Geography
Grindelwald has an area, as of 2009, of 171.08 km2 (66.05 sq mi). Of this area, 49.47 km2 (19.10 sq mi) or 28.9% is used for agricultural purposes, while 28.02 km2 (10.82 sq mi) or 16.4% is forested. Of the rest of the land, 3.06 km2 (1.18 sq mi) or 1.8% is settled (buildings or roads), 1.37 km2 (0.53 sq mi) or 0.8% is either rivers or lakes and 89.21 km2 (34.44 sq mi) or 52.1% is unproductive land.
Of the built up area, housing and buildings made up 1.0% and transportation infrastructure made up 0.6%. 12.9% of the total land area is heavily forested and 2.3% is covered with orchards or small clusters of trees. Of the agricultural land, 5.1% is pastures and 23.8% is used for alpine pastures. All the water in the municipality is in rivers and streams. Of the unproductive areas, 6.6% is unproductive vegetation, 24.0% is too rocky for vegetation and 21.6% of the land is covered by glaciers.
The municipality is quite large and is divided into seven mountain communities. However the municipality is dominated by the large village and tourist center of Grindelwald.
Read more about this topic: Grindelwald
Famous quotes containing the word geography:
“Yet America is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it will not wait long for metres.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs, from the most casual matters of geography and history to the profoundest laws of atomic physics or even of pure mathematics and logic, is a man-made fabric which impinges on experience only along the edges. Or, to change the figure, total science is like a field of force whose boundary conditions are experience.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)
“At present cats have more purchasing power and influence than the poor of this planet. Accidents of geography and colonial history should no longer determine who gets the fish.”
—Derek Wall (b. 1965)