How much land is consumed in Germany?

Based on the data of the Monitor of Settlement and Open Space Development, which is based on the official geodata ATKIS Basis-DLM, it has been possible to calculate values for land take in Germany since 2011. A slight downward trend was observed for the years up to 2018. Since 2018, however, values have been rising again, both in total land take and in the construction-related share.

For the year 2020, a value of 57.9 ha/day is determined. This means that the 30 ha target originally set for this year was missed by far. At 45.4 ha, built-up areas account for the largest share (78.4 %) of new land take. The shares of transportation areas (7.3 ha; 12.6 %) and new settlement open spaces (5.2 ha; 9.0 %) are significantly smaller.

The calculation of land consumption requires complex GIS processing steps based on the geometric intersection of two land use geometries. The procedure is described in SCHORCHT et al. (2016). 1

1Schorcht, Martin; Krüger, Tobias; Meinel, Gotthard: Measuring land take: usability of national topographic databases as input for land use change analysis: a case study from Germany, In: ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information 5 (2016) 8, Nr. 134, S. 20, http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijgi5080134


 To the map of "Land take for settlement and transportation area on a 5-year average" at IOER Monitor