The lower Havel River region (Brandenburg, Germany): A 230-Year-Long Historical 
Map Record Indicates a Decrease in Surface Water Areas and Groundwater Levels

Zielhofer, Christoph; Schmidt, Johanne; Reiche, Niklas; Tautenhahn, Marie; Ballasus, Helen; Burkart, Michael; Linstädter, Anja; Dietze, Elisabeth; Kaiser, K.; Mehler, Natascha

doi:10.3390/w14030480

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The lower Havel River region (Brandenburg, Germany): A 230-Year-Long Historical Map Record Indicates a Decrease in Surface Water Areas and Groundwater Levels

Authors

Zielhofer, Christoph

Schmidt, Johanne

Reiche, Niklas

Tautenhahn, Marie

Ballasus, Helen

Burkart, Michael

Linstädter, Anja

/persons/resource/edietze

Dietze, Elisabeth
3.2 Organic Geochemistry, 3.0 Geochemistry, Departments, GFZ Publication Database, Deutsches GeoForschungsZentrum;

/persons/resource/kaiserk

Kaiser, K.
Staff Scientific Executive Board, GFZ Publication Database, Deutsches GeoForschungsZentrum;

Mehler, Natascha

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Citation

Zielhofer, C., Schmidt, J., Reiche, N., Tautenhahn, M., Ballasus, H., Burkart, M., Linstädter, A., Dietze, E., Kaiser, K., Mehler, N. (2022): The lower Havel River region (Brandenburg, Germany): A 230-Year-Long Historical Map Record Indicates a Decrease in Surface Water Areas and Groundwater Levels. - Water, 14, 3, 480.
https://doi.org/10.3390/w14030480

Cite as: https://gfzpublic.gfz-potsdam.de/pubman/item/item_5009883

Abstract

Instrumental data show that the groundwater and lake levels in Northeast Germany have decreased over the past decades, and this process has accelerated over the past few years. In addition to global warming, the direct influence of humans on the local water balance is suspected to be the cause. Since the instrumental data usually go back only a few decades, little is known about the multidecadal to centennial-scale trend, which also takes long-term climate variation and the long-term influence by humans on the water balance into account. This study aims to quantitatively reconstruct the surface water areas in the Lower Havel Inner Delta and of adjacent Lake Gülpe in Brandenburg. The analysis includes the calculation of surface water areas from historical and modern maps from 1797 to 2020. The major finding is that surface water areas have decreased by approximately 30% since the pre-industrial period, with the decline being continuous. Our data show that the comprehensive measures in Lower Havel hydro-engineering correspond with groundwater lowering that started before recent global warming. Further, large-scale melioration measures with increasing water demands in the upstream wetlands beginning from the 1960s to the 1980s may have amplified the decline in downstream surface water areas.