At Kilometer 174 the Rhine divides into three channels.

The first is called the old Rhine, though in a geological sense it is brand new. In the middle of the 19th Century, engineers working to the plans of Johann Gottfried Tulla dug a straight, deep, and fast-flowing channel, “correcting” the river which had previously meandered lazily through a watery landscape. Their intent was to tame the stream for navigation and master the floods that brought disease and destitution to the villages along its banks.

The natural character of the Rhine was changed permanently, and only the slimmest vestiges of the original ecosystem remain. Where swamps had been a refuge for wildlife — and a breeding ground for malaria — farmland appeared. The river, for the first time in its millennia of history, was tamed.

The second channel is a result of conflict, and the endless rivalry between France and Germany, whose mutual border is partly formed by the river. Article 358 of the Treaty of Versailles following World War One gave France the right to draw as much water from the stream as it wanted; the Grand Canal of Alsace, beginning here with the hydroelectric plant at Kembs, is the result. The bunkers of the Siegfried Line, a German-built defensive chain reaching north to the Dutch border, can be seen decaying in the undergrowth.

The last stream is a modern effort to make amends. Within the last decade French engineers have carved out a winding channel through the 6-kilometer-long island that appeared between the first two branches of the river. It’s a reserve, an attempt to recreate the ecology that was swept away in the rush to industrial modernity. On the other side of the border, German engineers have rebuilt flood zones, vast troughs designed to hold back water that would otherwise overwhelm defences downstream — a new necessity in a warming world.

This short stretch of Western Europe’s great river is like a manuscript, written and re-written over again, each time expressing the human will of the age.

This is an ongoing, long-term documentation in multiple formats.