{"id":15788,"date":"2015-03-04T19:35:50","date_gmt":"2015-03-05T00:35:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.howderfamily.com\/blog\/?p=15788"},"modified":"2024-12-22T09:36:43","modified_gmt":"2024-12-22T14:36:43","slug":"lake-neusiedl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.howderfamily.com\/blog\/lake-neusiedl\/","title":{"rendered":"Lake Neusiedl"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

All that talk of endorheic basins in County Divided<\/a> got me wondering about similar conditions in other unexpected places. It seemed farfetched to find an area lacking natural drainage to the sea on the Great Plains of North America. So did a similar condition in central Europe. I searched around and the largest place in that general vicinity appeared to be Lake Neusiedl on the border between Austria and Hungary (map<\/a>), where it was called Neusiedler See in German and Fert? in Hungarian.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Lake Neusiedl<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"Neusiedler<\/a>
Neusiedler See<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The basin wasn’t huge<\/a> although I took what I could get for purposes of this topic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The lake covers 315 km\u00b2, of which 240 km\u00b2 is on the Austrian side and 75 km\u00b2 on the Hungarian side. The lake’s drainage basin has an area of about 1,120 km\u00b2. From north to south, the lake is about 36 km long, and it is between 6 km and 12 km wide from east to west. On average, the lake’s surface is 115.45 m above the Adriatic Sea and the lake is no more than 1.8 m deep.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

To put that in perspective, the entire drainage basin was about six times the size of Washington, DC or about one-third the size of Rhode Island. The Lake itself was somewhere about twice the size of Washington, DC. Nonetheless, although lacking in size, Lake Neusiedl packed a lot of beauty into its enclosed basin and a national park<\/a> that protected it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“This region around the steppe lake, with over 2000 hours of sunshine annually, is one of the most popular holiday areas in Austria… With its unique flora and fauna, the transborder National Park offers rare plant and bird species as well as Asinara White donkeys, Grey Hungarian cattle and Mangalitza pigs, the appropriate protection and a natural habitat.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

I learned soon enough that Neusiedl wasn’t completely endorheic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Einserkanal \/ Hans\u00e1gi-focsatorna<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"Andau...<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A basin without a natural outlet had one major drawback: it could fill up, overflow and flood adjacent countryside. That natural cycle happened many times over the centuries. Peasants simply dealt with it, dried off and went about their normal lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Officials finally tired of intermittent flooding at the end of the Nineteenth Century during a time when the Empire of Austria and the Kingdom of Hungary were united under the banner of the Austria-Hungary Empire. Thus came the construction of the Einserkanal (German) \/ Hans\u00e1gi-focsatorna (Hungarian)<\/a> in 1895, a canal “approximately 30 km long and 4.8 m deep on average and 7-15 m wide.” It served like an overflow drain on a bathtub. The canal safely diverted excess water to the Danube River whenever the basin hit a certain capacity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nonetheless, the vast preponderance of outflow from Lake Neusiedl happened because of natural evaporation. Perhaps only 10%<\/a> of outflow went through the artificial channel of the Einserkanal. I guess that would still make the watershed endorheic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Br\u00fccke von Andau \/ Andaui-h\u00edd<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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