Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Most of the works analyzed for this chapter deal with the place held by water in
(Blackbourn) over time.
33
Another trend focuses on rivers as
source of hazards and on the impact of major
“
conquest of nature
”
oods. Some research projects have
been funded in order to apply historical knowledge to current and future
ood-risk
management. They can reveal how the social and political processes set up after
ood events already contained measures to reduce vulnerability of
ood-threatened
areas. In south-west Germany for instance, after an extreme
ood in the Neckar
River catchment
in October 1824, a letter
from the Royal Government of
W
rttemberg stated that houses that were destroyed or severely damaged should not
be rebuilt on their original
ü
ood-exposed sites but elsewhere, on higher ground
and further away from the river, where risk of repeated
ooding was lower.
34
Vulnerability can also be historically constructed in an unequal way. During the
nineteenth century, in the outskirts of London, thousands of new homes and hun-
dreds of factories supplanted the marshes of the Lower Lea that once absorbed
owed into these
former wetlands. In 1888, 1897, 1904, and 1928 the poorest people in West Ham,
who lived in the suburb
oods. They increased the potential for damage when water
'
s oldest wetland neighborhoods, suffered as water rushed
into their homes.
35
From events that occurred in the last century, as well as from small-scale, almost
microscopic, changes that anyone can notice during regular visits to the same
waterscape, it is possible to state that both water-related ecosystems and human
societies are dynamic forces rather than static entities clashing with one another.
History and geography have thus much to teach environmental managers and
policy-makers. In Europe, the EU
s Water Framework Directive requires stream
restoration, to ensure that a good ecological status is achieved in all water bodies in
the EU by 2015. In Sweden, the
'
rst step before restoration necessitates knowledge
about the history of timber
oating and its physical effects on river channels.
Environmental history can work besides natural science, in order to use historical
archives providing data about
oatway structures, their purposes, their localizations
and their effectives. Historians are also useful to raise the question of cultural
remnants of the timber
ected the
socioeconomic reality at that time and the need for wages for the working people
along the rivers in northern Sweden. For Erik T
oating age (1850s
1980s). Stone piers re
-
one important part of
restoration work should be to consider both ecological and cultural aspects
ö
rnlund,
“
.
36
”
33
Blackbourn (
2006
).
34
Seidel et al. (
2011
).
35
Several water-related cases can be found in Massard-Guilbaud and Rodger (
2011
). Example
from Clifford (
2011
).
36
Erik T
ö
rnlund,
“
From Natural to Modi
ed Rivers and Back? Timber Floating in Northern
Sweden in 1850
s Ecological Stream
Restoration
”
,inThinking through the Environment. Green Approaches to Global History, op. cit.,
241
-
267. About restoration, see Hall (
2005
).
-
1980 and the Use of Historical Knowledge in Today
'
