page_title: Danube-Auen National Park
section_title: The River
hierarchical_section_title: Danube-Auen National Park / The River
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Hochwassermarken der Donau in der Stopfenreuther AuEnglish: High Water Mark of the Danube, Stopfenreuth floodplain forest, Lower Austria
context_page_description: Donau-Auen National Park covers 93 square kilometres in Vienna and Lower Austria and is one of the largest remaining floodplains of the Danube in Middle Europe.
  The German word Aue means "river island, wetland, floodplain, riparian woodland", i.e. a cultivated landscape in a riparian zone. The words Aue and Au occur in a large number of German place names—including Donau, the German word for the Danube River—and refer to forests, meadows, and wetlands in river and stream lowlands and floodplains. The Danube-Auen National Park protects a large area of lowland forests, meadows, wetlands, and other riparian habitat along the Danube just downstream of Vienna.
  The Park was designated an IUCN category II national park and spans the areas of Vienna, Groß-Enzersdorf, Orth an der Donau, Eckartsau, Engelhartstetten, Hainburg, Bad Deutsch-Altenburg, Petronell-Carnuntum, Regelsbrunn, Haslau-Maria Ellend, Fischamend and Schwechat.
context_section_description: The main channel of the Danube was separated from its side channels by the flood control measures that were constructed around the year 1900. The outcome was a higher current velocity in the main channel, with a resulting deepening of the river bed, while in the side channels--which no longer had current flowing through them--sand and loam deposits were no longer removed by the current. In a natural riparian ecosystem woody plants and deadwood have a strong impact on the natural flow dynamics, by stabilizing riverbanks, by reducing erosion, and by creating areas of reducing or increased flow rates, and thus affecting in which areas sediments are deposited or removed. Large tree trunks and accumulations of smaller flotsam cause the water to stagnate and the speed of the current to drop, leading to increased sedimentation.
  To counteract the effects of the flood control measures, beginning in 2002 individual side channels were tied in with the main channel again--at least at high water times--via Gewässervernetzungen ("water crossings"), which lower or remove the levees protecting those channels. 
  In a 2006 pilot project created with the support of the LIFE+ Program of the European Union and the Austrian riverways agency via donau, about three kilometers of the complete flood works were removed across the river from Hainburg, so that the river once again could spread into the floodplain areas. In a similar project near Witzelsdorf, about one kilometer of the levees were removed.  After the completion of the pilot projects in Hainburg and Witzelsdorf, future plans for this river engineering project are for removal of 50% of the levees and flood control works between Vienna and the eastern border of Austria. 
  Aside from a revitalization of the Au (riparian zone), the project promises to mediate the effects of floods on the river and to stabilize the riverbed to the benefit of both river ecology and navigation.
caption: Monument with high water marks near Stopfenreuth – highest: August 15th, 2002
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