Martin Schmid, along with co-authors Gertrud Haidvogl, Severin Hohensinner published an article titled ‘Waterway, power plant chain, river landscape: A short environmental history of the Danube’  in the magazine Geographic Round-view - Issue 10/2024 (October). This article is mainly targeted at school teachers of Class level 11 (until 13th School year), as well as high school students.

The article (in Deutsch) tells the environmental history of the Danube river, its genesis, its former floodplains that are now being intensively built up, and basic knowledge for more sustainable use of the river in the light of current climate change.

Today, the Danube serves primarily as a waterway, from Germany to Slovakia and the “Iron Gate” on the Serbian-Romanian border also for electricity production. Former floodplains are intensively used and must be protected against flooding. The Danube is an industrialised river landscape in which social, ecological and hydrological systems are coupled. The environmental history researches their long-term genesis and thus also provides basic knowledge for a more sustainable use of rivers in times of climate change, energy transition and biodiversity loss.