Geography

The Plateau stretches from Lake Geneva in the south west to Lake Constance in the north east, with an average altitude of 580 m (1902 ft).

It covers about 30 percent of the country`s surface area, but is home to two thirds of the population. There are 450 people to every square kilometre (1,166 per square mile). Few regions in Europe are more densely populated.

Urbanized landscape

If you travel across the Plateau, from Lake Geneva to Lake Constance, you never pass through unpopulated territory. The landscape continually shows signs of man’s presence. When you leave a town, the next one is never far away. Villages lie within sight of each other.

The dense population and economic concentration in the Plateau means that more and more cultivated land is being lost. In Switzerland as a whole, 1 m2 (11 sq.ft.) of land has been built over every second since the early 1980s by encroaching housing and infrastructure. The greatest expansion has been in the conurbations of the Plateau.

Even outside the built-up areas there have been many changes. Orchards have given way to crops that can be mechanically harvested. In the period 1984-95, for every four trees grubbed up, only one was planted. However, the total length of hedgerows has increased, and there has been a move towards restoring open streams, which in previous decades had been built over.

Projects

Switzerland is involved in a number of water-related projects, in Switzerland and abroad aimed at guaranteeing the quality of fresh water and forestalling dangers that might threaten it.

since 1999 Switzerland has been supporting Action N, a campaign aimed at reducing nitrate levels in ground water. The campaign’s primary target is farmers: it provides information about the problem of nitrate infiltration and offers financial incentives for measures to reduce the levels. It has been found, for example, that switching from ploughland to meadow can cut nitrate pollution by up to 60%.