Taken from Eurostat.
Click to enlarge:
UPDATE: Further to Kj's comment, I have done another chart to show the amount of developed land relative to the adjusted value* of agricultural land.
Click to enlarge:
* I applied relative values of 1 to arable land, 1/3 to grassland i.e. pastoral land and 1/20 to woodland. I excluded water areas, wetland, scrubland and bare land.
** The list excludes Malta, Cyprus, Bulgaria and Romania.
No wonder he's never around
54 minutes ago
17 comments:
Very illustrative that chart. But you can also see that there is a relative tradeoff between *arable* and urban land.
Arable being a multiple of grassland in terms of productivity, both calories and value.
Kj, I see no trade off whatsoever between arable and urban.
You can download the spread sheet at the bottom of the link and see for yourself.
Or do you mean that the amount which can be urbanised depends on the amount of arable land?
MW: the ratio between arable(cropland) and urban isn't that large. And prime arable tends to be the first choice for expansion of urban land. And a piece of arable land is worth much more than grassland as productive land, so I'd say there is a bigger tradeoff than the chart shows if you look at it from a productive capacity of farmland perspective.
Kj, I think I see what you mean.
We could:
1. completely ignore water, wetland, forest, scrubland and 'bare land' (whatever that is) as being nice to look at but irrelevant in economic terms.
2. Reduce grassland by two-thirds to show its equivalent value in arable land.
3. Finally, look at developed/artificial land as a % of what's left. That might be a more constant proportion, I don't know.
Whys is there so much"artificial" land in UK? Where is it, do you think? Netherlands having so much may be a clue.
DBC: that'd be the same as built on/paved over, not reclaimed.
DBC, I have no idea why they use the expression 'artificial'.
They actually mean 'developed' i.e. it's got buildings or roads on it, or presumably homes and gardens.
Yes but what are the conclusions from that, Mark? It indicates what?
JH, I'm not drawing conclusions, I'm just stating the fact:
1. By and large. most European countries are covered in forests and farms, in some countries it's more of the former and in others more of the latter.
2. The amount of developed land is surprisingly low in most countries, including the UK.
"'bare land' (whatever that is)"
I expect it means desert, moorland, mountain tops etc, going by the fact that Spain has the most of it.
If artificial land denotes built-up there is a trade-off between urban and rural.You somehow include Portugal, which has an amazing amount of woodland, amongst the likes of UK and the Benelux countries.
B, I'd assume so.
DBC, how do you mean "You somehow include Portugal"? That was on their spreadsheet so I included it in the chart.
@MW In the original chart Portugal appears up the top: after your mathematical wizardry in the adjusted chart it appears at the bottom with all the artificial land basket cases, like us.
DBC, the first chart just shows the trade-off between woodland and farmland. It's near the top because it has lots of woodland.
In the second chart it's at the bottom because it has used a relatively large amount of its non-woodland for development.
MW: thanks for the adjusted graph. Still not terribly disconcerting, and if you peek back at the first chart, if we try to avoid cropland, still relatively abundant land to expand on.
Kj, ta, yes, clearly it makes more sense to build on shrubland or grassland than on arable.
As you said above, towns tend to be in the middle of where the arable land is, which is a bit unfortunate. But it can't be impossible to organise this properly.
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