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Land use

Land use Catalonia. 2004
Value (hectares) Percentage (%)
Forest surface 1,900,506 59.2
Wood 937,784 29.2
Scrubland 472,514 14.7
Other vegetation 490,208 15.3
Areas without vegetation 175,775 5.5
Cropland 921,917 28.7
Rainfed crops 660,149 20.6
Irrigated crops 261,768 8.2
Urban, urbanisable and infrastructures 209,844 6.5
Total 3,208,042 100.0
Source: Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Food.
Land use Spain. 2004
Value (hectares) Percentage (%)
Forest surface 27,631,000 54.7
Areas without vegetation 2,059,000 4.1
Cropland 18,644,000 36.9
Urban, urbanisable and infrastructures 2,205,000 4.4
Total 50,539,000 100.0
Source: Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Environment.
Note: A partir del 2005, les "àrees sense vegetació" estan incloses en el sòl "urbà, urbanitzable i infraestructures".

Last update: December 16, 2014. Revised series on July 23, 2019.

Methodological note

Research into the general land distribution in Catalonia summarises the data from the 1-T survey on land areas occupied by crop cultivation, carried out annually by the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries, Food and Natural Environment in each municipality, with the subsequent aggregation of the data to yield the computation per county and for all of Catalonia.

In 2007 improvements were introduced for the production of these statistics, adding new classification criteria based on geographic information tools (SIGPAC), which particularly impacted the classification what is considered other vegetation, which is now largely redistributed as forest or scrubland, while to a lesser degree it meant less area devoted to cultivation. These changes signify that the data are not necessarily comparable to previous years.

Forest land consists of forested areas, occupied by woods and tree farms; woodlands, occupied by shrubland, thickets, brush, heath, bushes, sub-shrubs and forest/shrubland transitional areas; and areas with other vegetation, such as prairies, pastures, grassland, wetland vegetation and barren pasture.

Crop fields consist of parcels of land planted with annual or multi-year species: arable or woody crops, dry-farmed and irrigated land, and land left fallow.

Areas without vegetation, which include bare soils, rocky outcrops, escarpments, rocky ground, gullies, sand banks and beaches, snowfields, lakes, reservoirs and rivers.

Urban areas and infrastructure correspond to land occupied by cities and towns, low-density urban areas, industrial and commercial areas and road networks.

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