Land reclamation

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File:Perth1964.jpg
Reclaiming in Mounts Bay, Perth, Australia in 1964
File:Boeing 747-467, Cathay Pacific Airways JP10362.jpg
The former airport of Hong Kong (pictured) and the current airport of Hong Kong were built on reclaimed land.
File:Xinghai Square .jpg
The largest city square in the world, the Xinghai Square of Dalian, China, was created entirely through land reclamation.

Land reclamation, often known as reclamation, and also known as land fill (not to be confused with a waste landfill), is the process of creating new land from oceans, seas, riverbeds or lake beds. The land reclaimed is known as reclamation ground, reclaimed land, or land fill.

History

In ancient Egypt, the rulers of the Twelfth Dynasty (c. 2000–1800 BC) undertook a far-sighted land reclamation scheme to increase agricultural output. They constructed levees and canals to connect the Faiyum with the Bahr Yussef waterway, diverting water that would have flowed into Lake Moeris and causing gradual evaporation around the lake's edges, creating new farmland from the reclaimed land.<ref name=ShawIan>Template:Cite book</ref> A similar land reclamation system using dams and drainage canals was used in the Greek Copaic Basin during the Middle Helladic Period (c. 1900–1600 BC).<ref name=ShawIan /> Another early large-scale project was the Beemster Polder in the Netherlands, adding Template:Convert of land in 1612. In Hong Kong, the Praya Reclamation Scheme added Template:Convert of land in 1890 during the second phase of construction. It was one of the most ambitious projects undertaken during the era of colonial Hong Kong.<ref name="Bard">Bard, Solomon. [2002] (2002). Voices from the Past: Hong Kong 1842–1918. HK University press. Template:ISBN</ref> Some 20% of land in the Tokyo Bay area has been reclaimed,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> most notably Odaiba artificial island. The city of Rio de Janeiro was largely built on reclaimed land, as was Wellington, New Zealand.

Methods

Land reclamation can be achieved by a number of different methods. The simplest method involves filling the area with large amounts of heavy rock and/or cement, then filling with clay and dirt until the desired height is reached. The process is called "infilling"<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> and the material used to fill the space is generally called "infill".<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Draining of submerged wetlands is often used to reclaim land for agricultural use. Deep cement mixing is used typically in situations in which the material displaced by either dredging or draining may be contaminated and hence needs to be contained. Land dredging is also another method of land reclamation. It is the removal of sediments and debris from the bottom of a body of water. It is commonly used for maintaining reclaimed land masses as sedimentation, a natural process, fills channels and harbors.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Notable instances

File:East Coast Park Panorama, Mar 06.jpg
East Coast Park in Singapore was built on reclaimed land with a human-made beach.
File:Satellite image of Flevopolder, Netherlands (5.48E 52.43N).png
The Flevopolder in the Netherlands, reclaimed from the IJsselmeer, is the largest reclaimed artificial island in the world.
File:View from Nokia Beirut.jpg
Land Reclamation in the Beirut Central District
File:Fontvieille harbour.JPG
The whole district of Fontvieille, Monaco was reclaimed from the sea

Africa

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Asia

  • Parts of the coastlines of mainland China, Hong Kong, North Korea and South Korea. It is estimated that nearly 65% of tidal flats around the Yellow Sea have been reclaimed.<ref>Murray N. J., Clemens R. S., Phinn S. R., Possingham H. P. & Fuller R. A. (2014) Tracking the rapid loss of tidal wetlands in the Yellow Sea. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 12, 267–72 Template:Doi</ref>

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  • Inland lowlands in the Yangtze valley, including the areas of important cities like Wuhan.<ref>Brian Lander. State Management of River Dikes in Early China: New Sources on the Environmental History of the Central Yangzi Region . T'oung Pao 100.4-5 (2014): 325–362; Mira Mihelich, “Polders and Politics of Land Reclamation in Southeast China during the Northern Sung” (Ph.D. dissertation, Cornell Univ., 1979); Peter Perdue, Exhausting the Earth: State and Peasant in Hunan 1500–1850 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Council on East Asian Studies, 1987); Mei Li 梅莉, Zhang Guoxiong 張國雄, and Yan Changgui 晏昌貴, Lianghu pingyuan kaifa tanyuan 兩湖平原開發探源 (Nanchang: Jiangxi jiaoyu chubanshe, 1995); Shiba Yoshinobu, “Environment versus Water Control: The Case of the Southern Hangzhou Bay Area from the Mid-Tang Through the Qing,” in Sediments of Time: Environment and Society in Chinese History, ed. Mark Elvin and Ts'ui-jung Liu (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 135–64</ref>
  • Nanhui New City in Shanghai
  • Haikou Bay, Hainan Province, where the west side of Haidian Island is being extended, and off the coast of Haikou, where new land for a marina is being created.
  • The Cotai area of Macau, where many casinos are located.
  • Parts of Shekou in Shenzhen, Guangdong province.

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  • Forest City, an integrated residential and tourism district in Johor, Malaysia, was controversial due to its reclamation of wetlands of international importance under the Ramsar Convention in a designated Environmentally Sensitive Area (ESA) Rank 1 area.

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File:Newly-reclaimed foreshore areas in Coron, Palawan, Philippines as seen from Mt. Tapyas.jpg
Reclaimed coastal area in Coron, Palawan, Philippines. The bare, brown-colored reclaimed land stands out from the original vegetated coastside, as seen from atop Mt. Tapyas.

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  • The city-state of Singapore, where land is in short supply, is also famous for its efforts on land reclamation.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
  • The size of Singapore has increased by 25% from 581.5 square kilometres in 1960 to 725.7 in 2019. This is part of the nation's plans to create more homes and common spaces in the land-scarce city-state. Upcoming projects include the Long Island project, involving the reclamation of three tracts of land (expected to span around 800 ha), which is set at a higher level to protect against rising sea levels. It will also enclose a body of water, acting as a reservoir, strengthening the nation's water resilience. Detailed technical studies are currently under way, lasting five years. This project would take a few decades to plan and implement.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

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Europe

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  • The southwestern residential area in Brest.

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  • Paljassaare, Tallinn is a peninsula consisting of two former islands connected to the mainland during the 20th century
  • Port of Tallinn is largely built on land reclaimed over centuries.

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  • Helsinki (of which the major part of the city center is built on reclaimed land).

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  • Parts of Bryggen, Bergen including the Dreggekaien cruise terminal and other ship services.

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  • Majority of left-bank and some right-bank residential areas of Kyiv were built on a reclaimed fens and floodplains of the Dnieper river.

North America

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  • Much of Bermuda's St David's Island are reclaimed; the island, the site of Bermuda's international airport, was formerly several smaller islands.

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Oceania

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  • My Suva park, a recreation park for the Greater Suva area.

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  • Considerable areas of Dunedin, New Zealand, including the "Southern Endowment", stretching from the central city to the southeastern suburbs along the shore of Otago Harbour.
  • Prior to the Napier earthquake of 1931, significant reclamation of the then-lagoon was undertaken in areas of Napier South and Ahuriri. There were also minor reclamation works undertaken after 1931 on the new low-lying lands brought up by the earthquake.
  • Areas around Wellington and Auckland's harbours and airports have also been reclaimed.

South America

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  • Parts of Montevideo, Rambla Sur and several projects still going on in Montevideo's Bay.

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Agriculture

File:Bingzhou Peninsula area - land reclamation - DSCF9204.JPG
Land reclamation in progress in Bingzhou (丙州) Peninsula (formerly, island) of the Dongzui Bay (东咀港). Tong'an District, Xiamen, China

Agriculture was a driver of land reclamation before industrialisation.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> In South China, farmers reclaimed paddy fields by enclosing an area with a stone wall on the sea shore near a river mouth or river delta. The species of rice that are grown on these grounds are more salt tolerant. Another use of such enclosed land is the creation of fish ponds. It is commonly seen on the Pearl River Delta and Hong Kong. These reclaimed areas also attract species of migrating birds.

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.

Even in the post-industrial age, there have been land reclamation projects intended for increasing available agricultural land. For example, the village of Ogata in Akita, Japan, was established on land reclaimed from Lake Hachirōgata (Japan's second largest lake at the time) starting in 1957. By 1977, the amount of land reclaimed totalled Template:Convert.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Artificial islands

Artificial islands are an example of land reclamation. Creating an artificial island is an expensive and risky undertaking. It is often considered in places with high population density and a scarcity of flat land. 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 (although there is yet no real "scarcity of land" in Dubai), as well as the Flevopolder in the Netherlands which is the largest artificial island in the world.

Beach restoration

Template:Main 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. An example of this is the city of Mumbai.<ref name="Mumbai"/>

Landfill

As human overcrowding of developed areas intensified during the 20th century, it has become important to develop land re-use strategies for completed landfills. Some of the most common usages are for parks, golf courses and other sports fields. Increasingly, however, office buildings and industrial uses are made on a completed landfill. In these latter uses, methane capture is customarily carried out to minimize explosive hazard within the building.

An example of a Class A office building constructed over a landfill is the Dakin Building at Sierra Point, Brisbane, California. The underlying fill was deposited from 1965 to 1985, mostly consisting of construction debris from San Francisco and some municipal wastes. Aerial photographs prior to 1965 show this area to be tidelands of the San Francisco Bay. A clay cap was constructed over the debris prior to building approval.<ref>Paul B. Awosika and Marc Papineau, Phase One Environmental Site Assessment, 7000 Marina Boulevard, Brisbane, California, prepared for Argentum International by Certified. Engineering & Testing Company, Boston, Massachusetts, July 15, 1993</ref>

A notable example is Sydney Olympic Park, the primary venue for the 2000 Summer Olympic Games, which was built atop an industrial wasteland that included landfills.

Another strategy for landfill is the incineration of landfill trash at high temperature via the plasma-arc gasification process, which is currently used at two facilities in Japan, and was proposed to be used at a facility in St. Lucie County, Florida.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> The planned facility in Florida was later canceled.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Environmental impact

File:Bay area fill.jpg
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. Reclamation projects have strong negative impacts on coastal populations, although some species can take advantage of the newly created area.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> A 2022 global analysis estimated that 39% of losses (approximately Template:Convert) and 14% of gains (approximately Template:Convert) of tidal wetlands (mangroves, tidal flats, and tidal marshes) between 1999 and 2019 were due to direct human activities, including conversion to aquaculture, agriculture, plantations, coastal developments and other physical structures.<ref name="Murray et al. 2022">Template:Cite journal</ref>

Environmental legislation

File:Hong Kong Reclamation Map.png
A map of reclaimed land (grey area) in Hong Kong. Many of the urban areas of Hong Kong are on reclaimed land.

The State of California created a state commission, the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission, in 1965 to protect San Francisco Bay and regulate development near its shores. The commission was created in response to growing concern over the shrinking size of the bay.

Hong Kong legislators passed the Protection of the Harbour Ordinance, proposed by the Society for Protection of the Harbour, in 1997 in an effort to safeguard the increasingly threatened Victoria Harbour against encroaching land development.<ref name="bill">Template:Cite news</ref> Several large reclamation schemes at Green Island, West Kowloon, and Kowloon Bay were subsequently shelved, and others reduced in size.

Dangers

Reclaimed land is highly susceptible to soil liquefaction during earthquakes,<ref name=abag>Template:Cite web</ref> which can amplify the amount of damage that occurs to buildings and infrastructure. Subsidence is another issue, both from soil compaction on filled land, and also when wetlands are enclosed by levees and drained to create polders. Drained marshes will eventually sink below the surrounding water level, increasing the danger from flooding.

Land amounts added

Asia

Country or territory Notes
Template:Flag 76.3% of original size of Template:Convert (1931–2007). Template:Citation needed<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
Template:Flag About Template:Convert in total and has Template:Convert potential (8% of total area) up to Template:Convert depth in the territorial sea area.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
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Template:Convert of land was reclaimed up to 2013. Praya Reclamation Scheme began in the late 1860s and consisted of two stages totaling Template:Convert.<ref name="Bard" /> 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,<ref name="court">Template:Cite news</ref> as well as the collusion of the Hong Kong Government with the real estate developers in the territory.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

In addition, as the city expanded, new towns in different decades were mostly built on reclaimed land, such as Kwun Tong, Sha Tin-Ma On Shan, Tai Po, Tseung Kwan O, Tuen Mun, and West Kowloon.

Template:Flag Mumbai – An archipelago of originally seven separate islands were joined by land reclamation over a span of five centuries. This was done to develop Mumbai as a harbour city.
Template:Flag JakartaGiant Sea Wall Jakarta is part of a massive coastal development project at Jakarta Bay.
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Template:Flag 170% of the original size or Template:Convert<ref>gov.mo</ref>
Template:Flag In the 1980s, North Korea commenced a "find new land" program to reclaim 300,000 hectares of land (3,000 km2 or 1,160 mi2) in order to expand the country's supply of arable land. The project was unsuccessful and only reclaimed 20,000 hectares (200 km2 or 70 mi2) by the time it was cancelled after the death of Kim Il-sung in 1994. It also contributed to the collapse of the North Korean economy and the subsequent famine in the 1990s. Land reclamation efforts resumed in the 2010s under Kim Jong-un with more success. North Korea constructed artificial islands in the Yellow Sea containing Korean People's Army bases, possibly inspired by Chinese artificial islands in the South China Sea and possibly as bases for long-range ballistic missiles.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
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Additional 626 hectares along the eastern coast of Manila Bay created in the 1990s<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> to the 88-hectare Cultural Center of the Philippines Complex. The shore road of Manila (Roxas Boulevard) is actually reclaimed land, as well as its extension road to Cavite (Manila-Cavite Expressway / Aguinaldo Boulevard).
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20 percent of the original size or Template:Convert. Template:As of, plans for Template:Convert more are to go ahead,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> even though disputes persist with Malaysia over Singapore's extensive land reclamation works.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Parts of Changi Airport are also on reclaimed land.

Template:Flag As of 2006, 38 percent or Template:Convert of coastal wetlands reclaimed, including Template:Convert at Saemangeum. Songdo International Business district, the largest private development in history, is a large-scale reclamation project built entirely on tidal mudflats.
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Dubai has a total of four reclaimed islands (the Palm Jumeirah, Jebal Ali, The Burj al Arab Island, and The World Islands), with a fifth under construction (the Palm Deira). There are several human-made islands in Abu Dhabi, such as Yas Island and Al Lulu Island.

Europe

Country Notes
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Template:Convert out of Template:Convert, or one fifth of Monaco comes from land taken from the sea, mainly in the neighborhoods of Fontvieille, La Condamine, and Larvotto/Bas Moulins.

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About Template:Frac (almost 17%) of the entire country, or about Template:Convert in total, has been reclaimed from the sea, lakes, marshes and swamps. The province of Flevoland has almost completely been reclaimed from the Zuiderzee.

Other countries

Country Notes
Template:Flag Significant areas of land totaling several hundred hectares have been reclaimed along the harbourfronts of Auckland, Dunedin, and Wellington. In Dunedin – which in its early days was nicknamed "Mudedin" – around Template:Convert, 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. The international airports serving Auckland and Wellington have had significant reclamation for runway use.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Wellington City Council — Off to a flying start with Wellington Airport</ref>
Template:Flag Eko Atlantic,<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Lagos – 25 square kilometers

List of reclaimed land by country and territory

Country or territory Reclaimed land
(km2)
Notes
Template:Flag 13,500+ Land reclamation in China
Template:Flag 7,000 Flevoland, de Beemster, Afsluitdijk
Land reclamation in the Netherlands
Template:Flag 1,550
Template:Flag 1,000+ Artificial islands of the United States
Template:Flag 500+
Template:Flag 470 Land reclamation in the United Arab Emirates
Template:Flag 410
Template:Flag 135 Land reclamation in Singapore
Template:Flag 110
Template:Flag 67 Land reclamation in Hong Kong
Template:Flag 35
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Template:Flag 9.26 Cebu South Road Properties Central Business District and
Land reclamation in Metro Manila
Template:Flag 3.3 Reclamation of Wellington Harbour<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Template:Flag 2.33 Colombo International Financial City
Template:Flag 1.94 Cape Town Foreshore<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Template:Flag 0.62 Velana International Airport<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Template:Flag 0.41 Land reclamation in Monaco

See also

Notes

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References

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