Designing deserts? The role of eighteenth-century ideas and drainage schemes in the long-term landscape change of the Campine area (Belgium)

Desertification has become a primary concern in Europe and not only in the Mediterranean. During the drought of 2020, experts exclaimed that the desertification process had started in a natural reserve in the north of Belgium (Kalmthoutse heide). According to most scientists, global warming and paving the surface with impermeable materials are the main causal factors. One particular practice has received scant attention however: drainage. This project will study how societal choices designed long-term landscape change and current desertification processes. We will analyze the impact of historical drainage in one particular region in Belgium: The Campine area. This is one of the driest areas of Belgium but it included several extremely wet and water-rich regions in the premodern period. We will investigate via an interdisciplinary approach when, why, and how this area underwent a fundamental landscape change to arrive on the list of sites at risk of desertification. By combining historical, cartographic, archaeological, and pedological approaches, we will test the hypothesis that the arrival of new agronomic perspectives during the eighteenth century led to fundamentally new drainage practices that laid the foundation of the drought-prone region that we see today.