Land Use
arable land: 3.3% (in use; some more marginal areas are not in use or used as pastures)
permanent crops: 0%
permanent pastures: 0%
forests and woodland: 38% of land area is covered by forest; 21% by conifer forest, 17% deciduous forest,; increasing as many pastures in the higher elevations and some coastal, man-made heaths are no longer used or reforested, and due to warmer summers.
other: 59% (mountains and heaths 46%, bogs and wetlands 6.3%, lakes and rivers 5.3%, urban areas 1.1%). Source: Moen et al.: Vegetasjon: National Atlas of Norway)
Irrigated land: 970 km² (1993 est.)
Natural hazards:
- Winter storms with hurricane strength wind speed along the coast and in the mountains are not uncommon. For centuries one out of four males in coastal communities were lost at sea.
- Avalanches on steep slopes, especially in the northern part of the country and in mountain areas. 16 Norwegian soldiers on exercise were killed by an avalanche in Vassdalen in Narvik municipality on March 5, 1986.
- Landslides have on occasions killed people, mostly in areas with soil rich in marine clay, as in lowland areas near Trondheimsfjord.
- Tsunamis have killed people; usually caused by parts of mountains (rockslide) falling into fjords or lakes. This happened 1905 in Loen in Stryn when parts of Ramnefjell fell into Loenvatnet lake, causing a 40 m tsunami which killed 61 people. It happened again the same place in 1936, this time with 73 victims. 40 people were killed in Tafjord in Norddal in 1934.
Read more about this topic: Geography Of Norway
Famous quotes containing the word land:
“I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.”
—Bible: Hebrew, Exodus 3:7,8.
“Every New Englander might easily raise all his own breadstuffs in this land of rye and Indian corn, and not depend on distant and fluctuating markets for them. Yet so far are we from simplicity and independence that, in Concord, fresh and sweet meal is rarely sold in the shops, and hominy and corn in a still coarser form are hardly used by any.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)