Kristianstad Vattenrike Biosphere Reserve, a protected swamp area in the Hammarsjön Lake, surrounding the town of

Kristianstad Kristianstad ( , ) is a Urban areas in Sweden, city and the seat of Kristianstad Municipality, Scania County, Sweden with 41,198 inhabitants in 2023. Since the 1990s, the city has gone from being a garrison town to a developed commercial city, ...

Scania Scania ( ), also known by its native name of Skåne (), is the southernmost of the historical provinces of Sweden, provinces () of Sweden. Located in the south tip of the geographical region of Götaland, the province is roughly conterminous w ...

, southern

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and north, and Finland to the east. At , Sweden is the largest Nordic count ...

. Sweden's lowest point is located in the reserve at below sea level. The point is at the bottom of what was once Nosabyviken, a bay on the lake of Hammarsjön. The bay was drained in the 1860s by John Nun Milner, an

engineer Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who Invention, invent, design, build, maintain and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials. They aim to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while ...

, to get more

arable land Arable land (from the , "able to be ploughed") is any land capable of being ploughed and used to grow crops.''Oxford English Dictionary'', "arable, ''adj''. and ''n.''" Oxford University Press (Oxford), 2013. Alternatively, for the purposes of a ...

for Kristianstad. Established in 2005, it provides habitat for a large number of

endangered An endangered species is a species that is very likely to become extinct in the near future, either worldwide or in a particular political jurisdiction. Endangered species may be at risk due to factors such as habitat loss, poaching, inv ...

species of birds and fish. There are also deposits remaining from the Ice Age, the forests of Hanöbukten Bay and the rich wetlands of the River Helge. The Kristianstad Vattenrike Biosphere Reserve is visited by about 100,000 people every year. The hiking trail

Skåneleden The Skåneleden trail is a Long-distance trail, long-distance walking trail that stretches all over the countryside of Scania, Skåne, in southern Sweden. The trail spans over and is divided into seven sub-trails, with a total of 147 sections. T ...

has a sub-trail named after Vattenrike, traversing it north to south and passing through the town of Kristianstad. Other smaller trails also pass through the reserve, such as Linnérundan, with , partly overlapping with Skåneleden, and the smaller Tivolirundan, with .

References

External links

Vattenriket
Official page, in Swedish and English. Geography of Skåne County Biosphere reserves of Sweden Tourist attractions in Skåne County Kristianstad Municipality 2005 establishments in Sweden 21st-century establishments in Skåne County {{Skåne-geo-stub