page_title: Geography of Austria
section_title: Human geography
hierarchical_section_title: Geography of Austria / Human geography
caption_attribution_description: Satellite image of Austria with provincial capitals and other annotations
context_page_description: Austria is a small, predominantly mountainous country in Central Europe, approximately between Germany, Italy and Hungary. It has a total area of 83,879 km², about twice the size of Switzerland.
  The landlocked country shares national borders with Switzerland and the principality of Liechtenstein to the west, Germany and the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the north, Hungary to the east, and Slovenia and Italy to the south.
  The westernmost third of the somewhat pear-shaped country consists of a narrow corridor between Germany and Italy that is between 32 km and 60 km wide. The rest of Austria lies to the east and has a maximum north–south width of 280 km. The country measures almost 600 km in length, extending from Lake Constance on the Austrian-Swiss-German border in the west to the Neusiedler See on the Austrian-Hungarian border in the east. The contrast between these two lakes – one in the Alps and the other a typical steppe lake on the westernmost fringe of the Hungarian Plain – illustrates the diversity of Austria's landscape.
context_section_description: Land-use patterns in Austria change from Alpine to non-Alpine regions. Approximately one-tenth of Austria is barren or unproductive, that is, extremely Alpine or above the tree line. Just over 40% of Austria is covered by forests, the majority of which is in Alpine regions. Less than one-fifth of Austria is arable and suitable for conventional agriculture. The percentage of arable land in Austria increases in the East as the country becomes less alpine. More than one-fifth of Austria is pasture and meadow located at varying altitudes. Almost half of this grassland consists of high Alpine pastures.
  Historically, high Alpine pastures have been used during the summer for grazing dairy cattle, thus making space available at lower altitudes for cultivating and harvesting fodder for winter. Many of the high pastures are at altitudes of more than 1,000 m.
  Although agriculture in mountainous areas was at one time economically viable, in recent decades it has survived only with the help of extensive subsidies. A concern of farmers in these mountainous regions is that membership of the European Union might entail a curtailment of these subsidies and the end of Alpine agriculture. If this occurs, many areas will be reclaimed by nature after centuries of cultivation.
  Although the Alps are beautiful, they make many areas of Austria uninhabitable. Austria's so-called areas of permanent settlement – regions that are cultivated, continuously inhabited, and used for transportation, but do not include forests, Alpine pastures, or barren land – cover only 40% or 35,000 km² of the country. The great majority of the area of permanent settlement is in the Danube valley and the lowlands or hilly regions north, east, and south of the Alps, where approximately two-thirds of the population lives.
  In the country's predominantly Alpine provinces, most of the population live in river valleys: Bregenz on the shores of Lake Constance in Vorarlberg; Innsbruck on the Inn River in Tyrol; Salzburg on the Salzach River in Salzburg; and Klagenfurt on the Wörthersee lake in Carinthia. The higher the Alps are, the less inhabitable they become in terms of soil, microclimate, and vegetation. Conversely, the lower and broader the Alpine valleys are, the more densely populated they become.
  Tyrol illustrates most clearly the relationship between Alpine geography and habitation. As the most mountainous province (less than 3% of the land is arable), it is the most sparsely inhabited, with an area of permanent settlement of only 15%.
  Because of the Alps, the country as a whole is one of the least densely populated states of Western and Central Europe. With ninety-three inhabitants per square kilometre, Austria has a population density similar to that of the former Yugoslavia.
  Austria's national borders and geography have corresponded very little. Since the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the Alps and the Danube have not served to mark political boundaries. Even within Austria, provincial borders were only occasionally set by the ranges and ridges of the Alps.
  Although the Alps did not mark political boundaries, they often separated groups of people from one another. Because in the past the Alps were impassable, inhabitants isolated in valleys or networks of valleys developed distinct regional subcultures. Consequently, the inhabitants of one valley frequently maintained dialects, native or traditional dress, architectural styles, and folklore that substantially differed from those of the next valley. Differences were great enough that the origins of outsiders could easily be identified. However, mass media, mobility, prosperity, and tourism have eroded the distinctness of Alpine regional subcultures to a great extent by reducing the isolation that gave them their particular character.
  Despite the Alps, Austria has historically been a land of transit. The Danube valley, for centuries Central Europe's aquatic link to the Balkan Peninsula and the "Orient" in the broadest sense of the word, has always been an avenue of east–west transit. However, Europe's division into
caption: Annotated satellite map of Austria
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