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A depth chart shows, per river kilometre, how deep the water really is. It is measured against the low water reference level. Red indicates shallow water, with different colours for nearly shallow water or water that is shallower still. The red colour with the safety contour is drawn around the depth that the waterway authority guarantees, or in the case of the Rhine/Waal around the shallows you have to avoid when using the deep rules of thumb (Nijmegen -250/240 cm).
To work out the actual water depth, and to see which colour you have to avoid, take the difference between the low water reference level (OLR) and the current gauge reading. At the bottom of each chart sheet you will find which gauges apply to that stretch.
The official fairway and the buoyage are marked on the chart as well, to make it easier to get your bearings and to make clear how poor the fairway from the navigation charts actually is. Inside the channel it is sometimes deep where it is deeper outside the channel.
For the Dutch rivers, Rijkswaterstaat bed-level files are converted to depth below the reference level for each reach. We also try to produce the German Rhine charts ourselves using the available data, converting it to depth below GlW 2022 where necessary.
The Dutch charts are updated weekly to monthly, depending on how often the stretch is sounded. At the end you can see how the newest survey differs from the previous one, to get a feel for how the river is developing.
The survey data these charts rest on is not ours. The waterway authorities publish it as open data, and without that work this atlas would not exist. Our thanks to them.
Geodaten des Bundes, made available by the Wasserstraßen- und Schifffahrtsverwaltung des Bundes (WSV), in particular the Fachstelle für Geodäsie und Geoinformation der WSV and the waterway offices involved, among them WSA Oberrhein (Rhine) and WSA Donau MDK (Danube), and by the Bundesanstalt für Gewässerkunde (BfG, digital terrain models of the watercourse). The fairway, the buoyage and the other waterway data come from the WSV's Inland ENCs via ELWIS. This data is available as open data under the Geodatenzugangsgesetz (GeoZG) and is used under the GeoNutzV. Part of the data also comes from the digital elevation model of the Rhine by Weber et al. (2020, PANGAEA, doi:10.1594/PANGAEA.919308, CC BY 4.0).
Bed-level data from Rijkswaterstaat (bodemhoogte 1 m, via rijkswaterstaatdata.nl), together with the fairway and buoyage data from Rijkswaterstaat via vaarweginformatie.nl. Both are open data from Rijkswaterstaat.
Compiling, converting, drawing and publishing the chart sheets is the work of PegelTiefgang.
Important: this is an adaptation of the data named above. The soundings have been clipped, merged, interpolated, converted to depth below the low water reference level of the reach in question (GlW 2022, RNW, OLR/OLW) and charted anew. The authorities named took no part in that work and are not responsible for the result. These charts are not an official product of the WSV, the BfG or Rijkswaterstaat, are not approved by them, and are not an official chart for navigation.
The Boven-IJssel is the shallowest part.