Land reclamation is either of two distinct practices. One involves creating new land from sea or riverbeds, the other refers to restoring an area to a more natural state (such as after
pollution,
deforestation or
salination) have made it unusable, though its the former definition for which the phrase is most widely used.
Creating new land
For habitation or agriculture
Land reclamation can be the creation of new land where there was once water. Notable examples in the West include parts of
New Orleans;
Washington, D.C. (which is partially built on land that was once
swamp);
Mexico City (which is situated at the former site of
Lake Texcoco);
Helsinki (of which the major part of the city center is built on reclaimed land); the
Cape Town foreshore; the
Chicago shoreline; the
Manila Bay shoreline;
Back Bay, Boston, Massachusetts;
Battery Park City,
Manhattan; the port of
Zeebrugge in
Belgium; the southwestern residential area in
Brest, Belarus, the
polders of the
Netherlands; and the
Toronto Islands,
Leslie Street Spit, and the
waterfront in
Toronto. In the Far East, Japan, the southern
Chinese cities of
Hong Kong,
Shenzhen and
Macau, the
Philippine capital
Manila, and the
city-state of
Singapore, where land is in short supply, are also famous for their efforts on land reclamation. One of the earliest and famous project was the
Praya Reclamation Scheme, which added 50 to of land in 1890 during the second phase of construction. It was one of the most ambitious projects ever taken during the
Colonial Hong Kong era.
[Bard, Solomon. [2002] (2002). Voices from the Past: Hong Kong 1842-1918. HK University press. ISBN 9622095747] Some 20% of land in the
Tokyo Bay area has been reclaimed.
Monaco and the British territory of
Gibraltar are also expanding due to land reclamation. The city of
Rio de Janeiro was largely built on reclaimed land.
Artificial islands are an example of land reclamation. Creating an artificial island is an expensive and risky undertaking. It is often considered in places that are densely populated and flat land is scarce.
Kansai International Airport (in
Osaka) and
Hong Kong International Airport are examples where this process was deemed necessary. The
Palm Islands,
The World and hotel
Burj al-Arab off
Dubai in the
United Arab Emirates are other examples of artificial islands.
A related practice is the
draining of swampy or seasonally submerged
wetlands to convert them to
farmland. While this does not create new land exactly, it allows commercially productive use of land that would otherwise be restricted to
wildlife habitat. It is also an important method of
mosquito control.
For beach restoration
Beach rebuilding is the process of repairing
beaches using materials such as
sand or
mud from inland. This can be used to build up beaches suffering from
beach starvation or erosion from
longshore drift. It stops the movement of the original beach material through longshore drift and retains a natural look to the beach. Although it is not a long-lasting solution, it is cheap compared to other types of
coastal defences.
Environmental impact
Parts (highlighted in brown) of the
San Francisco Bay were reclaimed from wetlands for urban use.
Draining wetlands for ploughing, for example, is a form of
habitat destruction. In some parts of the world, new reclamation projects are restricted or no longer allowed, due to
environmental protection laws.
Environmental legislation
Hong Kong legislators passed the
Protection of the Harbour Ordinance in 1996 in an effort to safeguard the increasingly as threatened
Victoria Harbour against encroaching land development.
Land amounts added
Land reclamation in Hong Kong: Grey (built), Red (proposed or under development). Note that most of the urban area (not shown in map) of Hong Kong is on the reclaimed land.
- Netherlands - about 1/5 land from land reclamation or about 7,000 km².
- South Korea - As of 2006, 38 percent or 1,550 km² of coastal wetlands reclaimed.
- Singapore - 20% of the original size or 135 km² as of 2003, plans for 99 km² more.
Praya Reclamation Scheme began in the late 1860s that consisted of two stage totaling 50 to 60+ acres.
[Jason Wordie, , April 18, 1999] Hong Kong Disneyland,
Hong Kong International Airport, and its predecessor,
Kai Tak Airport, were all built on reclaimed land. In addition, much reclamation has taken place in prime locations on the waterfront on both sides of
Victoria Harbour. This has raised
environmental issues of the protection of the harbour which was once the source of prosperity of Hong Kong, traffic congestion in the
Central district,
as well as the collusion of the Hong Kong Government with the
real estate developers in the territory.
- Macau - 170% of the original size or 17 km²
- Tokyo Bay, Japan - 249 km².
- Kobe, Japan - 23 km² (1995).
- Bahrain - 76.3% of original size of 410 km2(1931-2007).
- New Zealand - significant areas of land totalling several hundred hectares have been reclaimed along the harbourfront of Auckland, Wellington and Dunedin. In Dunedin - which in its early days was nicknamed "Mudedin" - around 2.5 km², including much of the inner city and suburbs of Dunedin North, South Dunedin and Andersons Bay is reclaimed from the Otago Harbour, and a similar area in the suburbs of St Clair and St Kilda is reclaimed swampland.
Repairing damaged land
Land reclamation or
Land rehabilitation is also the process of cleaning up a site that has sustained
environmental degradation, such as those by natural cause (desertification, ...) and those caused by human activity (
strip mining, ...). Land reclamation is often done in these sites to allow for some form of human use (such as a
housing development) or to restore that area back to its natural state as a wildlife habitat home.
Reclaiming desert land
Land reclamation in deserts involves
- setting-up reliable water provisioning (eg by digging wells or placing long-distance water pipes)
- stabilizing and fixating the soil
Stabilizing and fixating the soil is usually done in several phases.
The first phase is fixating the soil to such extent that dune movement is ceased. This is done by grasses, and plants providing wind protection such as
shelterbelts,
windbreaks and
woodlots. Shelterbelts are wind protections composed of rows of trees, arranged perpendicular to the prevailing wind, while woodlots are more extensive areas of woodland.
The second phase involves improving/enriching the soil by planting nitrogen-fixating plants and using the soil immediately to grow crops.
Nitrogen fixating plants used include
clover, yellow mustard, beans, ... and food crops include
wheat,
barley,
beans,
peas,
sweet potatoes,
date,
olives,
limes,
figs,
apricot,
guave,
tomato, certain
herbs, ... Regardless of the cover crop used, the crops (not including any trees) are each year harvested and/or plowed into the soil (eg with clover, ...); in addition a each year the plots are used for a another type of crop (known as
crop rotation) to prevent depleting the soil on specific trace elements.
A recent development is the
Seawater Greenhouse and Seawater Forest. This proposal is to construct these devices on coastal deserts in order to create freshwater and grow food
A similar approach is the Desert Rose concept
These approaches are of widespread applicability, since the relative costs of pumping large quantities of seawater inland are low.
Another related concept is ADRECS - a proposed system for rapidly delivering soil stabilisation and re forestation techniques coupled with renewable energy generation.
See also
- Polder - low lying land reclaimed from a lake or sea
