Orohydrography Map

The orohydrographic map reveals the natural terrain of the study area, but also clearly highlights the scars left by discordant infrastructure constructions. The highway to the west of the area is built on top of a large embankment, and an even larger embankment is built next to it to allow the road to cross above the highway. To the south-west of the study area, railway line 26 cuts straight through the relief. The hollow roads and sunken ways are also clearly visible in the topography. In the flatter area around the Zenne, ditches have been dug to manage the water. During the second visit to the study area, the pastures were still very swampy and barely accessible.

Humans are not alone in shaping the topography. Small creeks and streams flow from the higher parts of the terrain and have carved gullies that can be observed both on the ground and in the DTM. These streams feed the Zenne, but some parts of the landscape were not accessible, and a few streams are therefore interrupted in the orohydrographic map. The path these streams take can be deduced from the terrain, which reveals interesting patterns of ditches in the forest. These are remnants of the forest’s former productive use by the paper mill, but they have not been mapped because they could not be observed in person, as those areas are inaccessible due to barbed wire fencing.

The southern tip of the study area reveals the biggest change from the LiDAR imagery, which dates from 2013-2015. A circular pond has been replaced with a star-shaped water buffer zone that can hold up to 4 million litres of water to mitigate flooding (Nieuwsblad, 2021). Areas that were partially flooded in February and March were also marked on the map as wetlands.