Harm Jan PierikRijksdienst voor Cultureel Erfgoed · Landschap
Harm Jan Pierik
Dr.
Researcher Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands
About
52
Publications
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Introduction
What can we learn from past landscapes? As a physical geographer I study the Quaternary geology and landscape evolution of lowland areas. I am fascinated by the driving processes that shape these areas and by their interaction with humans. I work interdisciplinary to translate this knowledge into solutions for heritage management and societal challenges.
Additional affiliations
May 2017 - February 2021
Publications
Publications (52)
Holocene drift-sand activity in the northwest European sand belt is commonly directly linked to population pressure (agricultural activity) or to climate change (e.g. storminess). In the Pleistocene sand areas of the Netherlands, small-scale Holocene drift-sand activity began in the Mesolithic, whereas large-scale sand drifting started during the M...
This paper demonstrates the decisive role of natural preconditions on the formation of large late Holocene sea ingressions in peaty coastal plains along the North Sea’s southern shores. Geological and archaeological evidence shows that these sea ingressions (expansion of new tidal systems) were mainly caused by land subsidence, which occurred due t...
This paper presents reconstructions on natural levee development in the Rhine-Meuse delta, the Netherlands, during the first millennium CE, covering the full delta plain. It is the first study that performs this on a delta scale, which allows seeing the delta-wide trends on levee-forming controls and their feedbacks. We mapped the levee morphology...
Settlement locations in delta landscapes change through time because of cultural and natural dynamics. We assessed the impact of natural-landscape dynamics on settlement-location shifts for the Rhine-Meuse delta in the Netherlands during the Roman and early-medieval periods (12 BCE–450 CE and 450–1050 CE respectively). During this time interval maj...
Dekzandvormen zijn alom aanwezig in het pleistocene zandlandschap. Ze zijn gevormd tijdens de laatste ijstijd en van groot belang voor de archeologie en het historische landschap. In dit artikel wordt ingegaan op de grote diversiteit in dekzandreliëf in Nederland – van kleine lage kopjes tot lange ruggen met hoge duinen. Hun variatie biedt een vens...
In the transformation from tidal systems to freshwater coastal landscapes, plants act as eco‐engineering species that reduce hydrodynamics and trap sediment, but nature and timing of the mechanisms of land creation along estuaries remains unclear. This article focuses on the Old Rhine estuary (The Netherlands) to show the importance of vegetation i...
The sedimentary-stratigraphic record is regularly considered only in the context of regional climate, tectonic configuration, and sea-level. In this study we provide examples of how biotically influenced autogenic processes may come to be overprinted on these extrinsic, allogenic controls. A sedimentological analysis is given for the Mississippian...
Mud plays a pivotal role in estuarine ecology and morphology. However, field data on the lateral and vertical depositional record of mud is rare. Furthermore, numerical morphodynamic models often ignore mud due to long computational times and simplifications of mixed depositional processes. This study aims to understand the spatial distribution, fo...
Many delta systems worldwide are becoming increasingly urbanized following a variety of processes, including land reclamation, embanking, major engineering and port constructions, dredging and more. Here, we trace the development of one system, the Rhine-Meuse delta in the Netherlands (RMD) from two natural estuaries (the RME fed by the Rhine river...
Estuaries comprise channels vital for economic activity and bars as valuable habitats. They are increasingly under human‐induced pressures (e.g., sea‐level rise and dredging), resulting in morphological changes that affect navigability, flood safety and ecology. Antecedent geology may strongly steer how estuary channels will adapt to these pressure...
Many Holocene estuaries were infilled to form convergent, single‐channel systems, while others remained partially or wholly unfilled. This difference in the degree of infilling depends partly on the balance between fluvial and coastal sediment input and the hydrodynamics that can export sediment. However, it remains unclear to what degree this bala...
The first millennium AD encompasses the Roman period (12 BC to AD 450) and the Early Middle Ages (AD 450 to 1050). In the Netherlands, this millennium saw population growth, steep decline and subsequent revival. In addition, many changes occurred in the physical landscape, marking a transition from a mainly natural prehistorical lowland landscape t...
Natural levees are common features in river, delta and tidal landscapes. They are elevated near‐channel morphological features that determine the connection between channel and floodbasin, and consequently affect long‐term evolution up to delta‐scales. Despite their relevance in shaping fluvial‐tidal systems, research on levees is sparse and often...
Reconstruction of past topography in palaeo-DEMs serves various geomorphological analyses. Constructing a palaeo-DEM by stripping young elements from a LiDAR DEM can provide results for large study areas at high resolution. However, such a ‘top-down’ approach is more suited to recent periods and geomorphologically static parts of the landscape than...
Geological, geomorphological and soil maps provide important information on the substrate as well as on the past and present physical landscape. For the intensely studied Netherlands coastal plain and Rhine–Meuse delta, many such map datasets have been compiled over the last two centuries. These mapping materials comprise older and younger legacy d...
The effects of sea-level rise on the future morphological functioning of estuaries are largely unknown because tidal amplitudes will change due to combined deepening of the estuary mouth and shifting amphidromic points at sea. Fluvial sediment supply is also globally decreasing, which hampers infilling necessary to maintain elevation relative to se...
Mud plays a pivotal role in estuary ecology and morphology. Effectsof mud are often ignored in morphodynamic studies due to longer compu-tational times and limited field data. This study aims to understand thespatial distribution of mud layers in tidal bars, their formative conditions,preservation potential and their effects on the morphology of ti...
River landscapes can be regarded as amongst the most densely populated regions in the world. Despite their dynamic nature and their susceptibility to natural hazards, pull factors such as fertile soils and trade connections always have attracted people to these regions. During the Roman (12 BCE – 450 CE) and early-medieval periods (450 CE–1050) the...
The long‐term morphodynamic evolution of estuaries depends on a combination of antecedent topography and boundary conditions, including fluvial input, sea‐level change and regional‐landscape interactions. Identifying effects of such boundary conditions on estuary evolution is important to anticipate future changes in specific boundary conditions an...
This dataset contains landscape reconstructions of the Rhine-Meuse delta for the first millennium AD, which is the last millennium before large-scale river embankment. The dataset provides a detailed integrated reconstruction of the landscape of natural levees (alluvial ridges) and residual channel landforms throughout the delta (Pierik et al., 201...
Although the shifting of deltaic river branches (avulsion) is a natural process that has become increasingly influenced by humans, the impact of early human activities as a driver of avulsion success has remained poorly explored. This study demonstrates how two important avulsions in the downstream part of the Rhine-Meuse delta, The Netherlands, we...
In this study we apply an evidence-based approach to model population-size fluctuations and their corresponding impact on land use during the Roman and early-medieval periods in the Rhine–Meuse delta in the present-day Netherlands. Past-population numbers are reconstructed based on Roman and early-medieval settlement patterns. Corresponding impacts...
Utrecht University's "Low Land Genesis" borehole descriptions from 1959-1990 have been digitized since the 1990ies, importantly during a 2017 project (DANS KDP scheme) focusing on corings by staff, next to corings by students. Borehole descriptions of younger years were mostly made digital right after collection. The database contains borehole desc...
Using archaeological, physical-geographical and tree-ring data we identified several major, mainly river-based, Roman and Early-Medieval long-distance transport routes in the Netherlands. Although these routes varied through time, they have a strong common denominator: during the whole of the 1st millennium AD, a consistent south-north (and vice ve...
This GIS dataset contains a new national overview of the occurrence of drift-sand activity in the Netherlands from ca. 5000 BC to AD 1700. The dataset has been compiled from overview studies, field studies and new data.
Estuaries and tidal embayments are partly enclosed coastal bodies of water with a free connection to the open sea at their tidal inlet and with minimal (tidal embayments) or substantial fluvial input (estuaries). Their tidal inlets can only remain open over multiple centuries to millennia when (1) the formation of accommodation space exceeds infill...
With the aim of providing ‘knowledge for informed choices’, a series of tools have been developed for archaeological heritage management in the Netherlands. They include maps, datasets, methods, guidelines, best practice and web-based applications to facilitate the effective and efficient selection of valuable archaeological remains. The products r...
In a geological GIS-data recombination project, a digital map was produced that contains information on the Netherlands’ former coastal and delta plain landscapes over the last 14,000 years: the Holocene and the very end of the Pleistocene. The polygon map product is accompanied by a set of palaeoDEMs (Digital Elevation Models) indicating the atten...
Geological-geomorphological reconstructions are important for integrating diverse types of data and improving understanding of landscape formation processes. This works especially well in densely populated Holocene landscapes, where large quantities of raw data are produced by geotechnical, archaeological, soil science and hydrological communities...
The Dutch coast consists of beach barriers and tidal inlet systems which dynamically developed during the Holocene. The resulting coastal plain geology has been studied extensively since the beginning of the 20th century, in various ways and from different backgrounds. Today, a large amount of heterogeneous data and many regional studies are availa...
Geological survey of the Hondsrug Megaflute, Drenthe, The Netherlands: the base of a unique new European Geopark
Ice streams always reflects an unbalance between accumulation and ablation in ice sheets and along ice sheet margins they are highly variable and dynamic in space and time. Present-day and Last Glacial examples of ice streams demonstrate a behaviour of switching on and off; acceleration and deceleration, migration and change of direction. The situa...
Some 170,000-150,000 years ago (during MIS 6), large ice masses last covered the Netherlands and NW Germany (Saalian Drenthe Substage). This left many geomorphological features in the landscape, e.g. ice-pushed ridges, sandurs and glacial basins. Throughout the 20th century extensive research has been revealed on this geomorphological assemblage an...
De Needse Berg is een kleine stuwwal in het noordelijk deel van de Achterhoek. Deze 15 m hoge heuvel maakt deel uit van een complex van stuwwallen dat gevormd is tijdens de voorlaatste ijstijd. Er is veel onduidelijk over de exacte ontstaanswijze van dit complex en vooral over de volgorde waarop de verschillende stuwwallen gevormd zijn. De Needse B...
Incomp[lete knowledge of the quartenary history of Drenthe provides a missing link in landscape planning, the protection of geoheritage values and nature- and landscape development. Two studies are presented: a case-study of brook valley sustem and a glaciological interpretation of Saalian till as a base for actual landscape and geo-ecohydrological...