Murten. West of this valley lie Lake Neuchâtel and Lake Biel, and beyond that the Jura mountains. The valley is flat and was subject to flooding until 1878, when a major hydraulic engineering project changed the courses of the Aare and the Zihl and lowered the level of the three lakes by . In addition, water from the Aare, the Broye, the Zihl, and the Schüss was diverted into the Nidau-Büren Canal and the Hagneck Canal. Coat of arms The blazon of the municipal coat of arms is Azure a Fleur-de-lys Argent ringed Or on a Mount of 3 Coupeaux Vert. Demographics Lyss has a population () of . , 16.0% of the population are resident foreign nationals. Over the last 10 years (2000–2010) the population has changed at a rate of 9.4%. Migration accounted for 7.9%, while births and deaths accounted for 1.7%. Most of the population () speaks German (9,072 or 85.1%) as their first language, Italian is the second most common (356 or 3.3%) and Spanish is the third (271 or 2.5%). There are 196 people who speak French and 6 people who speak Romansh. , the population was 49.0% male and 51.0% female. The population was made up of 4,803 Swiss men (40.6% of the population) and 992 (8.4%) non-Swiss men. There were 5,131 Swiss women (43.4%) and 89 (0.8%) non-Swiss women. Of the population in the municipality, 2,676 or about 25.1% were born in Lyss and lived there in 2000. There were 4,146 or 38.9% who were born in the same canton, while 1,642 or 15.4% were born somewhere else in Switzerland, and 1,865 or 17.5% were born outside of Switzerland. , children and teenagers (0–19 years old) make up 24.3% of the population, while adults (20–64 years old) make up 63.7% and seniors (over 64 years old) make up 12%. , there were 4,434 people who were single and never married in the municipality. There were 5,101 married individuals, 510 widows or widowers and 614 individuals who are divorced. , there were 5,367 private households in the municipality, and an average of 2.3 persons per household. There were 1,511 households that consist of only one person and 220 households with five or more people. , a total of 4,533 apartments (93.3% of the total) were permanently occupied, while 205 apartments (4.2%) were seasonally occupied and 123 apartments (2.5%) were empty. , the construction rate