It is not surprising that the entire catchment of the River Rhine was influenced by engineering projects modifying the river channel and related floodplains over a long time, based on human demand to make use of it. The efforts can be grouped according to their main objectives. Flood protection and drainage of the floodplain represent activities for the protection against the water, while improvements of navigation or built hydro-electric power stations make use of the river water. Following the industrialisation and the accelerated population growth, questions of water supply and sewage disposal became more and more relevant from the mid-19th century (HENNEKING 1994; DIX 1997; CIOC 2003). Nowadays, rehabilitation of previous channel and floodplain modifications can be added as subject, because several projects resulted in unexpected disadvantages like increased peak discharges of floods after melioration of the floodplains. Still most projects have anthropocentric goals, and hence focus on re-cultivation. The rehabilitation of river channels and valley bottoms are only locally considered as their own value. And even at those projects the request to keep control over the river dynamics is left (KALWEIT 1993a, 200). Based on a profound review by KALWEIT (1993b), the main goals of engineering impacts can be regionalized for a general overview, even if activities changed over time and were added to by local projects. The alpine River Rhine endangered settlements and cultivated valleys by floods: the energy of the flood flow destroyed the infrastructure and deposited sediments covered previously fertile fields and gardens. Hence, flood protection became the main target for the uppermost parts of the River Rhine catchment. The broad floodplains of the Upper Rhine downstream of Lake Constance between the Vosges Mountains and the Black Forest were repeatedly inundated for long periods after floods. To cultivate this extended area and to oppose epidemics of typhus and malaria drainage was the main objective. The narrow valleys of the Middle Rhine and most of its tributaries have always been an important traffic route (BOCKING 1979), which needs repeated improvement mainly to provide capacity for the increasing size of ships and intensified traffic. North of the Rheinische Schiefergebirge, where the River Rhine reaches the lowland areas of northwestern Central Europe, flood protection was the most important task, especially in the extended delta areas in the Netherlands. 294 Erdkunde Band 59/2005