With two-thirds of the Dutch population living below sea level, droughts can quickly become an acute problem in the Netherlands, leading to rivers silting up and hampering water traffic.

The Hague (AFP) – The Netherlands declared an official water shortage on Wednesday as the low-lying "land of water" was hit by Europe's sweltering summer. The Dutch ... from the sea by a famed ...

In a corner of the Rijksmuseum hangs a seventeenth-century cityscape by the Dutch Golden Age painter ... poles with the fluctuations of the water. Whereas Sea Palace is essentially a glorified ...

which is slightly lower than sea level. NAP is used as a base to measure how high or low water levels are in Dutch rivers. So when the river Rhine is high, it is described as a certain number of ...