Wollmatinger Ried
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Nature reserve "Wollmatinger Ried - Untersee - Gnadensee"
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 Aerial view of the Wollmatinger Ried (center) |
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| location | Konstanz , Reichenau , Allensbach , Konstanz district , Baden-Württemberg , Germany | |
| surface | 7.57 km² | |
| Identifier | 3,004 | |
| WDPA ID | 6995 | |
| Geographical location | 47 ° 41 ' N , 9 ° 8' E | |
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| Setup date | February 17, 1938 | |
| administration | Regional council Freiburg | |
The Wollmatinger Ried - Untersee - Gnadensee nature reserve , with a total area of 767 hectares, is the largest and, with an extremely diverse flora and fauna, also the most important nature reserve on the German shores of Lake Constance . It stretches from the shores of Seerhein west of Konstanz over the dam to the submarine lying island of Reichenau up to the eastern Gnadensee in Allensbach -Hegne. The two neighboring islands of Triboldingerbohl (Langenrain) and Mittler or Langbohl (Kopf) are part of the nature reserve .
The nature reserve
The Wollmatinger Ried was placed under protection for five years as early as 1930. Through the nature conservation ordinance of February 17, 1938 for the areas of Wollmatinger Ried, Giehrenmoos and Dreifusswiesen in the districts of Konstanz, Reichenau and Hegne, the shore landscape received final state protection. The protected reed area initially comprised 465 hectares, of which around five hectares were released from protection in 1964 to round off the “Unterlohn” industrial park in Constance. After an expansion in 1980, which included the water areas in front of the Ried on the Untersee and Gnadensee in the new nature and landscape protection area "Wollmatinger Ried-Untersee-Gnadensee", the area increased to 767 hectares.
meaning
The varied bank landscape of the Wollmatinger Ried offers a variety of plants and animal species a valuable habitat. Around 600 fern and flowering plants are currently found in the nature reserve; over 100 other species were found earlier, but are now lost. The list of bird species observed in the area includes around 290 species. It is particularly important for water birds as a breeding, resting and wintering area. In autumn, resting societies of 20,000–40,000 water birds are regularly counted. The shallow water zones of the area, which are only slightly influenced by humans, are important for maintaining a species-rich fish population in the Untersee. Among the insects , the large butterflies with over 330 species, the dragonflies with almost 50 and the grasshoppers with 26 species are particularly striking.
Its importance as a refuge for rare and endangered plants and animals as well as the successful nature conservation work has earned the area several international awards: The Wollmatinger Ried has received several international awards. Its importance as a refuge for rare and endangered animal and plant species as well as its successful nature conservation work was honored: In 1968 the Wollmatinger Ried received the "European Diploma" from the Council of Europe, which has been awarded every five years since then A European reserve and since 1976 the reed landscape together with the bordering sea bays has been part of the "wetlands of international importance" due to the Ramsar Convention of 1971. The Wollmatinger Ried is also protected by the European Natura 2000 protected area system, which consists of the Habitats Directive and the Birds Directive .
Emergence
The geological history of the Untersee landscape was an interplay of tectonics , sedimentation and erosion . At the time of the unfolding of the Alps, in the Tertiary , the northern foothills of the Alps formed a huge hollow. At times filled with sea water, at times with fresh water, large amounts of debris from the Alps were washed into this hollow . In the Quaternary , ice ages and warm ages replaced each other. In the Ice Ages, the submarine area was crossed by the Rhine Glacier, which did the main work on deepening the Lake Constance basin. After the last ice had melted, the moraine material was eroded by the Rhine , while massive basin clay deposits remained in the lake area.
Remarkable recent, post-glacial sediments in the area of Seerhein, Untersee and Wollmatinger Ried are lime nodules up to 2.5 cm in size, the layer of which can reach a thickness of over 10 m. The rounded tubers were created by calcium deposits from blue-green algae ( cyanobacteria ), often around the snail shell as a core, which is why they have long been called Schnegglisande on the lake .
Water balance
The water level of Lake Constance fluctuates considerably according to the seasonally strongly changing water flow of its most important tributary, the Alpine Rhine . The lowest water level is usually reached in February; then the lake level rises at the end of the snow period in the Alps by about 2 m and reaches its maximum water level in June and July. The simultaneous occurrence of snowmelt and heavy rainfall leads to a sudden rise in the lake level, in extreme cases by more than 40 cm in one day.
The Wollmatinger Ried has only slight differences in altitude. It is part of the Konstanzer Niederung, an almost flat depression in the Lake Constance basin between the Bodanrück hill country in the north and the Thurgau Seerücken in the south. The parts of the Wollmatinger Ried near the lake are regularly flooded in early summer; in extreme flood years, over 90% of the protected area can be under water. In the winter half of the year, however, the reed and the bank zone dry out, a condition that can persist into the summer months in dry years. The annual water level fluctuations in Lake Constance as well as the irregular flood or dry years have a formative influence on the flora and fauna of the Wollmatinger Ried and on the use of the area by people.
Diversity of habitats
The regular flooding of the Wollmatinger Ried has always enabled the residents to do extensive agriculture in addition to fishing and waterfowl hunting. This created a diverse mosaic of natural landscape (near the shore) and cultural landscape (in the higher areas). Natural, original habitats are z. B. the shallow water zones and reed beds , the litter meadows, however, were created through agricultural use.
Flowing waters
The Wollmatinger Ried lies at the confluence of the Seerhein in the Untersee. In the southeast of the reed, the right bank of the river forms the border of the protected area. The main estuary of the Seerhein continues to the west in the Untersee as a Rhine channel. The Seerhein and Rheinrinne are outside the reserve and have heavy boat traffic. But their abundance of fish is important for birds such as divers , cormorants and common terns . In winter, tufted ducks , pochards and coots dive for migrating clams on the river bed . When there is frost, the flowing waters, which remain ice-free, also gain in importance for gray herons , several species of green ducks and waders .
Two other branches of the mouth of the Seerhein are the so-called hoses located within the protected area . Their river-like channels separate two reed-covered islands, Triboldingerbohl and Mittler or Langbohl , formed by Schnegglisand (calcium deposits from blue-green algae ) , from the Wollmatinger Ried. In one of the tubes there are breeding rafts for the common tern, which is threatened with extinction in Baden-Württemberg . At other rivers, the area in the reed zone has several ditches that constantly carry water, where bitterns and water rails hibernate.
Shallow water zones
Since 1980, parts of the shallow water zones in front of the Wollmatinger Ried have also been part of the nature reserve. Shallow water zones are the ecologically important link between the lake shore and the open lake water. Their water temperature is lower in winter than in the open water zone, but significantly higher in summer with intense solar radiation. Constant water movements cause intensive water and gas exchange, high oxygen input, and with the strong warming in summer also high metabolic rates. The result is a rapid and extensive decomposition of the organic substances carried into the lake from the shore, which is why shallow water zones are also referred to as biological sewage treatment plants of the lake . Aquatic plants ( macrophytes ) form real underwater gardens, which are spawning and growing areas for numerous fish species and feeding grounds for many water birds.
There are two important shallow water areas in front of the Wollmatinger Ried: the Ermatinger Basin in the east of the Untersee, a shallow floodplain at the confluence of the Seerhein, and the Hegnebucht in the east of the Gnadensee, which is separated by the Reichenauer Damm. In the shallow water of the Hegnebucht various types of chandelier algae and the mean mermaid dominate the aquatic plants . In nutrient-rich Ermatinger pool the stoneworts been since the 1960s, first by zannichellia palustris and pondweed pushed back, but now take back lost ground, as the water quality has improved significantly since the 1980th White water lilies can only exist in reed bays on Reichenauer Damm that are protected from the impact of waves.
The chandelier algae are the main food of the pochard , the greatest ornithological treasure of Lake Constance. Around half of the Central European breeding population of this rare species of duck breeds on Lake Constance, particularly in large numbers in the Wollmatinger Ried. In autumn, several thousand red-crested pochards come from other breeding areas, which mainly visit the Hegnebucht when the small plumage moults.
The shallow water but are used also by many other species of birds as food, rearing, moulting and resting place, inter alia, little grebe , great crested grebe and black-necked grebe , Mute Swan , Gadwall , teal , mallard , teal , shoveler , pochard and tufted duck , coot and black-headed gull , at low tide also from waders. Whooper swan , pintail and curlew are typical overwinterers in the Ermatinger Basin, while the Hegnebucht often freezes over in winter.
Shallow ponds
Extreme floods in the middle of the breeding season repeatedly lead to loss of eggs in water birds at Lake Constance. In 1976, in the Wollmatinger Ried, a shallow water pond with a system of ditches, islands and old reed areas was created in a natural depression. The summer floods can be anticipated here by damming up early. With its breeding sites protected from flooding, the pond quickly became the most important breeding site in the nature reserve. Red-crested ducks (up to 40 pairs) and many other species breed here every year. After hatching, the mother ducks can lead their young to the neighboring, nutrient-rich Ermatinger basin.
In the east of the reserve a shallow meadow pond was created in 1994, which serves as a feeding and resting place for green ducks and waders.
Reed dishes
The banks of the nature reserve are largely taken up by reed beds, which are predominantly made of reeds . On the lake side, the reeds reach mean water depths of around 1–2 m, on the landward side they are replaced by the stiff sedge .
In the east of the area, on the Seerhein, the reed belt is relatively narrow; On both sides of the Reichenauer Damm the reed reaches a width of more than 500 m. The reedbed habitat looks rather monotonous, but is characterized by high productivity. Reed can reach heights of up to 5 m, young shoots grow 2–4 cm daily. Reeds protect the bank against the impact of the waves and are habitat for numerous animals. Divers, ducks , Coot , marsh harrier , reed warbler and reed warbler and the rare bearded tit nest here. Many other bird species use the reed beds as a feeding and resting place, and large groups of swallows , starlings and stilts can often be found in the passage . Many insects and other small animals have specialized in the reed, amphibians use the reeds as spawning grounds.
Beach lawn
Where the shores of Lake Constance are too pebbly for reeds, there is grassy and patchy vegetation on the shore in the floodplain: the beach lawn . The plants on the beach lawns are true survivors and can even survive a six-month flood unscathed. But through human intervention, the beach lawn stocks on Lake Constance were pushed back to 10–20% of the extent they had at the beginning of the century. Beach Schmiele , bank buttercups as well as Lake Constance forget-me-nots and Strandling have therefore become rare, other types of beach lawn on Lake Constance are already extinct. In the Wollmatinger Ried, too, this bank vegetation can hardly be found. Immediately to the west of the protected area border, however, at the Hegne campsite, there is a large beach lawn with tens of thousands of individual plants of the Lake Constance forget-me-nots .
Litter and fodder meadows
The meadows on the shores of Lake Constance are human-made habitats. In their place, alluvial forests once grew with black poplars , silver willows , oaks and elms . After they were cleared, moist meadows were created, which were mowed in autumn and winter to produce litter for cattle stalls and were therefore called litter meadow.
In the Wollmatinger Ried, only one mowing per year was initially possible after the summer floods had retreated. Only the slightly higher and drier areas in the east of the area allowed a second mowing per year. Some more nutrient-rich forage meadows were created here through fertilization . Most of the meadows of the Wollmatinger Ried, however, retained their nutrient-poor character and are still today a species-rich flower paradise. With the decline in livestock farming in the 1960s, farmers gave up the traditional use of litter meadows, and since then nature conservation has preserved this valuable cultural landscape.
Species such as the fragrant leek and the Siberian iris , orchids such as marsh stendelwort , mosquito hendelwort and fragrant hendellus , lesser orchid and flesh-colored orchid, as well as the carnation and the gentian thrive in the litter meadows dominated by the blue whistle grass . Swamp heart leaf , flour primrose and hose gentian grow in wet and swelling places . The greatest botanical treasure of the area, however, is the marsh Siegwurz , a native wild gladiolus that has its last location here in Baden-Württemberg.
The flower-rich litter meadows attract countless flower-visiting insects such as butterflies, hoverflies and wild bees .
The more nutrient-rich forage meadows show less biodiversity. They are dominated by meadow foxtail , cuckoo's light carnation and various buttercups and clover species. Insects visiting flowers are very numerous in the forage meadows, especially in spring, as the flowering dates of most of the plants in these meadows are before those of the litter meadows. The forage meadows also serve as feeding grounds for the lapwing and curlew . While the lapwing still breeds in the Wollmatinger Ried today, the curlew only occurs as migrants and overwinterers.
Beach walls
After the last Ice Age, in a phase when the lake level was higher than today, the Schnegglisands in the Wollmatinger Ried were piled up to form beach walls several meters high , some of which are now hundreds of meters from the lake shore. Its loose soil made up of coarse lime bulbs can hardly store rainwater, which is why a lime-loving dry vegetation has settled here - right next to moist meadows. These include branchy grass lily , fire orchid , pasque flower , bedstraw rue , spring gentian and swallowwort . Even with extreme floods, at least the highest beach walls still protrude from the flooded reed. Since the end of agricultural use, the beach ridges have also been mowed every year by nature conservation.
Woods
Only remnants are left of the former alluvial forests: some beautiful individual silver willow trees and younger oaks. Most of the woody plants in the nature reserve are bushes that have settled on the litter meadows after abandoning their agricultural use. Common species include buckthorn , buckthorn , common snowball, and various types of willow . Dense bushes have emerged, especially along the northern border of the protected area. Typical bird species in the bushes are nightingale , garden warbler and blackcap , chiffchaff , fitis and great tit . Crooked forest pines have settled on the higher beach walls in particular .
Conservation work in the area
To preserve the diversity of plants and animals in the Wollmatinger Ried, which include many endangered species on the Red List , it was not enough to place the area under nature protection. This became very clear in the 1960s when, after traditional agricultural use had been abandoned, the typical flora and fauna of the litter meadows increasingly lost their habitat due to bush encroachment. The meadow mowing had to be taken over by nature conservation in order to preserve the biodiversity.
In the 1970s, an organizational plan was therefore developed for the care of the Wollmatinger Ried and the protective and maintenance measures to be carried out. A care contract has been regulating the cooperation between state and private nature conservation since 1979. The state of Baden-Württemberg commissioned the Naturschutzbund Deutschland (NABU) with essential support tasks, which are carried out in close cooperation with the regional council and the district office for nature conservation and landscape management (BNL) Freiburg.
Care work by the nature conservation authorities
As the responsible nature conservation authority, the Freiburg Regional Council is responsible for the content and objectives of the Protected Area Ordinance and for its maintenance. As a nature conservation authority, the BNL Freiburg organizes the landscape conservation measures together with NABU and the State Forestry Office. On behalf of the BNL, farmers mow around 130 hectares of litter meadow every year. An attempt to graze by Scottish Highland cattle has also been underway since 1998. The fodder meadows in the east of the area were leased to a farmer.
Support work by the nature conservation center Wollmatinger Ried
In May 1979, NABU opened the Wollmatinger Ried Nature Conservation Center , from which the care of the area is coordinated. The focus of the work is the planning and implementation of maintenance measures, informing the public, guided tours, recording the development of the population of plants and animals, monitoring the area and preparing annual reports. NABU has been employing community service workers for this work since 1978. In addition to the managing director, up to ten employees work at the nature conservation center, and there are also volunteers.
During the maintenance measures, the personnel of the nature conservation center concentrate on the mowing of particularly sensitive areas, around 35 hectares, which - like beach ridges in particular - do not allow the use of heavy equipment. The endangered beach lawn is also dependent on care in order to prevent its displacement by more vigorous competing plants.
Since 1971, a floating protection and observation station has been used to monitor the protected area, which is named after the zoological genus name of the pochard Netta . The shallow water zone in front of the Wollmatinger Ried is monitored by the Netta , which is equipped with solar technology as a model for environmentally friendly water sports . Since the reserve was expanded to include the upstream water bodies, disturbances from watercraft have decreased. Another important benefit for the area was the abolition of the centuries-old German-Swiss waterfowl hunt ( Belchenschlacht ) in 1985.
Nature reserve of national representative importance
In 1989 the Wollmatinger Ried was included by the Federal Ministry in the funding program for the establishment and safeguarding of parts of nature and landscape that are worthy of protection and of national significance . As part of this project, important measures to improve the situation of the protected area could be carried out. The range of visitor facilities has been improved: at the Ermating Basin, an observation platform from the 1970s was renewed as a closed hut; at the shallow pond, which was designed as a breeding ground for water birds, an observation hut replaced an older temporary structure; An observation platform was built at the Hegne campsite and an observation tower was built within the Schopflen ruins on Reichenauer Damm.
A detailed maintenance and development plan was drawn up. This envisaged extensive de-bushing measures, the implementation of which made it possible to reclaim former litter meadows in the 1990s. The financially most expensive project under the funding program was renaturation measures in the east of the Wollmatinger Ried. Since 1965, a rainwater sewer from the Konstanz sewage treatment plant has cut valuable litter meadows over a length of over 1 km. Through the construction of seven 50 m long green bridges as a land connection over the canal, extensive clearing of bushes and the dismantling of a canal path, the barrier effect of the canal route was at least partially eliminated in the winter of 1993/94 and the former, open landscape character restored. In addition, a newly created flood basin has now reduced the risk of nutrient-contaminated water entering the reed meadows. The chances of survival for rare plants and animals could be significantly improved.
The conservation center
In 1990, the NABU nature conservation center in Wollmatinger Ried opened in the former Reichenau train station . This was replaced in October 2018 by the NABU-Bodenseezentrum newly opened by NABU Baden-Württemberg . It is the new home of the previous NABU centers in Wollmatinger Ried and Mettnau as well as the NABU district association Danube-Lake Constance. All nature conservation work is bundled there, from landscape maintenance and political work to the care of the protected areas. In addition, the NABU-Bodenseezentrum with its permanent exhibition is open to all interested parties for questions about nature and environmental protection and for lectures, discussions and seminars.
exhibition
The exhibition in the NABU-Bodenseezentrum shows the spectrum of different habitats in the protected areas. Broken down according to the seasons, they give an impression of the biodiversity on western Lake Constance and in Hegau.
Info path
The information path at Wollmatinger Ried is part of the international Lake Constance path. It provides information about habitats, animals and plants in the nature reserve. The path is divided into two parts in terms of space and content. The boards along Reichenauer Damm provide information about the reed habitat. On the observation platform Schopflen, water birds of Lake Constance and their diet are discussed. The second part of the nature trail stretches across the Konstanz area along the “Gottlieber Weg” from the Konstanz sewage treatment plant down to the Seerhein near Gottlieben. There is information about the species-rich litter meadows and the formation of Lake Constance, also with special information boards for children. Another board on the Hegne observation platform shows the sequence of natural habitats from open water to silted up bushes.
guides
The old Vogelhäusle nature conservation center near the Konstanz sewage treatment plant serves as the starting point for the public reed tours on the five-kilometer circular route.
See also
literature
- District Office for Nature Conservation and Landscape Management Freiburg: Nature reserves in the administrative district of Freiburg . Ed .: Regional Council Freiburg. 2nd Edition. Thorbecke, Ostfildern 2004, ISBN 978-3-7995-5174-8 . Pp. 406-412
- Harald Jacoby: Schnegglisand, candelabra and belchen hunting. The Wollmatinger Ried: biological significance, aspects of the history of use and nature conservation. In: Das DelphinBuch , Volume 6, 2000, pp. 81-101, ISBN 3-926937-50-5 .
swell
- NABU-Bodenseezentrum.de
- nabu-wollmatingerried.de: The Wollmatinger Ried
- Regional council Freiburg : leaflet on the nature reserve Wollmatinger Ried
Web links
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