Artificial Oxbow Lakes
Oxbow lakes may be formed when a river channel is straightened artificially to improve navigation or for flood alleviation. This occurred notably on the upper Rhine in Germany in the nineteenth century.
An example of an entirely artificial waterway with oxbows is the Oxford Canal in England. When originally constructed, it had a very meandering course, following the contours of the land, but the northern part of the canal was straightened out between 1829 and 1834. The work reduced its length from 91 to 77 and a half miles (approximately) and left a number of oxbow-shaped sections isolated from the new course.
Read more about this topic: Oxbow Lake
Famous quotes containing the words artificial and/or lakes:
“You must recollect however that I know nothing of painting & that I detest it, unless it reminds me of something I have seen or think it possible to see.... Depend upon it of all the arts it is the most artificial & unnatural—& that by which the nonsense of mankind is the most imposed upon.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“The lakes are something which you are unprepared for; they lie up so high, exposed to the light, and the forest is diminished to a fine fringe on their edges, with here and there a blue mountain, like amethyst jewels set around some jewel of the first water,—so anterior, so superior, to all the changes that are to take place on their shores, even now civil and refined, and fair as they can ever be.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)