Rhine River? please, help!?

Question

I'm doing an essay and need some help, PLEASE and THANKS! so my question is, describe the factors that have made the Rhine River the "Industrial Heartland" of Europe?

Answer 1

The Rhine and the Danube formed most of the northern frontier of the Roman Empire, and since those days the Rhine has been a vital navigable waterway, carrying trade and goods deep inland. It has also served as a defensive feature, and been the basis for regional and international borders. The many castles and prehistoric fortifications along the Rhine testify to its importance as a waterway. River traffic could be stopped at these locations, usually for the purpose of collecting tolls, by the state controlling that portion of the river.

Answer 2

It is a navigable river, which means that there has always been trade and transport since Roman times and probably before. It's in an area of rich farmland, although mostly industry is there now, and along the major tributaries, which also are navigable by boats. Koln (Cologne) was the center of Rhine River civilization for a very long time, and Rotterdam developed at the mouth of the river. It was heavily fortified at times which is a testament to its importance.

Answer 3

The Rhine begins as a tumultuous Alpine stream churning through deep gorges, and because it is fed by the meltwaters of snow and glaciers, it has a maximum volume in spring and summer. Although the river's flow is moderated somewhat as it passes through the Bodensee (Lake of Constance), the river remains a torrent westward to Basel, Switzerland. Near the Swiss canton of Schaffhausen it is 185 m (600 ft) wide and plunges 23 m (75 ft) over a spectacular waterfall, the Rheinfall. At Basel the river turns north and enters the Rhine Graben, a flat-floored rift valley lying between the Vosges on the west and the Black Forest (Schwarzwald) on the east. Strasbourg, France, a focal point for merging water routes from the Paris Basin, is located at the valley's northern extremity. With the junction of the Main River at Mainz, in Germany, the Rhine's seasonal regime becomes more stabilized. Along its course from Bingen to Bonn, the river has cut the deep, steepsided Rhine Gorge through the Rhineland Plateau. This picturesque gorge, with terraced vineyards and castle-lined cliffs, has often been called the “heroic Rhine,” renowned in history and romantic literature. Near the town of Sankt Goar is the Lorelei, the great face of rock that inspired the famous lyric Die Lorelei (1823) by the German poet Heinrich Heine. Here the Rhine is 150 m (480 ft) wide and 23 m (75 ft) deep. Downstream from Bonn, the river crosses Germany's North Rhine-Westphalia (Nordrhein-Westfalen) state, which has a population of 17 million and accounts for approximately one-third of the country's industrial production. Leading cities on the stream's banks are Cologne, Düsseldorf, and Duisburg. Along the Ruhr River, a small right-bank tributary of the Rhine, is one of the world's greatest concentrations of industrial activity. At the Netherlands frontier, the Rhine is 655 m (2,150 ft) wide. From this point it divides into two parallel distributaries, the Lek and the Waal, as it crosses a wide, marshy plain and a great delta as it heads toward the North Sea. These two main channels were closed off by the Delta Project, completed in 1986, which built sluices and alternate channels for the river's runoff. The main link from the Rhine to the North Sea is the New Waterway, which established Rotterdam as the leading port in continental Europe when it was constructed in 1872. Much of this delta area is at or below sea level, but diking has enabled it to become one of the most densely populated and important economic regions on the continent.

Answer 4

navigation
went thru populated area
went thru industrial area