Germany is turning abandoned coal mines into 23 lakes and a wetland landscape

In eastern Germany, enormous pits carved into the landscape by decades of lignite mining are being transformed into a vast network of lakes, wetlands and restored land. The Lusatian Lakeland, spread across Brandenburg and Saxony between Berlin and Dresden, is being created by flooding former open-cast mines and reshaping their surroundings. The tourist destination now comprises 23 post-mining lakes covering about 14,000 hectares of water. The transformation began with Lake Senftenberg in 1967 and has continued for decades, turning one of Germany's major coal-producing regions into a new water landscape. The project combines environmental restoration with tourism, recreation and long-term rehabilitation of land heavily altered by mining.Germany transforms coal pits to a giant lake landscapeLusatia was one of Germany's major lignite-mining regions, and open-cast extraction left huge excavated areas after the coal was removed. The first major step towards their transformation began in 1967, when the former Niemtsch open-cast mine started filling to create Lake Senftenberg. Flooding was completed in 1972, and the lake opened for public use the following year. Since then, numerous other...