Spiegelplas

The Spiegelplas, which means ‘Mirror Lake’, is situated in the central Netherlands, approximately 20 km southeast of Amsterdam. It was a marsh for thousands of years. The entire area was flooded several times in the past by the nearby Zuiderzee, which remained connected to the North Sea until 1932. Over the last few centuries the peat was removed, and in the 1960s the area was dredged for sand extraction. This left a very large (280 ha) and deep (45 m) lake. At present, the lake has very clear water and is fed only by rainfall and seepage. Its salinity level is about 200 mg Cl/l in summer.

Some interesting species:

Artodiscus saltans
Actinocoma ramosa
Psammonobotius linearis
Rhizamoeba timidum
Hyalosphenia cuneata