Verkehrswege und ihre Bedeutung für die Kulturlandschaft

124 K .A.H.W. Leender s
In years with a good peat production, one canal-system could transport 70 000
cubic metres of peat to the export harbour .
Since canals that were long out of use left their marks in the landscape, we tried
to indentify the factors that governed the way in which these canals were preserved
over the centuries . A main factor is their later importance for the drainage of
the region . A canal without drainage function could be filled up without creating
any problems . A second factor is the space of time between the end of the turf
transport and the reclamation of the dug out area for agricultural use . During a
long interval the dug out area became a wilderness without property-boundaries,
where old traces strongly tended to disappear . When reclamation followed directly
on the peat extraction, the infrastructure of the peat-industry (i .e . the canals,
canalside-roads and the division in plots) was -frozen- into the new agricultural
landscape . The third factor is the very slow alteration by agricultural
processes of these -frozen- elements . In the low-laying parts of the studied area
an important fourth factor was active : flooding by the sea with the associated
effects of the tides . Nearly all the old landscape was ereased during the century or
longer that such circumstances might persist . The combined action led to a very
varying way of conservation of the old canals in this region .
The peat canals are wittnesses from an industry that changed the landscape
profoundly and that stimulated the colonization of the region . Theirs remnants
carry information about the history of the region and they are often still an
important visual dominating element on the landscape .
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