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
Environmental issues in the Niger Delta Niger Delta. Vegetation in the Niger River Delta consists of extensive mangrove forests, brackish swamp forests, and rainforests. The large expanses of mangrove forests are estimated to cover approximately 5,000 to 8,580 km² of land. Mangroves remain very important to the indigenous people of Nigeria as well as to the various organisms that inhabit these ecosystems. Human impact from poor land management upstream coupled with the constant pollution of petroleum has caused five to ten percent of these mangrove forests to disappear. The volatile, quickly penetrating, and viscous properties of petroleum have wiped out large areas of vegetation. When spills