Climate Change and the European Water Dimension - Agri ...

landcover decreases from north to south and remains below 0.5% in several
southern countries in Europe like Bulgaria, Slovenia, Macedonia, France, Spain, and
Portugal. In these areas man-made lakes such as reservoirs and ponds occur more
frequently than natural lakes. In Spain, for instance, there are more than 1,000 large
reservoirs. Also in Belgium, The Netherlands, Southern England, Slovakia, and the
central parts of Germany there are generally few natural lakes. As lakes can be used
for water supply, irrigation and several other purposes, the relative importance of
each lake is reciprocally related to the occurrence of lakes in a particular area.
Table IV.B.1. Percentage of the total area of lakes and reservoirs in the total
country area. Data on CORINE landcover (unit 512 “lakes”) from the EEA database,
country areas from UN database if not indicated otherwise
Country
Percentage of lakes
in landcover
Sweden 9 1
Finland 8.72
Norway 4.65 2
Estonia 4.38
Switzerland 3.99 3
Ireland 1.80
Lithuania 1.66
Latvia 1.59
Albania 1.40
The Netherlands 1.28
Hungary 1.20
Poland 1.20
United Kingdom 0.89
Germany 0.84
Denmark 0.82
Romania 0.64
Czech Republic 0.63
Greece 0.59
Italy 0.57
Austria 0.49
Bulgaria 0.47
Spain 0.39
Belgium 0.35
Bosnia and Herzegovina 0.35
Portugal 0.32
Slovakia 0.32
Macedonia 0.31
France 0.28
Luxembourg 0.15
Slovenia
1
http://www.internat.naturvardsverket.se
0.13
2
http://www.ssb.no/english/yearbook/2002/tab/t-010101-022.html
3
Aggregated airphoto-based estimate together with rivers after Waser et al. (2000)
Lakes, which the following numbers demonstrate, dominate the landscape of
Northern Europe: 65,000 lakes in Norway, 95,700 lakes in Sweden and 187,888
lakes in Finland (Henriksen et al., 1998). The number of lakes counted in each
country depends on the lower size limit set to separate ponds from lakes. The given
54