Danube-Auen National Park
| Danube-Auen National Park | |
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IUCN category II (national park)
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Danube-Auen near Hainburg
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| Location | Vienna and Lower Austria |
| Nearest city | Vienna |
| Coordinates | 48°8′N 16°55′E / 48.133°N 16.917°ECoordinates: 48°8′N 16°55′E / 48.133°N 16.917°E |
| Area | 93 km2 (36 sq mi) |
| Established | October 27, 1996 |
The Danube-Auen National Park (German: Nationalpark Donau-Auen) covers 93 square kilometres in Vienna and Lower Austria and is one of the largest remaining floodplains of the Danube in Middle Europe.
The German word Aue (variant Au) means "river island, wetland, floodplain, riparian woodland", i.e. a cultivated landscape in a riparian zone. The words Aue and Au occur in a large number of German place names—including Donau, the German word for the Danube River—and refer to forests, meadows, and wetlands in river and stream lowlands and floodplains. The Danube-Auen National Park protects a large area of lowland forests, meadows, wetlands, and other riparian habitat along the Danube just downstream of Vienna.
The park was designated an IUCN category II national park and spans the areas of Vienna (Lobau), Groß-Enzersdorf, Orth an der Donau, Eckartsau, Engelhartstetten, Hainburg, Bad Deutsch-Altenburg, Petronell-Carnuntum, Regelsbrunn, Haslau-Maria Ellend, Fischamend and Schwechat.
Until the 19th century the Danube was an untamed river. In the 19th century, extensive engineering began to alter the natural balance of the river landscape dramatically. Many side-channels were dammed so that they now carry water from the Danube only at flood stages. Ever more intrusive engineering interventions were accompanied by decades of heavy forestry use in many parts of lowland forests. In the 1950s, development began of an nearly unbroken chain of hydroelectric power plants and associated dams on the Austrian section of the Danube River.
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