Zuiderzee Works Zuiderzee Works The Zuiderzee Works () is a man-made system of dams and dikes, land reclamation and water drainage work, in total the largest hydraulic engineering project undertaken by the Netherlands during the twentieth century. The project involved the damming of the Zuiderzee, a large, shallow inlet of the North Sea, and the reclamation of land in the newly enclosed water using polders. Its main purposes are to improve flood protection and create additional land for agriculture. The American Society of Civil Engineers declared these works, together with the Delta Works in the South-West of the Netherlands, as among the
Coastline of the North Sea similar action to that which created the fjords and firths. The glaciers in these places affected the land to an even greater extent, so that large areas were scraped away. The coastal brim ("Strandflaten"), which is found especially in southern Norway, is a gently sloping lowland area between the sea and the mountains. It consists of plates of rock platforms, and often extends for kilometres, reaching under the sea, at a depth of only a few metres. The shallow-water coasts of the southern and eastern coast up to Denmark were formed by ice age activity, but their particular shape is