For example on wikipedia for Switzerland it says the country has an area of 41,285 km². Does this take into account that a lot of that area is actually angled at a steep inclination, thus the actual surface area is in effect larger than what you would expect when looking onto a map in satellite view?

  • ricecake@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    3 months ago

    Yup, it’s why grazers are so common in mountainous areas. It’s way easier to manage goats and cows in a mountain, with some fruit, hay and wheat fields to supplement down in the valleys than it is to reshape the steep areas to make them suitable for crops.
    It’s why Switzerland has it’s own type of cheese, and the flattest parts of the US are predominantly known for “lots of corn”.

    To be clear though, the unusable areas I referred to were more the mountains in the background, or the nearly shear cliffs in the middle ground that the shepherd is unlikely to let the (perfectly willing) goats graze on, on account of needing to be able to get the goats later. :)