Alpine Rhine

	Alpine Rhine
	Map of the catchment area of the Alpine Rhine
	Data
location	Europe
River system	Rhine
Drain over	Lake Constance → Rhine → North Sea
source	Alps; (see source of the Rhine ) ; 46 ° 37 ′ 57 ″ N , 8 ° 40 ′ 20 ″ E
Source height	2345 m above sea level M.
Rhine delta	Lake Constance coordinates: 47 ° 31 '28 " N , 9 ° 38' 43" E 47 ° 31 '28 " N , 9 ° 38' 43" E;
Mouth height	395.3 m
Height difference	1,949.7 m
Bottom slope	22 ‰
length	90 km ; The information varies depending on the source
Catchment area	6119 km² with source rivers ; Vorderrhein u. Hinterrhein
Left tributaries	see section tributaries
Right tributaries	see section tributaries

The confluence of the front and rear Rhine to the left rear flowing down Alpine Rhine near Reichenau GR

Rhine near Fläsch , shortly before it becomes the border river to Liechtenstein

Young Rhine viewed from Triesenberg in Liechtenstein

The confluence of the Alpine Rhine with Lake Constance

The section of the river Rhine that extends from the confluence of the Vorderrhein with the Hinterrhein at Reichenau-Tamins to the confluence with Lake Constance is called the Alpine Rhine ( pronunciation ^?^/^I ) . Although its catchment area with 6119 km² makes up only 3.3% of the catchment area of the Rhine above the mouth branches into the North Sea (185,300 km²), it still feeds Lake Constance with an average discharge rate of 235 m³ / s; that is a good 10.2% of the flow rate at the mouth branches of the Rhine (2300 m³ / s). Its length of 90 km makes up 7.26% of the total length of the Rhine (1238.8 km). The valley that it flows through is called the Alpine Rhine Valley .

geography

At Reichenau - Tamins , the front and rear Rhine merge to form the Alpine Rhine. Over a length of 90 kilometers, it falls from 592 m above sea level. M. to 396 m. The Rhine initially flows east to Chur , the capital of Graubünden , where it changes its direction to the northwest in an arc of a good 130 °. At Sargans it bends to the north and tends towards Lake Constance in a moderately twisted northerly direction.

Naming

Alpenrhein is a compound word made up of the Alps and the Rhine . The name Rhine goes back to the Roman (Latin) Reinos (river, stream).

Alpine Rhine Valley

The Alpine Rhine Valley is a glacial, broadly cleared, alpine valley . At Sargans , a land step only a few meters high prevents the Rhine from flowing through the open Seeztal through Lake Walen and Lake Zurich to the Aare . Below that, its west bank is Swiss , in the east it borders Liechtenstein and then Austria . Its limits are not precisely defined. Some mountains and hills are included in the Alpine Rhine Valley, others are not. Basically, it is assumed that a valley is defined by its adjoining mountains and their draining water. For example, the highest point of the Ringelspitz ( 3247 m above sea level ) is also on the ground of the municipality of Tamins (part of its water flows into the Alpine Rhine), which is included in the Alpine Rhine Valley. Thus, the Ringelspitz is not only the highest mountain in the canton of St. Gallen , but also the highest mountain in the Alpine Rhine Valley.

Do not confuse the Alpenrheintal with the Rhine Valley , which often only the region St. Gallen Rhine Valley or the Constituency Rheintal is called on the Swiss side.

The Rhine

The Rhine, with its light water due to its high suspended load, has already largely filled Lake Constance, which initially reached far into the Alps, with sediments . It transports up to 3 million cubic meters of solids into Lake Constance every year. The Rhine delta ( inland delta ), which grows into Lake Constance, is largely a nature and bird sanctuary between the Old Rhine in the west and the lower Rhine gorge in the east and includes the Austrian villages of Gaißau , Höchst and Fußach . The Rhine once naturally branched into at least two main arms. Many small islands (in Lake Constance dialect "Isel", cf. field name Esel ) were created as a result of sediment deposited . In the estuary area, permanent gravel mining with floating dredgers is necessary in order to control the sedimentation. The large sediment loads are also a consequence of the extensive amelioration upstream. Nevertheless, the Alpine Rhine is still sometimes referred to as the largest torrent in Europe.

With the regulation of the Rhine and the resulting punctures at Diepoldsau and Fußach , the floods and heavy sedimentation in the Rhine delta were countered. In order to prevent the Bregenz Bay from silting up and to preserve today's coastline, the mouth of the canal-like Alpine Rhine into Lake Constance was "stretched out" and oriented to the west. At the same time, the Dornbirner Ach was directed into Lake Constance. The former tributaries to the Rhine, between Ill and Dornbirner Ach, were channeled into the newly created Vorarlberg Rheintalbinnenkanal , which flows into the Dornbirner Ach. On the Swiss side, the Rheintaler inland canal and the Werdenberg inland canal were created in order to accommodate further tributaries to the Alpine Rhine and now also separately flow into Lake Constance via the Old Rhine . The cut-off Old Rhine initially ran in a swampy landscape , but was channeled below St. Margrethen as part of the Rhine regulation and made navigable from Rheineck .

Tributaries

Vorderrhein ( left source river of the Rhine )

Hinterrhein ( right source river of the Rhine )

Plessur , confluence with Chur

Schwarzseebach ( left )
Rabiosa ( left )

Landquart ( right ), confluence with Landquart
Tamina ( left ), confluence with Bad Ragaz
Trüebbach ( left ), confluence with Trübbach
Vilterser-Wangser Canal ( left ), confluence near Rheinau (Trübbach)

Saar (Rhine) ( right )

Werdenberger Binnenkanal ( left ), confluence with Lienz

Simmi ( left )

Ill ( right ), confluence between Bangs and Meiningen

Alfenz ( right )

Frutz ( right ), confluence with Au ( Koblach )

environment

The Alpine Rhine of today is strongly influenced by the international Rhine regulation .

Places on the Alpine Rhine

52 villages border the banks of the Alpine Rhine. The best known is Chur , the capital of the canton of Graubünden and the oldest city in Switzerland . Other places are:

AH	I-R	S-Z
Altach Altstätten Au Bad Ragaz Balzers Bangs (nofels) Box Chur Diepoldsau Domat / Ems Feldkirch Felsberg Bottle Fußach Gamprin Hague Haldenstein Hard Maximum	Igis Koblach Kriessern Landquart Lienz Lüchingen Lustenau Mäder Maienfeld Masans Mastrils Meiningen Mels Montlingen Oberriet Reichenau Ruggell Rüthi	St. Margrethen Sargans Schaan Sennwald Sevelen Tamins Triesen Trimmis Truebbach Untervaz Vaduz Vilters-Wangs Wartau Widnau Zizers

Rhine foreland

The Rhine foreland is also used as a sports field in many places, such as here near Lustenau as a football field

The foreland of the Rhine as the starting point for the 2008 balloon days

The foreland of the Rhine is the cultural area between the embankment of the river bed ( central channel ) and the flood dams . As a floodplain, it ensures that the water masses do not flood the cultivated land . The foreland accompanies the Rhine on the right bank from Bangs and from Oberriet on both sides at an average width of 100 meters. The flood area of the Rhine with the foreland and the dams is on average 260 meters wide and reaches 464 meters wide at Widnau / Diepoldsau (km 81.00). With the larger widths in curved sections, it was taken into account that higher flow velocities can occur there and that the dams of the central channel are overflowed more frequently. 47.266766 9.531814 47.305761 9.566578

The foreland of the Rhine is mainly used for agriculture and serves as a local recreation area . Several nature and landscape protection areas are designated on both banks. The Rhine foreland in its current form was created in the course of the Rhine corrections .

Flood on the Alpine Rhine

Floods on the Alpine Rhine are not a phenomenon of modern times. In the old chronicles of the villages along the Alpine Rhine there are numerous reports about just such. The residents tried to avoid the problem of flooding by building the villages along the mountain slopes of the Alpine Rhine Valley. However, the use of hydropower and the availability of sources drew them ever closer to the Rhine. Only the correction of the Rhine at the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century and the amelioration of the Rhine plain in the middle of the twentieth century was able to avert this danger to a certain extent.

The flood discharge quantities (HQ) are given by the IRR and the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN) at different levels. The HQ100 for Diepoldsau is given by the FOEN as 2596 m³ / s and by the IRR as 3100 m³ / s. In the following, the values of the FOEN are used for the HQ information (see table below). Otherwise the addition (IRR) is used.

Probability of occurrence of annual flood values ( HQn ) Measurement
period 1910–2012 Measurement site
: Rhine - Diepoldsau, Rietbrücke - 2473
Annuality (years)	2	5	20th	30th	50	100
Discharge (m³ / s)	1288	1693	1935	2268	2412	2596
Note to HQN: the number corresponding to the high water flow (HQ = H ochwasser q uantität) in m³ / s, which - repeated with the specified return period (n = number of years) - the average.

The mean flow rate of the Rhine at the Diepoldsau measuring point is 235 m³ / s. The middle channel of the Rhine can discharge 1285 m³ / s of water until the Rhine exceeds the top of the dams (HQ 2). With the Rhine foreland as a flood area, the Rhine at Diepoldsau can discharge 3100 m³ / s of water before cultivated land in the Rhine Valley is flooded - this corresponds to a 100-year flood (IRR HQ100).

The mean flood discharge rate (MHQ) of the Alpine Rhine is 1337 m³ / s, which corresponds to 20.04% of the MHQ before the mouth junction (6670 m³ / s).

In the next few years, the capacity of the flooding rooms is to be expanded to at least 4300 m³ / s (HQ 300). This applies to the international routes on the lower reaches between the mouth of the Ill and Lake Constance. The expansion will be coordinated with water management on the Swiss upper reaches. To this end, a cross-border project called Rhesi ("Rhine - Recreation and Security") was started, in which state measures are tailored to the needs of agriculture, leisure and nature conservation. This redesign of the foreland of the Rhine is based on the Alpine Rhine development concept that was drawn up in 2005 by the International Alpine Rhine Government Commission (IRKA) and the International Rhine Regulation (IRR).

Historical floods

Markings of the historical floods of 1855 and 1868 at the parish hall in Au

The measured values refer to the Diepoldsau measuring station .

Flood in 1987: 2665 m³ / s
Flood 2005: 2300 m³ / s
Flood in 1999: 1920 m³ / s

Measuring stations

The water quantity and quality of the Rhine water are permanently monitored by the FOEN on the Swiss side . The following measuring stations exist / existed on the Alpine Rhine:

Rhine - Domat / Ems (2602)
Rhine - Maienfeld, GW profile (2454)
Rhine - Wartau, Schleuse Weite (2453) (station canceled on January 1, 2004)
Rhine - Sennwald, Salez lock (2452) (station canceled on January 1, 2004)
Rhine - Oberriet, Blatten (2041)
Rhine - Diepoldsau, Rietbrücke (2473)

Measuring stations Oberriet and Diepoldsau

The measuring stations in Oberriet and Diepoldsau are important facilities for flood analysis and prevention in Europe. They are the last before the confluence of the Alpine Rhine with Lake Constance. The Alpine Rhine at Diepoldsau has a higher flow velocity than the average of the entire Alpine Rhine stretch, and all tributaries have already reached it above, near Montlingen. From a discharge rate of 2600 m³ / s near Oberriet, there is talk of a flood of the century (HQ 100), even if the Rhine in the Rhine Valley has not yet crossed the flood dams. With this amount of runoff, other parts of the area around the Rhine in Switzerland and also in Germany will be affected by flooding. The higher flow velocity is due to the narrowing in Oberriet from 100 m wide to 70 m up to the mouth on Lake Constance. This is necessary to counteract the gravel of the river bed.

Measuring stations Bangs and Lustenau (Höchst Bridge)

These are the stations operated by the Vorarlberg Hydrographic Service on the Austrian side of the Rhine. In Lustenau, the highest discharge observed so far was 2800 m³ / s on July 19, 1987. Even at 3100 m³ / s (HQ 100), the dams still exceed the water level there by more than 2 m.

Rhine regulation

The International Rhine Regulation (IRR) separated sections of the Rhine at the Diepoldsauer Piercing and the Fußacher Piercing , which are now called the Old Rhine . The old Rhine at the Fußacher breakthrough was connected to the newly created Rheintaler inland canal . The Old Rhine at the Diepoldsauer breakthrough became a standing body of water (lake) that is fed by groundwater.

literature

Horst Johannes Tümmers: The Rhine: A European river and its history . 2nd Edition. CH Beck, 1999, ISBN 3-406-44823-2 .

Robert Allgäuer: Border area of the Alpine Rhine: Bridges and barriers 1914–1938 . Chronos, 1999, ISBN 3-905312-97-2 .

International Rhine Regulation (ed.): The Alpine Rhine and its regulation. International Rhine Regulation 1892–1992 . 2nd Edition. BuchsDruck, Rorschach 1997, ISBN 3-905222-65-5 .

Web links

Commons : Alpenrhein - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Wiktionary: Alpenrhein - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Interregio Alpenrhein-Bodensee-Hochrhein (information on economic cooperation in large aglomeration)
Zukunft Alpenrhein (An initiative of the IRKA International Government Commission Alpenrhein and the IRR Internationale Rheinregulierung )
Alpenrhein (environmental platform)

Individual evidence

↑ ^a ^b The Rhine and its catchment area. International Rhine Regulation [IRR], accessed on January 5, 2014 .

↑ ^a ^b Flood probabilities (annual flood), DB no. 1129 Rhine - Diepoldsau, Rietbrücke. (PDF) Federal Office for the Environment FOEN Hydrology Department, October 1, 2013, accessed on January 4, 2014 .

↑ Werner Kuster: Rheintaler heads . Historical-biographical portraits from five centuries. Ed .: Association for the History of the Rhine Valley. Rheintaler Druckerei und Verlag AG, Berneck 2004, ISBN 3-03300265-X , settlement, administration and politics, p. 14 .

↑ see also Hammer 1973, pp. 85-88

↑ Attachment guidance ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2
↑ Flood protection: alarm organization. International Rhine Regulation [IRR], accessed on January 5, 2014 .
↑ Martin Ebner: The mouth of the Alpine Rhine: gentle S-curve into the lake. August 22, 2009, accessed on December 10, 2014 (article for the Südwestpresse, Ulm).
↑ ^a ^b The IRR: facts. International Rhine Regulation (IRR), accessed on December 25, 2013 .
↑ Education Council of the Canton of St. Gallen (Ed.): St. Gallerland . Teaching materials for the human and environmental department, 4th to 6th grade. 1st edition. Kantonaler Lehrmittelverlag St. Gallen, Rorschach 2001, ISBN 3-906784-00-2 , Protection against floods, p. 96-100 .
↑ Measuring point: Rhine - Diepoldsau, Rietbrücke (2473), on BAFU hydrodata
↑ ^a ^b ^c flood protection. International Rhine Regulation (IRR), accessed on December 25, 2013 .
↑ What is Rhesi ?, project description. International Rhine Regulation (IRR), accessed on December 25, 2013 .
↑ How much flood should it be? (No longer available online.) The Rheintaler, June 24, 2013, archived from the original on December 3, 2013 ; Retrieved November 21, 2013 .
↑ Current data from the Rhine - Domat / Ems measuring station
↑ Current data from the Rhine - Oberriet measuring station
↑ Current data from the Rhine - Diepoldsau measuring station
↑ Station information for Lustenau (Höchst Bridge), 200196. Accessed on March 19, 2020 .

[IRR-EZ-1] The Rhine and its catchment area. International Rhine Regulation [IRR], accessed on January 5, 2014 .

[ALP-RP-BAFU-2] Flood probabilities (annual flood), DB no. 1129 Rhine - Diepoldsau, Rietbrücke. (PDF) Federal Office for the Environment FOEN Hydrology Department, October 1, 2013, accessed on January 4, 2014 .

[RK-14-3] Werner Kuster: Rheintaler heads . Historical-biographical portraits from five centuries. Ed .: Association for the History of the Rhine Valley. Rheintaler Druckerei und Verlag AG, Berneck 2004, ISBN 3-03300265-X , settlement, administration and politics, p. 14 .

[4] see also Hammer 1973, pp. 85-88