2) Data

The land use data in the city of Innsbruck and its surroundings were obtained from the Urban Atlas of the European Environment Agency. The agency provides comparable and high-resolution land use maps for 305 large urban zones of more than 100.000 inhabitants. A simplified land use map was created to better visualise the principal types of land use (figure 1).

 Figure 1: Land use map for the district of Innsbruck

Thanks to a comparison with a digital elevation model (obtained from the office "Amt der Tiroler Landesregiering Landesstatistik", 2013), we observe that the land use pattern follows the topography of the region (figure 2). Indeed, urban fabrics are located in the valley, then around we observe agricultural lands, semi-natural sites or wetlands. When the elevation increases, forests are becoming dominant. We can suppose that at a higher altitude (over 2000 meters), due to the environmental conditions, the land use represented in yellow is not agricultural lands dedicated to food production anymore.

 Figure 2: Elevation map for the district of Innsbruck