Qualla: Sandwater

Sandwater: Introduction

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Frisia Orientalis, CC BY-SA 3.0. Sandwater is doing something most lakes never do twice: vanishing. Five thousand years ago, during the warm Atlantic period that opened up northern Europe to broadleaf forests, water gathered here on the edge of the geest near what is now Simonswolde. Then the climate shifted, the land rose, and the lake quietly dried out. Two thousand years ago, conditions changed again, and Sandwater reappeared in roughly the same place. Now, slowly, the reeds are coming in. Open water that once covered a much larger area has shrunk to about 0.22 square kilometers. Lily pads thicken the surface. Mud accumulates underneath. Stand on the edge of one of East Frisia's few surviving natural inland seas and you are watching a long, slow third disappearance unfold in real time.

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Image: Frisia Orientalis | CC BY-SA 3.0

Sandwater: The Edge of the Geest

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Frisia Orientalis, CC BY-SA 3.0. Geographers have a word for the East Frisian threshold: geest, the sandy uplands that the ice sheets left behind after the last glaciation. South of Aurich, in the municipality of Ihlow, this slightly higher ground bumps up against soft fen country, and Sandwater pools in the sea...

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Image: Frisia Orientalis | CC BY-SA 3.0

Sandwater: The Lake That Cleaned Itself

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Frisia Orientalis, CC BY-SA 3.0. For most of its existence Sandwater filtered itself. Beds of pondweed, floating water-plantain (Luronium natans), and lesser water-plantain (Baldellia ranunculoides) covered the lake floor, drinking up dissolved nutrients and producing the relatively clean, mineral-rich water the...

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Image: Frisia Orientalis | CC BY-SA 3.0

Sandwater: Reeds Winning by Inches

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Christian Fischer, CC BY-SA 4.0. Since 1973 the lake and 59 hectares of surrounding wetland have been protected as a nature reserve, less to preserve the lake than to preserve what the lake supports. The expanding reed beds are the headline ecological feature now. Common reed (Phragmites australis) makes superb ...

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Image: Christian Fischer | CC BY-SA 4.0

Sandwater: An Inland Sea in Miniature

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Frisia Orientalis, CC BY-SA 3.0. What makes Sandwater worth defending is partly what it is and partly what it represents. East Frisia is a land made of water — North Sea coast, Wadden tidal flats, river estuaries, drainage canals, fens and bogs everywhere — and yet the natural standing water of the inland fen la...

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Image: Frisia Orientalis | CC BY-SA 3.0