The Geography of the Netherlands makes the Netherlands one of the most unique countries on Earth. This is due to the fact that much of its land was reclaimed from the sea and is below sea level, protected by dikes.

Geographic coordinates: ca. 51° - 53° N, 4° - 7° E

• 1 degree = 111 km NS, 68 km EW (the ratio is 0.61, the cosine of the latitude)
• 1 minute = 1,850 m NS (ca. 1 nautical mile), 1,140 m EW
• 1 second = 31 m NS, 19 m EW

Also the Dutch RD coordinate system (Rijksdriehoeksmeting) is common, see [1] (pdf, in Dutch; see little map on p.1) and converter. There is a west-east coordinate between 0 and 280 km, and a south-north coordinate between 300 and 620 km.

The reference point is the Onze-Lieve-Vrouwentoren (Our Lady's tower) in Amersfoort, with RD coordinates (155.000, 463.000) and geographic coordinates ca. 52°9′N 5°23′E.

Rate of change of solar time: 1 minute per 17 km EW.

Highest altitude of the Sun on a day varies at the center from 38.5 - 23.5 = 15 degrees in December to 38.5 + 23.5 = 62 degrees in June. This occurs, depending on east-west location, at ca. 11:40 UTC, i.e. local time 12:40 in winter and 13:40 in summer.

Map references: Europe

Area:
total: 41,526 km²
land: 33,883 km²
water: 7,643 km²

Land boundaries:
total: 1,027 km
border countries: Belgium 450 km, Germany 577 km

Coastline: 451 km

Maritime claims:
exclusive fishing zone: 200 nautical miles (370 km)
territorial sea: 12 nautical miles (22 km)

Climate: temperate; marine; cool summers and mild winters

Terrain: mostly coastal lowland and reclaimed land (polders); some hills in southeast

Elevation extremes:
lowest point: Zuidplaspolder (Nieuwerkerk aan den IJssel) -7 m
highest point: Vaalserberg 321 m

Natural resources: natural gas, petroleum, arable land

Land use:
arable land: 25%
permanent crops: 3%
permanent pastures: 25%
forests and woodland: 8%
other: 39% (1996 est.)

Irrigated land: 6,000 km² (1996 est.)

Natural hazards: the extensive system of dikes, dams and sand dunes protect nearly one-half of the total area from being flooded

Environment - current issues: water pollution in the form of heavy metals, organic compounds, and nutrients such as nitrates and phosphates; air pollution from vehicles and refining activities; acid rain

Environment - international agreements:
party to: Air Pollution, Air Pollution-Nitrogen Oxides, Air Pollution-Sulphur 85, Air Pollution-Sulphur 94, Air Pollution-Volatile Organic Compounds, Antarctic-Environmental Protocol, Antarctic Treaty, Biodiversity, Climate Change, Desertification, Endangered Species, Environmental Modification, Hazardous Wastes, Law of the Sea, Marine Dumping, Marine Life Conservation, Nuclear Test Ban, Ozone Layer Protection, Ship Pollution, Tropical Timber 83, Tropical Timber 94, Wetlands, Whaling
signed, but not ratified: Air Pollution-Persistent Organic Pollutants, Biodiversity, Climate Change-Kyoto Protocol

Geography - note: located at mouths of three major European rivers (Rhine, Maas or Meuse, and Scheldt)

See also

• List of places in the Netherlands
• Municipalities in the Netherlands
• Extreme points of the Netherlands

External links

• Map showing first two digits of postal codes (see List of postal codes in the Netherlands), ditto
• Map showing first three digits of postal codes for the midwest of the Netherlands
• Locate town or village; find municipality it is part of, range of postal codes, and some other basic data
• Find postal code for a full address, and address for full postal code plus street number
• For each municipality a pdf file - with statistics in Dutch, and with (towards the end) a map showing the neighborhoods (together ca. 11,000), and listing (a few pages further) the population figures etc. as well as the grouping into quarters (together ca 2,400)
• Lists of "places" (towns, villages, and various smaller entities), with municipality: alphabetical (ca. 4,800) - by province (extended, ca. 7,000)

Maps

• Multimap - shows geographic coordinates and allows a direct link to a map for a given location and with a given zoom level; shows all railways from scale 1:500k, all railway stations from 1:50k
• Vialys
• http://www.locatienet.nl/ - almost the same as http://www.routenet.nl - apart from producing maps, also gives address range for a full postal code, and shows the four-digit parts of the postal codes on the maps
• http://www.map24.nl/index.php?language=en (also used by http://www.lycos.nl/lycos/route/ )
• http://www.routemaster.nl/ ; similar or the same:
  • http://route.anwb.nl/zoek_plattegrond.html
  • http://www.andes.nl/ (select "Interactieve kaart"): the same but one has to know the postal code
  • http://www.travelmanager.nl/nl/contentimap/index.html: ditto
  • maps of public transport planner http://www.9292ov.nl
• http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?country=NL&zoom=3
  • to link directly to a city: http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?country=NL&city=, type city at the end of the URL
  • to link directly to a postal code: http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?country=NL&zipcode=, type four-digit code at the end of the URL
  • to link to given geographic coordinates: latlongtype=decimal&latitude=...&longitude=... - a red star shows the location on the map; in the largest scale one pixel is ca. 1.5 m or from 0.000015 degrees; therefore for the number of degrees up to five decimals can make sense for exact pinpointing (although the star size is 16x16 pixels and not transparent, hence a small map detail and ca. one letter of text may be covered by the star)
  • specify zoom level 0-9: add "&zoom=zoom level" (note that the zoom level in MapQuest's hoverbox have numbers which are one more, the range is 1-10)
• http://de.maps.yahoo.com/py/maps.py?country=nl
• Michelin
• NS rail travel planner - contains a detailed map of the whole country; to view a location, specify it as destination and choose an arbitrary point of departure, then ask for the route map of the post transport from the train station. Of course the map shows railroads and train stations clearly. If you specify "Public transport" as means of pre or post transport, you will be redirected to http://www.9292ov.nl (see above).
• Yellow pages / Telephone directory - A map (plattegrond) is provided after searching for a company or person; if one just wants to use the map, do an arbitrary search like [2], select Plattegrond and by zooming out and selecting an area to zoom in go to any part of the map.
• Topographical Service map selection tool (can to some extent be used as a map by itself)
• Single png-map (zip)
• See also the links of:
  • http://www.landkaartenindex.nl/nederland/nederland.htm ; includes [3], a list of links to towns maps
  • Detailed town maps of Rijnland/Citoplan (note that on the overview maps, for enlargement one can often either select a box or a town and then a box)
  • Detailed town maps of Falkplan (see at the bottom of that webpage)

For public transport maps see Transportation in the Netherlands#External links.

Beach locations are defined by km-pole numbers, indicated on wooden poles every 250 m. See map (zip-file) with beach from Den Helder to Hoek van Holland, showing these numbers and also public transport info.

Satellite images and aerial photograps

Google Maps [4] has imagery for the whole country, with a higher resolution for some rectangular areas:

• Leiden, Katwijk, Noordwijk, Zandvoort, and the northeast of The Hague
• Rotterdam
• Roosendaal
• part of the center of Amsterdam
• the west of south-Limburg

The "map" option (as opposed to the "satellite" option) only gives a low-scale map indicating the country outline and waters. In combination with the downloadable Google Earth, a full map with town and street names, overlaying the satellite image, is provided.

Miscellaneous

• Overview of paper atlases
• Historic map 1658