Geography of Austria
[1][2] The westernmost third of the somewhat pear-shaped country consists of a narrow corridor between Germany and Italy that is between 32 and 60 km (20 and 37 mi) wide.
[1] The major rivers north of the watershed of the Austrian Alps (the Inn in Tyrol, the Salzach in Salzburg, and the Enns in Styria and Upper Austria) are direct tributaries of the Danube and flow north into the Danube valley, whereas the rivers south of the watershed in central and eastern Austria (the Gail and Drau rivers in Carinthia and the Mürz and Mur in Styria) flow south into the drainage system of the Drau, which eventually empties into the Danube in Serbia.
[1] Just over 28% of Austria is moderately hilly or flat: the Northern Alpine Foreland, which includes the Danube Valley; the lowlands and hilly regions in northeastern and eastern Austria, which include the Danube Basin; and the rolling hills and lowlands of the Southeastern Alpine Foreland.
[1] Austria's least mountainous landscape is southeast of the low Leithagebirge, which forms the southern lip of the Vienna Basin, where the steppe of the Hungarian Plain begins.
[1] The granite massif of the Bohemian Forest (known in German as the Böhmerwald), a low mountain range with bare and windswept plateaus and a harsh climate, is located north of the Danube Valley and covers the remaining 10% of Austria's area.
[1] 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.
[1] Many of the high pastures are at altitudes of more than 1,000 m.[1] Although agriculture in mountainous areas was at one time economically viable, in recent decades it has survived only with the help of extensive subsidies.
[1] 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.
[1] 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.
[1] 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.
[1] 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.
[1] However, Europe's division into two opposing economic and military blocs after World War II diminished Austria's importance as a place of transit.
[1] After the outbreak of hostilities in Yugoslavia in the summer of 1991, however, a substantial amount of this traffic was re-routed through the Danube Valley and Hungary.
[1] The Atlantic maritime climate from the northwest is characterized by low-pressure fronts, mild air from the Gulf Stream, and precipitation.
[1] Mediterranean high-pressure systems from the south are characterized by few clouds and warm air, and they influence the weather of the southern slopes of the Alps and that of the Southeastern Alpine Foreland, making them the most temperate part of Austria.
[1] During the winter, the rapid warming that accompanies a föhn can thaw the snow cover in the Alps to such an extent that avalanches occur.
[1] Given the importance of Alpine skiing for the Austrian tourist industry, December is the month during which the weather is watched with the greatest anticipation.
[1] However, a predominance of cold, dry continental systems or warm Mediterranean ones inevitably postpone the beginning of the ski season.
[1] Work is also under way to develop a "piggy-back" system of loading semitrailers on to flatbed railroad cars in southern Germany and northern Italy, transporting them through Tyrol by rail.
[1] Austria's proximity to industrialized regions of former Communist states, with negligible or no pollution control policies or equipment, combined with the influence of continental weather systems also have proved to be extremely harmful.
[1] In extreme cases, they have up to twenty hotel beds for each inhabitant, a ratio that places a disproportionate seasonal burden on communal infrastructures and the environment.
[1] For these reasons, efforts have been made to introduce "green" or "soft" forms of tourism that are more compatible with the Alpine environment.
[1] Part of the solution to Austria's ecological problems is being sought in stricter environmental legislation at the domestic level.
[1] Ultimately, however, pan-European and global cooperation in the realm of pollution and emission control will be necessary to protect the country's environment.
