time, the Wadden Sea is a place for breeding birds from northern climes that eat up the fat reserves they need for successful breeding. As a result, there are about 10-12 million waders, geese, ducks, the park works closely with the Jordsand Society especially in the area of bird conservation. The national park management is responsible for the care of the biosphere reserve, Nationalpark Hamburgisches Wattenmeer Nationalpark-Station Neuwerk, Turmwurt D -27499 Insel Neuwerk Tel. 04721 /69271 and Behörde für Stadtentwicklung und Umwelt Nationalpark-Verwaltung Hamburgisches Wattenmeer Stadthausbrücke 8 D -20355 Hamburg Tel,040 /42840 -3392 Umweltbehörde Hamburg, Naturschutzamt, ed. Nationalpark-Atlas Hamburgisches Wattenmeer. Nationalparkplan, Teil I, Hamburg, pp. 1-165, http, //fhh1. hamburg. de/Behoerden/Umweltbehoerde/wattenmeer/pdf/atlas-komplett. pdf Im Nationalpark Wattenmeer
8.
Schleswig-Holstein Wadden Sea National Park
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The Schleswig-Holstein Wadden Sea National Park is a national park in the Schleswig-Holstein area of the German Wadden Sea. It was founded by the Parliament of Schleswig-Holstein on 1 October 1985 by the National Park Act of 22 July 1985 and expanded significantly in 1999. Together with the Lower Saxon Wadden Sea National Park, the Hamburg Wadden Sea National Park, the national park extends from the German-Danish maritime border in the north down to the Elbe estuary in the south. In the North Frisian area, it includes the mudflats around the geest-based and marsh islands, there the mudflats are 40 km wide in places. Further south lie areas of mudflats which contain particularly large sandbanks, in addition to the plants and animals that are typical of the entire Wadden Sea, especially large numbers of porpoise, shelduck and eelgrass may be seen in the Schleswig-Holstein part. With an area of 4410 km ² it is by far the largest national park in Germany, some 68% of its area is permanently under water and 30% is periodically dry. The land element consists mainly of salt marshes, since 1990, the national park, including the North Frisian Halligen, has been designated as a UNESCO recognised biosphere. Together with other German and Dutch Wadden Sea areas it became a UNESCO World Heritage Site on 26 June 2009, the national park covers an area from the North Sea coast of Schleswig-Holstein by the Danish border in the north to the Elbe estuary in the south. In the northern area, the park boundary extends to the twelve mile territorial limit. On the land side it runs in the sea 150 metres off the coast, Sea dykes and the foreland immediately in front of the dykes are not part of the national park, beaches are thus largely excluded from the protected zone. Part of the park comprises uninhabited islands, islets and Halligen, such as Trischen, the national park can be divided into two areas. In the north, between the Danish border and the peninsula of Eiderstedt is the North Frisian part, on the south coast of Eiderstedt up to the Elbe estuary is the Dithmarschen part. The North Frisian Wadden Sea, together with the Danish Wadden Sea and it is screened from the open sea by the North Frisian Islands and the Halligen. The islands were formed from elements of the mainland, which became separated. The mudflats are protected and the transition between the flats and the sea is often clearer, because the lie to the east of the large islands. There are no major river estuaries and the range is relatively low at less than two metres. In the northern Wadden Sea there are still geest cliffs formed in the ice ages, the Dithmarschen part and the south coast between the Elbe and Eider Eider estuaries form the central part of the Wadden Sea. A tidal range of three metres has largely prevented the formation of islands
9.
Wadden Sea National Park, Denmark
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Wadden Sea National Park was designated a Danish national park on 17 January 2008, effective 2010. Since June 2014 it has constituted the Danish part of the UNESCOs Wadden Sea World Heritage Site, prince Joachim of Denmark is Patron of the Wadden Sea Centre. The Wadden Sea is internationally known as a place for millions of migratory birds. Large flocks of European starlings can be found which fly in formations known as the sort sol, the Wadden Sea also has large numbers of breeding birds, fish, and invertebrates such as starfish and blue mussels. It provides habitat for more than 500 species of plants and animals, 97% of the national park is part of Natura 2000, divided into several projects, a bird sanctuary, a wildlife sanctuary, and Ramsar wetlands of international importance. The areas comprise biomes like the low-lying flat coast, tidal channels, tidal flats, stream mouths, beach meadows, sandplains and dunes
10.
Dutch language
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It is the third most widely spoken Germanic language, after English and German. Dutch is one of the closest relatives of both German and English and is said to be roughly in between them, Dutch vocabulary is mostly Germanic and incorporates more Romance loans than German but far fewer than English. In both Belgium and the Netherlands, the official name for Dutch is Nederlands, and its dialects have their own names, e. g. Hollands, West-Vlaams. The use of the word Vlaams to describe Standard Dutch for the variations prevalent in Flanders and used there, however, is common in the Netherlands, the Dutch language has been known under a variety of names. It derived from the Old Germanic word theudisk, one of the first names used for the non-Romance languages of Western Europe. It literarily means the language of the people, that is. The term was used as opposed to Latin, the language of writing. In the first text in which it is found, dating from 784, later, theudisca appeared also in the Oaths of Strasbourg to refer to the Germanic portion of the oath. This led inevitably to confusion since similar terms referred to different languages, owing to Dutch commercial and colonial rivalry in the 16th and 17th centuries, the English term came to refer exclusively to the Dutch. A notable exception is Pennsylvania Dutch, which is a West Central German variety called Deitsch by its speakers, Jersey Dutch, on the other hand, as spoken until the 1950s in New Jersey, is a Dutch-based creole. In Dutch itself, Diets went out of common use - although Platdiets is still used for the transitional Limburgish-Ripuarian Low Dietsch dialects in northeast Belgium, Nederlands, the official Dutch word for Dutch, did not become firmly established until the 19th century. This designation had been in use as far back as the end of the 15th century, one of them was it reflected a distinction with Hoogduits, High Dutch, meaning the language spoken in Germany. The Hoog was later dropped, and thus, Duits narrowed down in meaning to refer to the German language. g, in English, too, Netherlandic is regarded as a more accurate term for the Dutch language, but is hardly ever used. Old Dutch branched off more or less around the same time Old English, Old High German, Old Frisian and Old Saxon did. During that period, it forced Old Frisian back from the western coast to the north of the Low Countries, on the other hand, Dutch has been replaced in adjacent lands in nowadays France and Germany. The division in Old, Middle and Modern Dutch is mostly conventional, one of the few moments linguists can detect somewhat of a revolution is when the Dutch standard language emerged and quickly established itself. This is assumed to have taken place in approximately the mid-first millennium BCE in the pre-Roman Northern European Iron Age, the Germanic languages are traditionally divided into three groups, East, West, and North Germanic. They remained mutually intelligible throughout the Migration Period, Dutch is part of the West Germanic group, which also includes English, Scots, Frisian, Low German and High German
11.
German language
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German is a West Germanic language that is mainly spoken in Central Europe. It is the most widely spoken and official language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, South Tyrol, the German-speaking Community of Belgium and it is also one of the three official languages of Luxembourg. Major languages which are most similar to German include other members of the West Germanic language branch, such as Afrikaans, Dutch, English, Luxembourgish and it is the second most widely spoken Germanic language, after English. One of the languages of the world, German is the first language of about 95 million people worldwide. The German speaking countries are ranked fifth in terms of publication of new books. German derives most of its vocabulary from the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family, a portion of German words are derived from Latin and Greek, and fewer are borrowed from French and English. With slightly different standardized variants, German is a pluricentric language, like English, German is also notable for its broad spectrum of dialects, with many unique varieties existing in Europe and also other parts of the world. The history of the German language begins with the High German consonant shift during the migration period, when Martin Luther translated the Bible, he based his translation primarily on the standard bureaucratic language used in Saxony, also known as Meißner Deutsch. Copies of Luthers Bible featured a long list of glosses for each region that translated words which were unknown in the region into the regional dialect. Roman Catholics initially rejected Luthers translation, and tried to create their own Catholic standard of the German language – the difference in relation to Protestant German was minimal. It was not until the middle of the 18th century that a widely accepted standard was created, until about 1800, standard German was mainly a written language, in urban northern Germany, the local Low German dialects were spoken. Standard German, which was different, was often learned as a foreign language with uncertain pronunciation. Northern German pronunciation was considered the standard in prescriptive pronunciation guides though, however, German was the language of commerce and government in the Habsburg Empire, which encompassed a large area of Central and Eastern Europe. Until the mid-19th century, it was essentially the language of townspeople throughout most of the Empire and its use indicated that the speaker was a merchant or someone from an urban area, regardless of nationality. Some cities, such as Prague and Budapest, were gradually Germanized in the years after their incorporation into the Habsburg domain, others, such as Pozsony, were originally settled during the Habsburg period, and were primarily German at that time. Prague, Budapest and Bratislava as well as cities like Zagreb, the most comprehensive guide to the vocabulary of the German language is found within the Deutsches Wörterbuch. This dictionary was created by the Brothers Grimm and is composed of 16 parts which were issued between 1852 and 1860, in 1872, grammatical and orthographic rules first appeared in the Duden Handbook. In 1901, the 2nd Orthographical Conference ended with a standardization of the German language in its written form
12.
Danish language
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There are also minor Danish-speaking communities in Norway, Sweden, Spain, the United States, Canada, Brazil and Argentina. Due to immigration and language shift in urban areas, around 15–20% of the population of Greenland speak Danish as their home language. Along with the other North Germanic languages, Danish is a descendant of Old Norse, until the 16th century, Danish was a continuum of dialects spoken from Schleswig to Scania with no standard variety or spelling conventions. With the Protestant Reformation and the introduction of printing, a language was developed which was based on the educated Copenhagen dialect. It spread through use in the system and administration though German. Today, traditional Danish dialects have all but disappeared, though there are variants of the standard language. The main differences in language are between generations, with youth language being particularly innovative, Danish has a very large vowel inventory comprising 27 phonemically distinctive vowels, and its prosody is characterized by the distinctive phenomenon stød, a kind of laryngeal phonation type. The grammar is moderately inflective with strong and weak conjugations and inflections, nouns and demonstrative pronouns distinguish common and neutral gender. As in English, Danish only has remnants of a case system, particularly in the pronouns. Its syntax is V2, with the verb always occupying the second slot in the sentence. Danish is a Germanic language of the North Germanic branch, other names for this group are the Nordic or Scandinavian languages. Along with Swedish, Danish descends from the Eastern dialects of the Old Norse language, Scandinavian languages are often considered a dialect continuum, where there are no sharp dividing lines between the different vernacular languages. Like Norwegian and Swedish, Danish was significantly influenced by Low German in the Middle Ages, Danish itself can be divided into three main dialect areas, West Danish, Insular Danish, and East Danish. Danish is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Swedish, both Swedes and Danes also understand Norwegian better than they understand each others languages. By the 8th century, the common Germanic language of Scandinavia, Proto-Norse, had some changes. This language was called the Danish tongue, or Norse language. Norse was written in the alphabet, first with the elder futhark. From the 7th century the common Norse language began to undergo changes that did not spread to all of Scandinavia, most of the changes separating East Norse from West Norse started as innovations in Denmark, that spread through Scania into Sweden and by maritime contact to southern Norway
13.
West Frisian language
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West Frisian, or simply Frisian is a West Germanic language spoken mostly in the province of Friesland in the north of the Netherlands, mostly by those of Frisian ancestry. It is the most widely spoken of the three Frisian languages, the name West Frisian is only used outside the Netherlands, to distinguish this language from the closely related Frisian languages of Saterland Frisian and North Frisian spoken in Germany. Most speakers of West Frisian live in the province of Friesland in the north of the Netherlands, Friesland has 643,000 inhabitants, of whom 94% can understand spoken Frisian, 74% can speak Frisian, 75% can read Frisian, and 27% can write it. For over half of the inhabitants of the province of Friesland, 55%, also, many Frisians have left their province in the last sixty years for more prosperous parts of the Netherlands. In addition, there is a Frisian diaspora abroad, with Friesland having sent, in relative terms, the largest concentrations of Frisian speakers outside the Netherlands are located in Canada, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand. Apart from the use of Frisian as a first language, it is spoken as a second language by about 120,000 people in the province of Friesland. One part of Friesland, Stellingwerf in the south-east, does not speak Frisian, the least-used dialect of West Frisian is Skiermûntseagersk, the island dialect of Schiermonnikoog, which is actually on the verge of extinction, because it is spoken by no more than 50–100 people. The Amelansk dialect is spoken on the island Ameland and is the only Frisian variety that does not devoice final obstruants, Hindeloopen Frisian, the archaic Frisian dialect of the peninsular harbour town of Hindeloopen on the west coast, is still spoken by some 300 people at the most. Skylgersk and Aastersk are the dialects of the western and eastern parts of the island of Terschelling and have about 800 and 400 speakers respectively and they are separated from each other by the Dutch dialect of Midslands, which is spoken in the central part of Terschelling. Because of their insular nature these four less-used dialects are also those that have deviated the most from mainstream Frisian, in fact, three of the four widely used mainland dialects are so much alike that a non-Frisian could probably not make out any differences. The Noardhoeksk dialect is spoken in the eastern corner of the province. By far the two most widely spoken West Frisian dialects are Clay Frisian and Wood Frisian, both these names are derived from the Frisian landscape. In the western and north-western parts of the province, the region where Clay Frisian is spoken, the dialect spoken in the eastern area is thus called Wood Frisian. Although Klaaifrysk and Wâldfrysk are mutually very easily intelligible, there are, at least to native Frisian speakers and these include the pronunciation of the words my, dy, hy, sy, wy and by, and the diphthongs ei and aai. In the early Middle Ages the Frisian lands stretched from the area around Bruges, in what is now Belgium, to the river Weser, at that time, the Frisian language was spoken along the entire southern North Sea coast. Old Frisian bore a similarity to Old English. This similarity was reinforced in the late Middle Ages by the Ingvaeonic sound shift, which affected Frisian and English, both English and Frisian are marked by the suppression of the Germanic nasal in a word like us, soft or goose, see Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law. Also, when followed by some vowels the Germanic k developed into a ch sound, for example, the Frisian for cheese and church is tsiis and tsjerke, whereas in Dutch it is kaas and kerk
14.
North Frisian language
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North Frisian is a minority language of Germany, spoken by about 10,000 people in North Frisia. The language is part of the group of the West Germanic Frisian languages. The language comprises 10 dialects which are divided into an insular. North Frisian is closely related to the Saterland Frisian language of Northwest Germany, all of these are also closely related to the English language forming the Anglo-Frisian group. The phonological system of the North Frisian dialects is strongly being influenced by Standard German and is adapting to that of the German language. With a number of native speakers probably even less than 10,000 and decreasing use in mainland North Frisia and it is protected as a minority language and has become an official language in the Nordfriesland district and on Heligoland island. Together these three form the group of Frisian languages. The English language is closely related to Frisian. The two languages are classified in a common Anglo-Frisian group, Anglo-Frisian is grouped among the Ingvaeonic languages together with Low German. The related Low German has developed differently since Old Saxon times and has lost many Ingvaeonic characteristics, the North Frisian dialects can be grouped into two main dialectal divisions, those of the mainland and the insular dialects. All in all these two groups comprise 10 dialects, the dialect spoken on the Halligen is one of the mainland dialects though. Typically one distinguishes between the ten dialects that have been spoken since the beginning of Frisian linguistic studies in the 19th century. The islands of Sylt, Föhr and Amrum were colonised around 800 while the mainland was settled by Frisians in AD1100, add to this the various influences of neighbouring languages on the dialects. The sentence displayed below in many variants reads, Shine, old moon, cried Häwelmann, but the moon was nowhere to be seen and the stars neither, they had all already gone to bed. Insular Sölring „Ljucht, ual Muun, ljucht. ”Skriilt Häwelmann, man di Muun wiar narigen tö sen en uk di Stiaren ek, rep Heewelmaan, man a muun wiar nochhuaren tu sen an a stäären uk ei, jo wiar al altermaal tu baad gingen. Rüp Heäwelman, oawers de Muun wear naarni tu sin’n en uk de Steern ni, dja wear al allemoal tu Baad gingen. Mainland Northern Goesharde Frisian, Hoorninger Fräisch variety of Langenhorn „Jocht, uule moune, jocht. ”Biilked Hääwelmoon, ors e moune waas närngs to schüns än da steere ok ai, ja weern al aal to beede gingen. Wiedingharde Frisian „Ljocht, uuile moone, ljocht. ”Biilked Hääwelmuon, män e moone was näärgen to schüns än uk e steere ai, jä würn al altomoale to beerd gingen
15.
Intertidal zone
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The intertidal zone, also known as the foreshore and seashore and sometimes referred to as the littoral zone, is the area that is above water at low tide and under water at high tide. This area can include different types of habitats, with many types of animals, such as starfish, sea urchins. The well-known area also includes rocky cliffs, sandy beaches. The area can be a strip, as in Pacific islands that have only a narrow tidal range. Organisms in the zone are adapted to an environment of harsh extremes. The intertidal zone is home to many several species from different taxa including Porifera, Annelids, Coelenterates, Mollusks, crustaceans, Arthropods. Water is available regularly with the tides but varies from fresh with rain to highly saline, wave splash can dislodge residents from the littoral zone. With the intertidal zones high exposure to the sun, the range can be anything from very hot with full sun to near freezing in colder climates. Some microclimates in the zone are ameliorated by local features. Adaptation in the littoral zone allows the use of nutrients supplied in high volume on a basis from the sea. Edges of habitats, in this land and sea, are themselves often significant ecologies. Along most shores, the zone can be clearly separated into the following subzones, high tide zone, middle tide zone. The intertidal zone is one of a number of biomes or habitats, including estuaries, neritic, surface. Marine biologists divide the region into three zones, based on the overall average exposure of the zone. The low intertidal zone, which borders on the shallow subtidal zone, is exposed to air at the lowest of low tides and is primarily marine in character. The mid intertidal zone is exposed and submerged by average tides. The high intertidal zone is covered by the highest of the high tides. The high intertidal zone borders on the splash zone, on shores exposed to heavy wave action, the intertidal zone will be influenced by waves, as the spray from breaking waves will extend the intertidal zone
16.
Europe
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Europe is a continent that comprises the westernmost part of Eurasia. Europe is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, yet the non-oceanic borders of Europe—a concept dating back to classical antiquity—are arbitrary. Europe covers about 10,180,000 square kilometres, or 2% of the Earths surface, politically, Europe is divided into about fifty sovereign states of which the Russian Federation is the largest and most populous, spanning 39% of the continent and comprising 15% of its population. Europe had a population of about 740 million as of 2015. Further from the sea, seasonal differences are more noticeable than close to the coast, Europe, in particular ancient Greece, was the birthplace of Western civilization. The fall of the Western Roman Empire, during the period, marked the end of ancient history. Renaissance humanism, exploration, art, and science led to the modern era, from the Age of Discovery onwards, Europe played a predominant role in global affairs. Between the 16th and 20th centuries, European powers controlled at times the Americas, most of Africa, Oceania. The Industrial Revolution, which began in Great Britain at the end of the 18th century, gave rise to economic, cultural, and social change in Western Europe. During the Cold War, Europe was divided along the Iron Curtain between NATO in the west and the Warsaw Pact in the east, until the revolutions of 1989 and fall of the Berlin Wall. In 1955, the Council of Europe was formed following a speech by Sir Winston Churchill and it includes all states except for Belarus, Kazakhstan and Vatican City. Further European integration by some states led to the formation of the European Union, the EU originated in Western Europe but has been expanding eastward since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. The European Anthem is Ode to Joy and states celebrate peace, in classical Greek mythology, Europa is the name of either a Phoenician princess or of a queen of Crete. The name contains the elements εὐρύς, wide, broad and ὤψ eye, broad has been an epithet of Earth herself in the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European religion and the poetry devoted to it. For the second part also the divine attributes of grey-eyed Athena or ox-eyed Hera. The same naming motive according to cartographic convention appears in Greek Ανατολή, Martin Litchfield West stated that phonologically, the match between Europas name and any form of the Semitic word is very poor. Next to these there is also a Proto-Indo-European root *h1regʷos, meaning darkness. Most major world languages use words derived from Eurṓpē or Europa to refer to the continent, in some Turkic languages the originally Persian name Frangistan is used casually in referring to much of Europe, besides official names such as Avrupa or Evropa
17.
Frisian Islands
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The islands shield the mudflat region of the Wadden Sea from the North Sea. The Frisian Islands, along with the mainland coast in the German Bight, form the region of Frisia, generally, the term Frisian Islands is used for the islands where Frisian is spoken and the population is ethnically Frisian. Most of the Frisian Islands are environmentally protected areas, and a wildlife nature reserve is being coordinated between the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark. Natural gas and oil drilling continue, however, and in the vicinity of the Ems, Weser and Elbe estuaries, and ship traffic causes tension between wildlife protection and economic values. During the last ice age, which ended approximately 12,000 years ago, sea level was about 60 metres lower than it is now, and part of what is now the North Sea was dry land. With the melting of the ice caps, the sea rose, reaching the current coast line around the beginning of the Holocene era. Tidal action transported large quantities of sand to form a line of dunes extending over 500 kilometres from the Netherlands to the mouth of the river Elbe in Germany. The sea broke through the dunes in many places to form the Wadden Islands, the Dutch West Frisian and the German East Frisian Islands are barrier islands. They arose along the edge where the water surge piled up sediment. Over time, shoals arose, which ultimately were only covered by infrequent storm floods, once plants began to colonize the sandbanks, the land began to stabilize. In contrast, the North Frisian Islands arose from the remains of old Geestland islands and they are, therefore, often higher and their cores are less exposed to changes than the islands to the south. Beyond the core, however, the processes are at work, as is particularly evident on Sylt, where the south of the island threatens to be broken away. The Danish Islands, the next in the chain to the north, into the 20th century, silt on the islands was a serious problem. To protect them, small woods were planted, long before the beginning of the modern era, there were already humans inhabiting the Wadden area. Up to 800 AD, most inhabitants lived on terpen, the Roman naturalist Pliny, writing in the First Century CE, described the Frisians as. People who live without trees or shrubs, there, two times in each period of a day and a night, the ocean with a fast tide submerges an immense plain, thereby the hiding. Whether the area is sea or land, there this miserable race inhabits raised pieces ground or platforms, which they have moored by hand above the level of the highest known tide. It is for them not possible to keep herds and live on such as the surrounding tribes
18.
Mudflat
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Mudflats or mud flats, also known as tidal flats, are coastal wetlands that form when mud is deposited by tides or rivers. They are found in sheltered areas such as bays, bayous, lagoons, mudflats may be viewed geologically as exposed layers of bay mud, resulting from deposition of estuarine silts, clays and marine animal detritus. Most of the sediment within a mudflat is within the intertidal zone, in the past tidal flats were considered unhealthy, economically unimportant areas and were often dredged and developed into agricultural land. Several especially shallow mudflat areas, such as the Wadden Sea, are now popular among those practising the sport of mudflat hiking. On the Baltic Sea coast of Germany in places, mudflats are exposed not by tidal action and these wind-affected mudflats are called windwatts in German. Tidal flats, along with salt marshes and mangrove forests, are important ecosystems. They are often of importance to migratory birds, as well as certain species of crabs, mollusks. In the United Kingdom mudflats have been classified as a Biodiversity Action Plan priority habitat, the maintenance of mudflats is important in preventing coastal erosion. However, mudflats worldwide are under threat from predicted sea level rises, land claims for development, dredging due to shipping purposes, in some parts of the world, such as East and South-East Asia, mudflats have been reclaimed for aquaculture, agriculture, and industrial development. For example, around the Yellow Sea region of East Asia, mudflat sediment deposits are focused into the intertidal zone which is composed of a barren zone, marsh and salt pan. Within these areas are various ratios of sand and mud that make up the sedimentary layers, the associated growth of coastal sediment deposits can be attributed to rates of subsidence along with rates of deposition and changes in sea level. Barren zones extend from the lowest portion of the zone to the marsh areas. Beginning in close proximity to the bars, sand dominated layers are prominent. Common bedding types include laminated sand, ripple bedding, and bay mud, bioturbation also has a strong presence in barren zones. Marshes contain an abundance of plants while the sediment layers consist of thin sand. Mudcracks are a common as well as wavy bedding planes, marshes are also the origins of coal/peat layers because of the abundant decaying plant life. Salt pans can be distinguished in that they contain thinly laminated layers of clayey silt, the main source of the silt comes from rivers. Dried up mud along with wind erosion forms silt dunes, when flooding, rain or tides come in, the dried sediment is then re-distributed
19.
Wetland
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A wetland is a land area that is saturated with water, either permanently or seasonally, such that it takes on the characteristics of a distinct ecosystem. The primary factor that distinguishes wetlands from other forms or water bodies is the characteristic vegetation of aquatic plants. Wetlands play a number of roles in the environment, principally water purification, flood control, carbon sink, Wetlands are also considered the most biologically diverse of all ecosystems, serving as home to a wide range of plant and animal life. Wetlands occur naturally on every continent except Antarctica, the largest including the Amazon River basin, the West Siberian Plain, the water found in wetlands can be freshwater, brackish, or saltwater. The main wetland types include swamps, marshes, bogs, and fens, and sub-types include mangrove, carr, pocosin, the UN Millennium Ecosystem Assessment determined that environmental degradation is more prominent within wetland systems than any other ecosystem on Earth. International conservation efforts are being used in conjunction with the development of rapid assessment tools to people about wetland issues. Constructed wetlands can be used to treat municipal and industrial wastewater as well as stormwater runoff and they may also play a role in water-sensitive urban design. A patch of land that develops pools of water after a storm would not be considered a wetland. Wetlands have unique characteristics, they are distinguished from other water bodies or landforms based on their water level. Specifically, wetlands are characterized as having a table that stands at or near the land surface for a long enough period each year to support aquatic plants. A more concise definition is a community composed of hydric soil, Wetlands have also been described as ecotones, providing a transition between dry land and water bodies. In environmental decision-making, there are subsets of definitions that are agreed upon to make regulatory and policy decisions. A wetland is an ecosystem that arises when inundation by water produces soils dominated by anaerobic processes, There are four main kinds of wetlands – marsh, swamp, bog and fen. Some experts also recognize wet meadows and aquatic ecosystems as additional wetland types, the largest wetlands in the world include the swamp forests of the Amazon and the peatlands of Siberia. Under the Ramsar international wetland conservation treaty, wetlands are defined as follows, Article 2.1, may incorporate riparian and coastal zones adjacent to the wetlands, and islands or bodies of marine water deeper than six metres at low tide lying within the wetlands. Although the general definition given above applies around the world, each county, Wetlands generally include swamps, marshes, bogs and similar areas. This definition has been used in the enforcement of the Clean Water Act, some US states, such as Massachusetts and New York, have separate definitions that may differ from the federal governments. It is not uncommon for a wetland to be dry for long portions of the growing season, the most important factor producing wetlands is flooding
20.
Biodiversity
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Biodiversity, a contraction of biological diversity, generally refers to the variety and variability of life on Earth. One of the most widely used definitions defines it in terms of the variability within species and it is a measure of the variety of organisms present in different ecosystems. This can refer to genetic variation, ecosystem variation, or species variation within an area, biome, terrestrial biodiversity tends to be greater near the equator, which seems to be the result of the warm climate and high primary productivity. Biodiversity is not distributed evenly on Earth, and is richest in the tropics and these tropical forest ecosystems cover less than 10 per cent of earths surface, and contain about 90 percent of the worlds species. Marine biodiversity tends to be highest along coasts in the Western Pacific, there are latitudinal gradients in species diversity. Biodiversity generally tends to cluster in hotspots, and has been increasing through time, the number and variety of plants, animals and other organisms that exist is known as biodiversity. It is a component of nature and it ensures the survival of human species by providing food, fuel, shelter, medicines. The richness of biodiversity depends on the conditions and area of the region. All species of plants taken together are known as flora and about 300,000 species of plants are known to date, all species of animals taken together are known as fauna which includes birds, mammals, fish, reptiles, insects, crustaceans, molluscs, etc. Rapid environmental changes typically cause mass extinctions, more than 99 percent of all species, amounting to over five billion species, that ever lived on Earth are estimated to be extinct. Estimates on the number of Earths current species range from 10 million to 14 million, of which about 1.2 million have been documented and over 86 percent have not yet been described. More recently, in May 2016, scientists reported that 1 trillion species are estimated to be on Earth currently with only one-thousandth of one percent described, the total amount of related DNA base pairs on Earth is estimated at 5.0 x 1037 and weighs 50 billion tonnes. In comparison, the mass of the biosphere has been estimated to be as much as 4 TtC. In July 2016, scientists reported identifying a set of 355 genes from the Last Universal Common Ancestor of all living on Earth. The age of the Earth is about 4.54 billion years old, there are microbial mat fossils found in 3.48 billion-year-old sandstone discovered in Western Australia. Other early physical evidence of a substance is graphite in 3.7 billion-year-old meta-sedimentary rocks discovered in Western Greenland. More recently, in 2015, remains of life were found in 4.1 billion-year-old rocks in Western Australia. According to one of the researchers, If life arose relatively quickly on Earth, then it could be common in the universe
21.
UNESCO
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The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations based in Paris. It is the heir of the League of Nations International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation, UNESCO has 195 member states and nine associate members. Most of its offices are cluster offices covering three or more countries, national and regional offices also exist. UNESCO pursues its objectives through five major programs, education, natural sciences, social/human sciences, culture and it is also a member of the United Nations Development Group. UNESCO and its mandate for international cooperation can be traced back to a League of Nations resolution on 21 September 1921, on 18 December 1925, the International Bureau of Education began work as a non-governmental organization in the service of international educational development. However, the work of predecessor organizations was largely interrupted by the onset of World War II. On 30 October 1943, the necessity for an organization was expressed in the Moscow Declaration, agreed upon by China, the United Kingdom, the United States. This was followed by the Dumbarton Oaks Conference proposals of 9 October 1944, a prominent figure in the initiative for UNESCO was Rab Butler, the Minister of Education for the United Kingdom. At the ECO/CONF, the Constitution of UNESCO was introduced and signed by 37 countries, the Preparatory Commission operated between 16 November 1945, and 4 November 1946—the date when UNESCOs Constitution came into force with the deposit of the twentieth ratification by a member state. The first General Conference took place between 19 November to 10 December 1946, and elected Dr. Julian Huxley to Director-General and this change in governance distinguished UNESCO from its predecessor, the CICI, in how member states would work together in the organizations fields of competence. In 1956, the Republic of South Africa withdrew from UNESCO claiming that some of the organizations publications amounted to interference in the racial problems. South Africa rejoined the organization in 1994 under the leadership of Nelson Mandela, UNESCOs early work in the field of education included the pilot project on fundamental education in the Marbial Valley, Haiti, started in 1947. This project was followed by missions to other countries, including, for example. In 1948, UNESCO recommended that Member States should make free primary education compulsory, in 1990, the World Conference on Education for All, in Jomtien, Thailand, launched a global movement to provide basic education for all children, youths and adults. Ten years later, the 2000 World Education Forum held in Dakar, Senegal, UNESCOs early activities in culture included, for example, the Nubia Campaign, launched in 1960. The purpose of the campaign was to move the Great Temple of Abu Simbel to keep it from being swamped by the Nile after construction of the Aswan Dam, during the 20-year campaign,22 monuments and architectural complexes were relocated. This was the first and largest in a series of campaigns including Mohenjo-daro, Fes, Kathmandu, Borobudur, the organizations work on heritage led to the adoption, in 1972, of the Convention concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage. The World Heritage Committee was established in 1976 and the first sites inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1978, since then important legal instruments on cultural heritage and diversity have been adopted by UNESCO member states in 2003 and 2005
22.
World Heritage List
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A World Heritage Site is a landmark which has been officially recognized by the United Nations, specifically by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Sites are selected on the basis of having cultural, historical, scientific or some form of significance. UNESCO regards these sites as being important to the interests of humanity. The programme catalogues, names, and conserves sites of outstanding cultural or natural importance to the common culture, under certain conditions, listed sites can obtain funds from the World Heritage Fund. The program was founded with the Convention Concerning the Protection of the Worlds Cultural and Natural Heritage, since then,192 state parties have ratified the convention, making it one of the most adhered to international instruments. As of July 2016,1052 sites are listed,814 cultural,203 natural, in 1959, the governments of Egypt and Sudan requested UNESCO to assist their countries to protect and rescue the endangered monuments and sites. In 1960, the Director-General of UNESCO launched an appeal to the Member States for an International Campaign to Save the Monuments of Nubia, the campaign, which ended in 1980, was considered a success. The project cost $80 million, about $40 million of which was collected from 50 countries, the projects success led to other safeguarding campaigns, saving Venice and its lagoon in Italy, the ruins of Mohenjo-daro in Pakistan, and the Borobodur Temple Compounds in Indonesia. UNESCO then initiated, with the International Council on Monuments and Sites, the United States initiated the idea of cultural conservation with nature conservation. The International Union for Conservation of Nature developed similar proposals in 1968, the Convention came into force on 17 December 1975. As of June 2016, it has been ratified by 192 states, including 188 UN member states plus the Cook Islands, the Holy See, Niue, a country must first list its significant cultural and natural sites, the result is called the Tentative List. A country may not nominate sites that have not been first included on the Tentative List, next, it can place sites selected from that list into a Nomination File. The Nomination File is evaluated by the International Council on Monuments and Sites and these bodies then make their recommendations to the World Heritage Committee. There are ten selection criteria – a site must meet at least one of them to be included on the list, up to 2004, there were six criteria for cultural heritage and four criteria for natural heritage. In 2005, this was modified so there is now only one set of ten criteria. Nominated sites must be of outstanding value and meet at least one of the ten criteria. Thus, the Geneva Convention treaty promulgates, Article 53, PROTECTION OF CULTURAL OBJECTS AND OF PLACES OF WORSHIP. There are 1,052 World Heritage Sites located in 165 States Party, of these,814 are cultural,203 are natural and 35 are mixed properties
23.
Den Helder
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Den Helder is a municipality and a city in the Netherlands, in the province of North Holland. Den Helder occupies the northernmost point of the North Holland peninsula and it is home to the countrys main naval base. From here the Royal TESO ferryboat service operates the transportation link between Den Helder and the nearby Dutch Wadden island of Texel to the north. The municipality of Den Helder consists of the cities, towns, villages and/or districts, Den Helder, Huisduinen, Julianadorp. The major areas of Den Helder are Old Den Helder, Nieuw-Den Helder, Nieuw-Den Helder was built in the 1950s, following World War II, when there was a great need for additional housing. De Schooten was constructed in the 1960s, Dutch Topographic map of Den Helder, March 2014. Huisduinen was the older part of the city, whereas Helder itself was a nearby smaller hamlet. Due to its location at the tip of the North Holland peninsula. The area likely began being called Helledore because of the water between now Den Helder and Texel called Marsdiep, the current of the water was so strong many ships were lost. The name Helder may also have come from Helle/Helde, which means hill or hilly grounds, or from Helre, Den Helder has played an important part in Dutch shipping. During the Dutch Golden Age, ships would be assembled near Den Helder, on 23 January 1795, the French captured 14 Dutch ships and 850 guns in the deepfrozen towns harbour. In 1799 the city was the target of the Anglo-Russian invasion of Holland, during the 1820s, the North Holland Canal was dug from Amsterdam to Den Helder. The lighthouse Lange Jaap was built in 1877 and is the tallest cast-iron lighthouse in Europe, Den Helder was the site of a naval base as early as the 18th century. An Anglo-Russian invasion force landed at Den Helder in August 1799, French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, visiting Den Helder in 1811, was impressed with the towns strategic location and ordered the construction of a fort and naval dockyards. The docks were built during the years 1813-1827, in 1947, it officially became the Royal Netherlands Navys main centre of operations. Den Helder continues to be the main base today. The Royal Netherlands Naval College is also located in the city, the old naval dockyards of Willemsoord, located in the north of the city, now house restaurants, a cinema, and other recreational facilities. The naval docks and administration have moved to a new location further east
24.
Estuary
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An estuary is a partially enclosed coastal body of brackish water with one or more rivers or streams flowing into it, and with a free connection to the open sea. Estuaries form a zone between river environments and maritime environments. They are subject both to marine influences—such as tides, waves, and the influx of saline water—and to riverine influences—such as flows of fresh water and sediment. The inflows of sea water and fresh water provide high levels of nutrients both in the water column and in sediment, making estuaries among the most productive natural habitats in the world. Most existing estuaries formed during the Holocene epoch with the flooding of river-eroded or glacially scoured valleys when the sea began to rise about 10. Estuaries are typically classified according to their geomorphological features or to water-circulation patterns, the banks of many estuaries are amongst the most heavily populated areas of the world, with about 60% of the worlds population living along estuaries and the coast. The word estuary is derived from the Latin word aestuarium meaning tidal inlet of the sea, there have been many definitions proposed to describe an estuary. However, this definition excludes a number of water bodies such as coastal lagoons. This broad definition also includes fjords, lagoons, river mouths, an estuary is a dynamic ecosystem having a connection to the open sea through which the sea water enters with the rhythm of the tides. The sea water entering the estuary is diluted by the water flowing from rivers. The pattern of dilution varies between different estuaries and depends on the volume of water, the tidal range. Drowned river valleys are known as coastal plain estuaries. In places where the sea level is rising relative to the land, sea water progressively penetrates into river valleys and this is the most common type of estuary in temperate climates. Well-studied estuaries include the Severn Estuary in the United Kingdom and the Ems Dollard along the Dutch-German border, the width-to-depth ratio of these estuaries is typically large, appearing wedge-shaped in the inner part and broadening and deepening seaward. Water depths rarely exceed 30 m, examples of this type of estuary in the U. S. are the Hudson River, Chesapeake Bay, and Delaware Bay along the Mid-Atlantic coast, and Galveston Bay and Tampa Bay along the Gulf Coast. They are relatively common in tropical and subtropical locations and these estuaries are semi-isolated from ocean waters by barrier beaches. Formation of barrier beaches partially encloses the estuary, with only narrow inlets allowing contact with the ocean waters, bar-built estuaries typically develop on gently sloping plains located along tectonically stable edges of continents and marginal sea coasts. They are extensive along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of the U. S. in areas with active coastal deposition of sediments, barrier beaches form in shallow water and are generally parallel to the shoreline, resulting in long, narrow estuaries
25.
IJsselmeer
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Ijsselmeer, or IJsselmeer is a shallow artificial lake of 1100 km² in the central Netherlands bordering the provinces of Flevoland, North Holland and Friesland, with an average depth of 5 to 6 m. The IJsselmeer is the largest lake in Western Europe, the IJsselmeer is a freshwater lake fed through the Ketelmeer by the river IJssel, which gives it its name. It is mainly fed by water from the Rhine since the IJssel is a branch of it, the first two letters of the name are capitalized because IJ is a digraph in Dutch, possibly a ligature, so it is treated as a single letter for most purposes. The IJsselmeer was created in 1932 when a shallow inland bay, the Zuiderzee, was closed by a 32 km dam. This was part of a hydraulic engineering project known as the Zuiderzee Works. This former southern part of the IJsselmeer is now the hydrologically separate Markermeer, the IJsselmeer functions as a major fresh water reserve, serving as a source for agriculture and drinking water. It also offers a number of opportunities for recreational activities, the province of Flevoland was established in 1986 and consists of three polders reclaimed from the IJsselmeer. The narrow lake east of IJsselmeer is Lake Ketelmeer, the lake receives water from rivers that carry industrial pollutants from factories upstream. Those polluted sediments have settled to the bottom in a layer of contaminated sludge. To restore a normal environment, this material needs to be removed from the lakebed. In 2010 an artificial island called the IJsseloog was installed in Lake Ketelmeer and it is a repository for contaminated material dredged from the bottom of the lake. Once the repository is full, it will be capped and turned into a nature reserve, media related to IJsselmeer at Wikimedia Commons
26.
Afsluitdijk
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It is a fundamental part of the larger Zuiderzee Works, damming off the Zuiderzee, a salt water inlet of the North Sea, and turning it into the fresh water lake of the IJsselmeer. The Afsluitdijk was the demonstration site for a 130 kilometres per hour speed limit in the Netherlands. Work started at four points, on sides of the mainland and on two specially made construction-islands along the line of the future dike. From these points, the dike slowly grew by ships depositing till into the sea until it breached the surface. The nascent dike was then strengthened from land by basalt rocks, the dike could then be finished off by raising it further with sand and finally clay for the surface of the dike, on which grass was planted. Construction progressed better than expected, at three points along the line of the dike there were deeper underwater trenches where the current was much stronger than elsewhere. These had been considered to be obstacles to completing the dike. On 28 May 1932, two earlier than initially thought, the Zuiderzee ceased to be, as the last tidal trench. The IJsselmeer was born, even though it was still salty at the time, the dike itself however was not finished yet as it still needed to be brought up to its required height and a road linking Friesland and North Holland also remained to be built. On 25 September 1933, the Afsluitdijk was officially opened, with a monument designed by architect Dudok marking the spot where the dike had been closed, the amount of material used is estimated at 23 million m3 of sand and 13. Beside the dike itself, there was also the construction of two complexes of shipping locks and discharge sluices at both ends of the dike. It is necessary to discharge water from the lake since it is continually fed by rivers and streams. In 2012, the State Secretary for Infrastructure and the Environment, Joop Atsma, a naviduct would have a high construction cost compared with standard locks and bridges, but would benefit the economy by reducing delays. After the cost–benefit analysis of all potential solutions was considered, a decision was made to strengthen the existing locks, however, it is quite possible that a naviduct will be built to replace the locks when they reach the end of their useful life in 2050. Provision for a line linking North Holland and Friesland had been included on the Afsluitdijk, in the form of a linear reservation. However, construction of the line was never undertaken by Dutch Railways, for reasons of cost, the reservation and abutments for the rail line were utilized instead for a second carriageway for the dikes two-lane highway in the 1970s, transforming the latter into todays four-lane A7 motorway. During the period 12–13 May 1940 it was the site of the Battle of the Afsluitdijk, icoon Afsluitdijk was a 2016 visual design project by Daan Roosegaarde and staff to enhance the Afsluitdijk with a variety of permanent and temporary features. The temporary features included energy-harvesting kites and a display of bioluminescent algae, the permanent features include Spiegelstenen—mirror stones—that memorialize workers on the original dyke and Gates of light—a highly reflective guard rail
27.
Levee
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A levee, dike, dyke, embankment, floodbank or stopbank is an elongated naturally occurring ridge or artificially constructed fill or wall, which regulates water levels. It is usually earthen and often parallel to the course of a river in its floodplain or along low-lying coastlines, the word levee, from the French word levée, is used in American English. It originated in New Orleans a few years after the founding in 1718 and was later adopted by English speakers. The name derives from the trait of the ridges being raised higher than both the channel and the surrounding floodplains. The modern word dike or dyke most likely derives from the Dutch word dijk, the 126 kilometres long Westfriese Omringdijk was completed by 1250, and was formed by connecting existing older dikes. The Roman chronicler Tacitus even mentions that the rebellious Batavi pierced dikes to flood their land, the word dijk originally indicated both the trench and the bank. It is closely related to the English verb to dig, in Anglo-Saxon, the word dic already existed and was pronounced as dick in northern England and as ditch in the south. Similar to Dutch, the English origins of the lie in digging a trench. This practice has meant that the name may be given to either the excavation or the bank, thus Offas Dyke is a combined structure and Car Dyke is a trench though it once had raised banks as well. In the midlands and north of England, and in the United States, a dike is what a ditch is in the south, a property boundary marker or small drainage channel. Where it carries a stream, it may be called a dike as in Rippingale Running Dike. The Weir Dike is a dike in Bourne North Fen, near Twenty and alongside the River Glen. In the Norfolk and Suffolk Broads, a dyke may be a ditch or a narrow artificial channel off a river or broad for access or mooring, some longer dykes being named. In parts of Britain, particularly Scotland, a dyke may be a field wall, Levees can be mainly found along the sea, where dunes are not strong enough, along rivers for protection against high-floods, along lakes or along polders. Furthermore, levees have been built for the purpose of empoldering, the latter can be a controlled inundation by the military or a measure to prevent inundation of a larger area surrounded by levees. Levees have also built as field boundaries and as military defences. More on this type of levee can be found in the article on dry-stone walls, Levees can be permanent earthworks or emergency constructions built hastily in a flood emergency. When such a bank is added on top of an existing levee it is known as a cradge
28.
Causeway
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In modern usage, a causeway is a road or railway on top an embankment usually across a broad body of water or wetland. When first used, the word appeared in a such as causey way making clear its derivation from the earlier form causey. This word seems to have come from the source by two different routes. It derives ultimately, from the Latin for heel, calx, anciently, the construction was trodden down, one layer at a time, often by slaves or flocks of sheep. Today, this work is done by machines, the same technique would have been used for road embankments, raised river banks, sea banks and fortification earthworks. The second derivation route is simply the hard, trodden surface of a path, the name by this route came to be applied to a firmly-surfaced road. It is now little-used except in dialect and in the names of roads which were notable for their solidly-made surface. The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica states causey, a mound or dam, which is derived, through the Norman-French caucie, from the late Latin via calciata, a road stamped firm with the feet. The word is comparable in both meanings with the French chaussée, from a form of which it reached English by way of Norman French. The French adjective, chaussée, carries the meaning of having given a hardened surface. As a noun chaussée is used on the one hand for a metalled carriageway, other languages have a noun with similar dual meaning. The Welsh is relevant here, as it also has a verb, sarnu, a transport corridor that is carried instead on a series of arches, perhaps approaching a bridge, is a viaduct. In the U. S. a short stretch of viaduct is called an overpass, some low causeways across shore waters become inaccessible when covered at high tide. The modern embankment may be constructed within a cofferdam, two parallel steel sheet pile or concrete retaining walls, anchored to each other with steel cables or rods. This construction may also serve as a dyke that keeps two bodies of water apart, such as bodies with a different water level on each side, or with water on one side. This may also be the purpose of a structure, the road providing a hardened crest for the dike. It also provides access for maintenance as well perhaps, as a public service, notable causeways include those that connect Singapore and Malaysia, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia and Venice to the mainland, all of which carry roadways and railways. In the Netherlands there are a number of prominent dykes which also double as causeways, including the Afsluitdijk, Brouwersdam, in Louisiana, two very long bridges, called the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway, stretch across Lake Pontchartrain for almost 38 km, making them the worlds longest bridges
29.
Robert Erskine Childers
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He was executed by the authorities of the nascent Irish Free State during the Irish Civil War. He was the son of British Orientalist scholar Robert Caesar Childers, the cousin of Hugh Childers and Robert Barton, when Erskine was six his father died from tuberculosis and, although seemingly healthy, Anna was confined to an isolation hospital, where she died six years later. The five children were sent to the Bartons, the family of their fathers uncle, at Glendalough and they were treated kindly there and Erskine grew up knowing and loving Ireland, albeit at that stage from the comfortable viewpoint of the Protestant Ascendancy. At the recommendation of his grandfather, Canon Charles Childers, he was sent to Haileybury College, there he won an exhibition to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied the classical tripos and then law. He distinguished himself as the editor of Cambridge Review, the university magazine, notwithstanding his unattractive voice and poor debating skills, he became president of the Trinity College Debating Society. Although Erskine was an admirer of his cousin Hugh Childers, a member of the British Cabinet working for Irish home rule, at this stage he spoke vehemently against the policy in college debates. With many sporting ventures now closed to him because of his injury, Childers was encouraged by Walter Runciman. After picking up the fundamentals of seamanship as a deckhand on Runcimans yacht, in 1893 he bought his own scrubby little yacht Shulah and he sold the Shulah in 1895 to a Plymouth man following a trip around the Lizard in a heavyish sea. In 1894 while he was living in Glendalough, he bought a Dublin Bay Water Wag and he sailed this boat on Lough Dan, close to Glendalough, and he and his brother Henry used to take friends for a sail in the Water Wag. These were the adventures he was to fictionalise in 1903 as The Riddle of the Sands, his most famous book and a huge bestseller. In 1903 Childers, now accompanied by his new wife Molly, was cruising in the Frisian Islands, in Sunbeam. Mollys father, Dr Hamilton Osgood, arranged for a fine 28-ton yacht, Asgard, to be built for the couple as a wedding gift and Sunbeam was only a temporary measure while Asgard was being fitted out. (The Asgard was acquired by the Irish government as a training vessel in 1961, stored on dry land in the yard of Kilmainham Gaol in 1979. As with most men of his background and education, Childers was originally a steadfast believer in the British Empire. He was an artilleryman classed as a driver, caring for a pair of horses. The unit set off for South Africa on 2 February 1900, most of the new volunteers, after the three-week voyage it was something of a disappointment that the HAC detachment was, initially, not used. On 26 June, while escorting a train of slow ox-wagons, Childers first came under fire. However it was a smartly executed defence of an infantry regiment on 3 July that established their worth
30.
The Riddle of the Sands
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The Riddle of the Sands, A Record of Secret Service is a 1903 novel by Erskine Childers. The book, which enjoyed popularity in the years before World War I, is an early example of the espionage novel and was extremely influential in the genre of spy fiction. It has been made into films for both cinema and television. The novel owes a lot to the adventure novels of writers like Rider Haggard. Carruthers, an official in the Foreign Office, is contacted by an acquaintance, Davies. Carruthers agrees, as his plans for a holiday have fallen through. He arrives to find that Davies has a sailing boat. However Carruthers agrees to go on the trip and joins Davies in Flensburg on the Baltic, whence they head for the Frisian Islands, Carruthers has to learn quickly how to sail the small boat. Davies gradually reveals that he suspects that the Germans are undertaking something sinister in the German Frisian islands and this is based on his belief that he was nearly wrecked by a German yacht luring him into a shoal in rough weather during a previous trip. Davies is suspicious about what would motivate the Germans to try to kill him, having failed to interest anyone in the government in the incident, he feels it is his patriotic duty to investigate further – hence the invitation to Carruthers. The two men discover that an expatriate Englishman, Dollmann, is involved in the recovery project, Carruthers realises that Davies is in love with Dollmann’s daughter, Clara. Carruthers and Davies try to approach Memmert, they’re warned away by a German navy patrol boat, the Blitz, and its commander Von Bruning. This makes them all the more sure that there is something more than a treasure dig on the island, taking advantage of a thick fog, Davies navigates them covertly through the complicated sandbanks in a small boat to investigate the site. He overhears Von Bruning and Dollmann discussing something more than treasure hunting, including references to Chatham, Seven. The pair return through the fog to the Dulcibella, there, they find Dollmann and Von Bruning have beaten them and are seemingly suspicious. Von Bruning invites them to Dollmanns villa for a dinner, where he attempts to subtly cross-examine them to find out if they are British spies, Carruthers plays a dangerous game, admitting they are curious. But he convinces Von Bruning that he believes the story about treasure. Carruthers announces that the Foreign Office has recalled him to England and he heads off, then doubles back to follow Von Bruning and his men
31.
Salt marsh
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It is dominated by dense stands of salt-tolerant plants such as herbs, grasses, or low shrubs. These plants are terrestrial in origin and are essential to the stability of the marsh in trapping and binding sediments. Salt marshes play a role in the aquatic food web. They also support terrestrial animals and provide coastal protection, salt marshes occur on low-energy shorelines in temperate and high-latitudes which can be stable or emerging, or submerging if the sedimentation rate exceeds the subsidence rate. Commonly these shorelines consist of mud or sand flats which are nourished with sediment from inflowing rivers and these typically include sheltered environments such as embankments, estuaries and the leeward side of barrier islands and spits. In the tropics and sub-tropics they are replaced by mangroves, an area that differs from a marsh in that instead of herbaceous plants. Most salt marshes have a low topography with low elevations but a vast wide area, salt marshes are located among different landforms based on their physical and geomorphological settings. Such marsh landforms include deltaic marshes, estuarine, back-barrier, open coast, embayments, deltaic marshes are associated with large rivers where many occur in Southern Europe such as the Camargue, France in the Rhone delta or the Ebro delta in Spain. They are also extensive within the rivers of the Mississippi Delta in the United States, in New Zealand, most salt marshes occur at the head of estuaries in areas where there is little wave action and high sedimentation. Such marshes are located in Awhitu Regional Park in Auckland, the Manawatu Estuary, back-barrier marshes are sensitive to the reshaping of barriers in the landward side of which they have been formed. They are common along much of the eastern coast of the United States, large, shallow coastal embayments can hold salt marshes with examples including Morecambe Bay and Portsmouth in Britain and the Bay of Fundy in North America. They have a big impact on the biodiversity of the area, salt marsh ecology involves complex food webs which include primary producers, primary consumers, and secondary consumers. The low physical energy and high grasses provide a refuge for animals, many marine fish use salt marshes as nursery grounds for their young before they move to open waters. Saltmarshes across 99 countries were mapped by Mcowen et al, a total of 5,495,089 hectares of mapped saltmarsh across 43 countries and territories are represented in a Geographic Information Systems polygon shapefile. This estimate is at the low end of previous estimates. Mats of filamentous blue-green algae can fix silt and clay sized sediment particles to their sticky sheaths on contact which can increase the erosion resistance of the sediments. This assists the process of sediment accretion to allow colonising species to grow, as a result, competitive species that prefer higher elevations relative to sea level can inhabit the area and often a succession of plant communities develops. Coastal salt marshes can be distinguished from terrestrial habitats by the tidal flow that occurs
32.
Westerhever
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Westerhever is a municipality in Nordfriesland in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein. Westerhever lies on the tip of the Eiderstedt Peninsula. The Westerheversand Lighthouse is a landmark on the peninsula which is surrounded by salt marshes. The saltmarshes, lighthouse, and beaches attract about 80,000 visitors every year, the island Westerhever was first settled by humans in the 12th Century. The first humans there built a dike to protect the land. Media related to Westerhever at Wikimedia Commons
33.
Greetsiel
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Greetsiel is a small port on the bight of Leybucht in western East Frisia, Germany that was first documented in letters from the year 1388. Since 1972, Greetsiel has been part of the municipality of Krummhörn, the nearest railway station is at Emden, about 15–20 kilometres away, and the two towns are linked by a bus service. Although originally just a small but picturesque fishing village, Greetsiel has become a major tourist attraction, in December 2006, it had 1,534 inhabitants, but the number of people living in the village significantly increases during the summer months and over the Christmas holidays. Greetsiel is situated on the Leybucht, a bay on the East Frisian coast. Over time, large parts of the bay were reclaimed behind dykes, in the 1990s, the Leybuchthörn was completed. This structure extends as a spit out into the Wadden Sea, within the Leybuchthörn is a reservoir and the approach channel from the North Sea into Greetsiel Harbour. Between the port and the sea is a lock. Since the completion of the structure, Greetsiel Harbour has been accessible from the sea, the distance to the nearest towns of Emden and Norden is 15–20 km to the north and south respectively. Greetsiel is first mentioned in the records in letters dating to the year 1388, at that time, Hamburgs ships lay at anchor in the port of Greetsiel and had to pay tariffs. The place was founded by the Domain of Appingen under the chiefs of Cirksena, while Appingen increasingly lost its importance, Greetsiel became the seat of the chief. In 1462 Count Edzard the Great was born at the Cirksenaburg, in 1547 Ubbo Emmius was born here. On old Dutch maps the town is marked as Grietjezijl, in creating the municipality of Krummhörn in 1972, a debate erupted over whether the administrative headquarters should be Pewsum or Greetsiel. Because Greetsiel was an isolated location, Pewsum was preferred. Of all the East Frisian Siel villages, Greetsiel has the best preserved old fishermens cottages, in its picturesque fishing harbour there are still 28 shrimp cutters. Other notable buildings are, Greetsiel Church, an evangelical, reformed church, the rectangular, brick, aisleless church was built between 1380 and 1410 as the private church of the chief, Haro Edzardsna, in two stages. In 1401, long before its completion, it was to be consecrated to Saint Mary. The building is crowned by a small flèche decorated with a clock and this is adorned by a 1730 weather vane in the shape of a ship. The actual clock tower stands off to one side, the simple interior, which at one time had a flat ceiling, has been covered by a slightly vaulted wooden ceiling since 1852
34.
Low German
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Low German or Low Saxon is a West Germanic language spoken mainly in northern Germany and the eastern part of the Netherlands. It is descended from Old Saxon in its earliest form, as an Ingvaeonic language, Low German is quite distinct from the Irminonic languages like Standard German. It is closely related to Anglo-Frisian group of languages and more distantly to Dutch and this difference resulted from the High German consonant shift, with the Uerdingen and Benrath lines being two notable linguistic borders. Dialects of Low German are widely spoken in the area of the Netherlands and are written there with an orthography based on Standard Dutch orthography. Small portions of northern Hesse and northern Thuringia are traditionally Low Saxon-speaking too, historically, Low German was also spoken in formerly German parts of Poland as well as in East Prussia and the Baltic States of Estonia and Latvia. Under the name Low Saxon, there are speakers in the Dutch north-eastern provinces of Groningen, Drenthe, Stellingwerf, Overijssel, German speakers in this area fled the Red Army or were forcibly expelled after the border changes at the end of World War II. Today, there are still speakers outside Germany and the Netherlands to be found in the areas of present-day Poland. In some of these countries, the language is part of the Mennonite religion, there are Mennonite communities in Ontario, Saskatchewan, Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, and Minnesota which use Low German in their religious services and communities. The type of Low German spoken in communities and in the Midwest region of the United States has diverged since emigration. The survival of the language is tenuous in many places and has died out in places where assimilation has occurred. Mennonite colonies in Paraguay, Belize, and Chihuahua, Mexico have made Low German a co-official language of the community, in Germany, native speakers of Low German call it Platt, Plattdüütsch or Nedderdüütsch. In the Netherlands, native speakers refer to their language as dialect, plat, nedersaksies, or the name of their village, officially, Low German is called Niederdeutsch by the German authorities and Nedersaksisch by the Dutch authorities. Plattdeutsch/Niederdeutsch and Platduits/Nedersaksisch are seen in texts from the German. In Danish it is called Plattysk, Nedertysk or, rarely, Mennonite Low German is called Plautdietsch. Etymologically Platt meant clear in the sense of a language the people could understand. In Dutch, the word Plat can also mean improper, or rude, the ISO 639-2 language code for Low German has been nds since May 2000. The question of whether Low German should be considered a separate language, linguistics offers no simple, generally accepted criterion to decide this question. Scholarly arguments have been put forward in favour of classifying Low German as a German dialect, as said, these arguments are not linguistic but rather socio-political and build mainly around the fact that Low German has no official standard form or use in sophisticated media
35.
Creek (tidal)
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A tidal creek, tidal channel, or estuary is the portion of a stream that is affected by ebb and flow of ocean tides, in the case that the subject stream discharges to an ocean, sea or strait. Thus this portion of the stream has variable salinity and electrical conductivity over the tidal cycle, due to the temporal variability of water quality parameters within the tidally influenced zone, there are unique biota associated with tidal creeks, which biota are often specialised to such zones. Creeks may often dry to a channel with little or no flow at low tide. In British English and in other countries in the Commonwealth, as well as some parts of the United States. In parts of southwest England and Wales, the pill is used. On the India and Pakistan borders the term applies to the salt water inlets enclosed by mangroves. Creeks are found dispersed all along the Indian coast, in the Florida Keys, a creek is a narrow channel between islands. There are thousands of examples of tidal creeks throughout the world
36.
Storm surge
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Most casualties during tropical cyclones occur as the result of storm surges. The deadliest storm surge on record was the 1970 Bhola cyclone, the low-lying coast of the Bay of Bengal is particularly vulnerable to surges caused by tropical cyclones. The deadliest storm surge in the twenty-first century was caused by the Cyclone Nargis, the next deadliest in this century was caused by the Typhoon Haiyan, which killed more than 6,000 people in the central Philippines in 2013 and resulted in economic losses estimated at $14 billion. Louis, Diamondhead and Pass Christian in Mississippi, a high storm surge occurred in New York City from Hurricane Sandy in October 2012, with a high tide of 14 ft. The pressure effects of a tropical cyclone will cause the level in the open ocean to rise in regions of low atmospheric pressure. The rising water level will counteract the low pressure such that the total pressure at some plane beneath the water surface remains constant. This effect is estimated at a 10 mm increase in sea level for every millibar drop in atmospheric pressure, strong surface winds cause surface currents at a 45° angle to the wind direction, by an effect known as the Ekman Spiral. Wind stresses cause a phenomenon referred to as wind set-up, which is the tendency for water levels to increase at the downwind shore, intuitively, this is caused by the storm simply blowing the water towards one side of the basin in the direction of its winds. Because the Ekman Spiral effects spread vertically through the water, the effect is proportional to depth. The pressure effect and the wind set-up on an open coast will be driven into bays in the way as the astronomical tide. The Earths rotation causes the Coriolis effect, which bends currents to the right in the Northern Hemisphere and to the left in the Southern Hemisphere. When this bend brings the currents into more contact with the shore it can amplify the surge. The effect of waves, while powered by the wind, is distinct from a storms wind-powered currents. Powerful wind whips up large, strong waves in the direction of its movement, although these surface waves are responsible for very little water transport in open water, they may be responsible for significant transport near the shore. When waves are breaking on a more or less parallel to the beach. The rainfall effect is experienced predominantly in estuaries, Hurricanes may dump as much as 12 in of rainfall in 24 hours over large areas, and higher rainfall densities in localized areas. As a result, watersheds can quickly surge water into the rivers that drain them and this can increase the water level near the head of tidal estuaries as storm-driven waters surging in from the ocean meet rainfall flowing from the estuary. This situation well exemplified by the southeast coast of Florida
37.
Peat
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Peat, also called turf, is an accumulation of partially decayed vegetation or organic matter that is unique to natural areas called peatlands, bogs, mires, moors, or muskegs. The peatland ecosystem is the most efficient carbon sink on the planet because peatland plants capture the CO2 which is released from the peat. Sphagnum moss is one of the most common components in peat, soils that contain mostly peat are known as histosols. Peat forms in wetland conditions, where flooding obstructs flows of oxygen from the atmosphere, Peatlands, particularly bogs, are the most important source of peat. That said, other less common types, including fens, pocosins. Landscapes covered in peat are home to specific kinds of plants including Sphagnum moss, ericaceous shrubs, because organic matter accumulates over thousands of years, peat deposits also provide records of past vegetation and climates stored in plant remains like pollen. This allows humans to reconstruct past environments and study changes in land use. Peat is harvested as an important source of fuel in certain parts of the world, by volume, there are about 4 trillion cubic metres of peat in the world, covering a total of around 2% of the global land area, containing about 8 billion terajoules of energy. Over time, the formation of peat is often the first step in the formation of other fossil fuels such as coal. This is also the commonly used in the peat industry. At 106 g CO2/MJ, the carbon dioxide emission intensity of peat is higher than that of coal and natural gas, lastly, peat fires have been responsible for large public health disasters including the 1997 Southeast Asian haze. Peat forms when plant material does not fully decay in acidic and anaerobic conditions and it is composed mainly of wetland vegetation, principally bog plants including mosses, sedges, and shrubs. As it accumulates, the peat holds water and this slowly creates wetter conditions that allow the area of wetland to expand. Peatland features can include ponds, ridges, and raised bogs, most modern peat bogs formed 12,000 years ago in high latitudes after the glaciers retreated at the end of the last ice age. Peat usually accumulates slowly at the rate of about a millimetre per year, using Carbon-dating, scientists found that Peat in peatlands started forming 360 million years ago based on it currently containing 550 Gt of carbon. Peat material is either fibric, hemic, or sapric, fibric peats are the least decomposed and consist of intact fiber. Hemic peats are partially decomposed and sapric are the most decomposed, Phragmites peat is one composed of reed grass, Phragmites australis, and other grasses. It is denser than other types of peat
38.
Sediment
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For sediment in beverages, see dregs. For example, sand and silt can be carried in suspension in water and on reaching the sea be deposited by sedimentation. Sediments are most often transported by water, but also wind, beach sands and river channel deposits are examples of fluvial transport and deposition, though sediment also often settles out of slow-moving or standing water in lakes and oceans. Desert sand dunes and loess are examples of transport and deposition. Glacial moraine deposits and till are ice-transported sediments, sediment can be classified based on its grain size and/or its composition. Sediment size is measured on a log base 2 scale, called the Phi scale, composition of sediment can be measured in terms of, parent rock lithology mineral composition chemical make-up. This leads to an ambiguity in which clay can be used as both a size-range and a composition, sediment is transported based on the strength of the flow that carries it and its own size, volume, density, and shape. Stronger flows will increase the lift and drag on the particle, causing it to rise, rivers and streams carry sediment in their flows. This sediment can be in a variety of locations within the flow and these relationships are shown in the following table for the Rouse number, which is a ratio of sediment fall velocity to upwards velocity. If the upwards velocity is less than the settling velocity, but still high enough for the sediment to move, it will move along the bed as bed load by rolling, sliding. If the upwards velocity is higher than the velocity, the sediment will be transported high in the flow as wash load. As there are generally a range of different particle sizes in the flow, sediment motion can create self-organized structures such as ripples, dunes, antidunes on the river or stream bed. These bedforms are often preserved in rocks and can be used to estimate the direction. Overland flow can erode soil particles and transport them downslope, the erosion associated with overland flow may occur through different methods depending on meteorological and flow conditions. If the initial impact of rain droplets dislodges soil, the phenomenon is called rainsplash erosion, if overland flow is directly responsible for sediment entrainment but does not form gullies, it is called sheet erosion. If the flow and the substrate permit channelization, gullies may form, glaciers carry a wide range of sediment sizes, and deposit it in moraines. The overall balance between sediment in transport and sediment being deposited on the bed is given by the Exner equation and this expression states that the rate of increase in bed elevation due to deposition is proportional to the amount of sediment that falls out of the flow. This can be localized, and simply due to obstacles, examples are scour holes behind boulders, where flow accelerates
39.
Vlieland
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Vlieland is a municipality and island in the northern Netherlands. The municipality of Vlieland has only one town, Oost-Vlieland. It is the second-least densely populated municipality in the Netherlands, Vlieland is one of the West Frisian Islands, lying in the Wadden Sea. It is the island from the west in the chain. The island was separated from the mainland in St. Lucias flood in 1287. Vlieland was named after the Vlie, the seaway between it and Terschelling that was the estuary of the river IJssel in medieval times, the northern part of the island of Texel, Eierland, once was the southwestern part of Vlieland. A storm surge in 1296 probably separated Eierland from Vlieland, until 1942 Vlieland, like Terschelling, was part of the province of North Holland. During the Second World War, Vlieland became part of the German Atlantic Wall, the Germans built two anti-aircraft batteries and stationed more soldiers on the island than there were inhabitants. They also repartitioned the island to Friesland and the situation was not reversed after the war, the mail station in the western part of the island is a reminder that in the past mail was delivered by ferry from Texel. Because of this history, Vlieland natives do not speak Frisian, the original dialect, Vlielands, was related to the dialect of Texel and to other Dutch dialects in North Holland. The last native speaker, Petronella de Boer-Zeylemaker, died in 1993 at the age of 107, Vlieland can be reached by ferry from the Frisian town of Harlingen on the mainland. Ferries are operated by Doeksen and the journey takes 45 minutes to 1.5 hours to cross the Wadden Sea, tourists are not allowed to bring cars with them on the ferry. A summer-only ferry service runs between De Cocksdorp on the island of Texel and the westernmost point of Vlieland. The most common form of transport on the island is the bicycle, a bus service runs from the ferry terminal to the village and campgrounds after the arrival of a ferry, and some time before departure. There is a small heliport near the village, but it is only used for SAR flights. Vlieland, being the outermost of the Frisian barrier islands, sees its climate the most moderated by the North- and Wadden Sea. As is the case with the other West Frisian islands, sunshine hours are among the highest in the Netherlands, and quite possibly among the highest in the North Sea basin. Temperature extremes are rare, on average only 6 times a year does the daytime high exceed 25 degrees, and a high above thirty happens on average only once every three years
40.
Ameland
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Ameland is a municipality and one of the West Frisian Islands off the north coast of the Netherlands. It consists mostly of sand dunes and it is the third major island of the West Frisians. It neighbours islands Terschelling to the west and Schiermonnikoog to the east and this includes the small Engelsmanplaat and Rif islands to the east. Ameland is, counted from the west, the fourth inhabited Dutch Wadden island, the whole island falls under one municipality, which carries the same name. The Wadden islands form the border between the North sea and the Wadden sea which lies on the side of the island file. The municipality of Ameland had a population of 3,591 in 2014, the island has four villages, and one small part-village. There were two villages, Oerd and Sier, but these were flooded and now lie in the sea. The name of these live on in MS Oerd and MS Sier. Although Holland, Friesland and the Holy Roman Emperor contested this quasi-independent status, it remained a free lordship until the family, Cammingha. Only in the constitution of 1813 was the island finally integrated into the Netherlands into the province of Friesland, the monarchy of the Netherlands still maintain the title Vrijheer van Ameland today. In 1871 and 1872, a dike was built between Ameland and the mainland by a society for the reclamation of Frisian land from the sea, the dike ran from Holwerd to Buren and was 8.7 km. long. The province and the Dutch realm each paid 200,000 guilders, in the end, it was unsuccessful, the dike did not prove to be durable and in 1882, after heavy storms in the winter, repair and maintenance of the dam were stopped. The dike can still be seen at low tide. The dam at Holwerd is the beginning of this dike, in 1940 German troops were ferried to the island and within hours Ameland was under the control of the German Army. Because of its military value the Allies never invaded Ameland. The German forces on the island did not surrender until June 2,1945, like all West and East Frisian Islands, Ameland is a unique piece of nature. The profusion of different plants on the island is caused by the variety of landscapes. One of the areas is the Oerd, a large complex of dunes which is still expanding by the year
41.
Flora
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Flora is the plant life occurring in a particular region or time, generally the naturally occurring or indigenous—native plant life. The corresponding term for animal life is fauna, Flora, fauna and other forms of life such as fungi are collectively referred to as biota. Sometimes bacteria and fungi are also referred to as flora, as in the gut flora or skin flora. The word flora comes from the Latin name of Flora, the goddess of plants, flowers, the distinction between vegetation and flora was first made by Jules Thurmann. Prior to this, the two terms were used indiscriminately, plants are grouped into floras based on region, period, special environment, or climate. Regions can be geographically distinct habitats like mountain vs. flatland, floras can mean plant life of a historic era as in fossil flora. Lastly, floras may be subdivided by special environments, Native flora, the native and indigenous flora of an area. The plants that are grown by humans. Traditionally this classification was applied to plants regarded as undesirable, many native plants previously considered weeds have been shown to be beneficial or even necessary to various ecosystems. The flora of an area or time period can be documented in a publication also known as a flora. Floras may require specialist botanical knowledge to use with any effectiveness, traditionally they are books, but some are now published on CD-ROM or websites. It is said that the Flora Sinensis by the Polish Jesuit Michał Boym was the first book that used the name Flora in this meaning, however, despite its title it covered not only plants, but also some animals of the region. A published flora often contains diagnostic keys, often these are dichotomous keys, which require the user to repeatedly examine a plant, and decide which one of two alternatives given best applies to the plant
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Fauna
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Fauna is all of the animal life of any particular region or time. The corresponding term for plants is flora, flora, fauna and other forms of life such as fungi are collectively referred to as biota. Zoologists and paleontologists use fauna to refer to a collection of animals found in a specific time or place. Paleontologists sometimes refer to a sequence of stages, which is a series of rocks all containing similar fossils. Fauna comes from the Greek names Fauna, a Roman goddess of earth and fertility, the Roman god Faunus, all three words are cognates of the name of the Greek god Pan, and panis is the Greek equivalent of fauna. Fauna is also the word for a book that catalogues the animals in such a manner, the term was first used by Carl Linnaeus from Sweden in the title of his 1745 work Fauna Suecica. Cryofauna are animals that live in, or very close to, cryptofauna are the fauna that exist in protected or concealed microhabitats. Infauna are benthic organisms that live within the substratum of a body of water, especially within the bottom-most oceanic sediments. Bacteria and microalgae may also live in the interstices of bottom sediments, epifauna, also called epibenthos, are aquatic animals that live on the bottom substratum as opposed to within it, that is, the benthic fauna that live on top of the sediment surface at the seafloor. Macrofauna are benthic or soil organisms which are retained on a 0.5 mm sieve, studies in the deep sea define macrofauna as animals retained on a 0.3 mm sieve to account for the small size of many of the taxa. Megafauna are large animals of any region or time. Meiofauna are small invertebrates that live in both marine and fresh water environments. The term Meiofauna loosely defines a group of organisms by their size, larger than microfauna but smaller than macrofauna, one environment for meiofauna is between grains of damp sand. In practice these are metazoan animals that can pass unharmed through a 0.5 –1 mm mesh but will be retained by a 30–45 μm mesh, but the exact dimensions will vary from researcher to researcher. Whether an organism passes through a 1 mm mesh also depends upon whether it is alive or dead at the time of sorting, mesofauna are macroscopic soil invertebrates such as arthropods or nematodes. Mesofauna are extremely diverse, considering just the springtails, as of 1998, microfauna are microscopic or very small animals. Other terms include avifauna, which means bird fauna and piscifauna, which means fish fauna
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Wader
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Waders are birds commonly found along shorelines and mudflats that wade in order to forage for food in the mud or sand. They are called shorebirds in North America, waders are members of the order Charadriiformes, which includes gulls, auks and their allies. There are about 210 species of wader, most of which are associated with wetland or coastal environments, many species of Arctic and temperate regions are strongly migratory, but tropical birds are often resident, or move only in response to rainfall patterns. Some of the Arctic species, such as the little stint, are amongst the longest distance migrants, the smallest member of this group is the least sandpiper, small adults of which can weigh as little as 15.5 grams and measure just over 13 cm. The largest species is believed to be the Far Eastern curlew, at about 63 cm and 860 grams, in the Sibley-Ahlquist taxonomy, waders and many other groups are subsumed into a greatly enlarged Ciconiiformes order. Formerly, the waders were united in a single suborder Charadrii, however, it indicated that the plains wanderer actually belonged into one of them. Shorebirds is a term used to refer to multiple species of birds that live in wet. Because most these species spend much of their time near bodies of water, some species prefer locations with rocks or mud. Many shorebirds display migratory patterns and often migrate before breeding season and these behaviors explain the long wing lengths observed in species, and can also account for the efficient metabolisms that give the birds energy during long migrations. The majority of species eat small invertebrates picked out of mud or exposed soil, different lengths of bills enable different species to feed in the same habitat, particularly on the coast, without direct competition for food. Many waders have sensitive nerve endings at the end of their bills which enable them to prey items hidden in mud or soft soil. Some larger species, particularly adapted to drier habitats will take larger prey including insects. Shorebirds, like other animals, exhibit phenotypic differences between males and females, also known as sexual dimorphism. In shorebirds, various sexual dimorphisms are seen, including, but not limited to, size, color, in polygynous species, where one male individual mates with multiple female partners over his lifetime, dimorphisms tend to be more diverse. The suborder of Charadrii displays the widest range of sexual dimorphisms seen in the Charadriiformes order, however, cases of sexual monomorphism, where there are no distinguishing physical features besides external genitalia, are also seen in this order. One of the biggest factors that leads to the development of sexual dimorphism in shorebirds is sexual selection, males with ideal characteristics favored by females are more likely to reproduce and pass on their genetic information to their offspring better than the males who lack such characteristics. Mentioned earlier, male shorebirds are typically larger in size compared to their female counterparts, competition between males tends to lead to sexual selection toward larger males and as a result, an increase in dimorphism. Bigger males tend to have access to female mates because their larger size aids them in defeating other competitors
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Duck
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Duck is the common name for a large number of species in the waterfowl family Anatidae, which also includes swans and geese. The ducks are divided among several subfamilies in the family Anatidae, they do not represent a group but a form taxon, since swans. Ducks are mostly birds, mostly smaller than the swans and geese. Ducks are sometimes confused with several types of unrelated water birds with similar forms, such as loons or divers, grebes, gallinules and this word replaced Old English ened/ænid duck, possibly to avoid confusion with other Old English words, like ende end with similar forms. Other Germanic languages still have similar words for duck, for example, Dutch eend duck, the word ened/ænid was inherited from Proto-Indo-European, compare, Latin anas duck, Lithuanian ántis duck, Ancient Greek nēssa/nētta duck, and Sanskrit ātí water bird, among others. A duckling is a duck in downy plumage or baby duck. A male duck is called a drake and the female is called a duck, the overall body plan of ducks is elongated and broad, and the ducks are also relatively long-necked, albeit not as long-necked as the geese and swans. The body shape of diving ducks varies somewhat from this in being more rounded, the bill is usually broad and contains serrated lamellae, which are particularly well defined in the filter-feeding species. In the case of some fishing species the bill is long, the scaled legs are strong and well developed, and generally set far back on the body, more so in the highly aquatic species. The wings are strong and are generally short and pointed. Three species of duck are almost flightless, however. Many species of duck are temporarily flightless while moulting, they seek out protected habitat with good food supplies during this period, the drakes of northern species often have extravagant plumage, but that is moulted in summer to give a more female-like appearance, the eclipse plumage. The plumage of birds generally resembles that of the female. Over the course of evolution, female ducks have evolved to have a corkscrew shaped vagina to prevent rape, Ducks exploit a variety of food sources such as grasses, aquatic plants, fish, insects, small amphibians, worms, and small molluscs. Dabbling ducks feed on the surface of water or on land, along the edge of the beak there is a comb-like structure called a pecten. This strains the water squirting from the side of the beak, the pecten is also used to preen feathers and to hold slippery food items. Diving ducks and sea ducks forage deep underwater, to be able to submerge more easily, the diving ducks are heavier than dabbling ducks, and therefore have more difficulty taking off to fly. A few specialized species such as the mergansers are adapted to catch, to avoid injury when digging into sediment it has no cere, but the nostrils come out through hard horn
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Goose
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Geese are waterfowl belonging to the tribe Anserini of the family Anatidae. This tribe comprises the genera Anser, Branta and Chen, some other birds, mostly related to the shelducks, have goose as part of their names. More distantly related members of the family Anatidae are swans, most of which are larger than true geese, and ducks, the word goose is a direct descendent of Proto-Indo-European root, *ghans-. In Germanic languages, the root gave Old English gōs with the plural gēs and gandres, Frisian goes, gies and guoske, New High German Gans, Gänse, and Ganter, and Old Norse gās. The term goose applies to the female in particular, while applies to the male in particular. Young birds before fledging are called goslings, the collective noun for a group of geese on the ground is a gaggle, when in flight, they are called a skein, a team, or a wedge, when flying close together, they are called a plump. The three living genera of true geese are, Anser, grey geese, including the goose, and domestic geese, Chen, white geese. Either these or, more probably, the goose-like Coscoroba swan is the closest living relative of the true geese, the aptly named Anser atavus from some 12 million years ago had even more plesiomorphies in common with swans. In addition, some birds are known from subfossil remains found on the Hawaiian Islands. Geese are monogamous, living in permanent pairs throughout the year, however, unlike most other permanently monogamous animals, paired geese are more dominant and feed more, two factors that result in more young. Some mainly Southern Hemisphere birds are called geese, most of which belong to the shelduck subfamily Tadorninae, the blue-winged goose, Cyanochen cyanopterus, and the Cape Barren goose, Cereopsis novaehollandiae, have disputed affinities. They belong to separate ancient lineages that may ally either to the Tadorninae, Anserinae, the three species of small waterfowl in the genus Nettapus are named pygmy geese. They seem to represent another ancient lineage, with affinities to the Cape Barren goose or the spur-winged goose. A genus of prehistorically extinct seaducks, Chendytes, is sometimes called diving-geese due to their large size, the unusual magpie goose is in a family of its own, the Anseranatidae. The northern gannet, a seabird, is known as the Solan goose, although it is a bird unrelated to the true geese. Well-known sayings about geese include, To have a gander is to something in detail. Whats sauce for the goose is sauce for the means that what is appropriate treatment for one person is equally appropriate for someone else. Saying that someones goose is cooked means that they have suffered, or are about to suffer, a wild goose chase is a useless, futile waste of time and effort
