Average altitude 1700 m (5576 ft.). The Alps determine the climate and vegetation,providing a continental watershed. While the Alps contribute enormously to the Swissidentity, economic activity is concentrated in the Plateau. The PlatueDepopulated mountain regionsTwo thirds of the country is covered by mountains, ice, rocks, forests and alpinemeadows. 11 per cent of the population live in the mountain regions.Urbanized landscape If you travel across the Plateau, from Lake Geneva to Lake Constance, you never passthrough 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 eachother. Cultivated land: green and intensively used.if you travel through the Plateau, you will be amazed at how green the countryside is; itappears to have just been painted. Then you notice how organized everything is, as if ithas been drawn with a ruler. Fields are followed by more fields, with a dense roadnetwork between them. Everything is neat and clearlylaid out. Nowhere will you drivepast endless fields given over to a single crop. Instead, meadows alternate with fieldssown to cereals or other crops. Between them are small woods. The land is usedintensively.Land utilizationThe dense population and economic concentration in the Plateau (30 percent of thecountry's surface area) means that more and more cultivated land is being lost. InSwitzerland as a whole, 1 m2 (11 sq.ft.) of land has been built over every second sincethe early 1980s by encroaching housing and infrastructure. The greatest expansion hasbeen in the conurbations of the Plateau. Even outside the built-up areas there have beenmany changes. Orchards have given way to crops that can be mechanically harvested. Inthe period 1984-95, for every four trees grubbed up, only one was planted. However, thetotal length of hedgerows has increased, and there has been a move towards restoringopen stre...