ABSTRACT

The Western and Northern European region as delimited here corresponds to the two subregions of the same name as defined by the United Nations Statistical Division. Compared to other subdivision schemes, we also included the western part of Central Europe (Germany, Austria and Switzerland) while eastern Central Europe, based on socioeconomic similarities, is treated in the Eastern European chapter (Török et al., 2018). That way, the current chapter comprises those countries of Europe that were subject to capitalist economy after World War II from the temperate to the arctic zone, while the countries of the Mediterranean zone are treated in a separate chapter (Ambarlı et al., 2018). For pragmatic reasons, we include eastern Germany (the former German Democratic Republic, GDR) in the present chapter. From those countries that partly lie in the temperate and partly in the Mediterranean zone, we consider the northern part of France and the Italian Alps, while Mediterranean France, the major part of Italy and the whole of Spain are covered by Ambarlı et al., 2018. This chapter thus deals with 15 countries and several dependent territories with a total of about 2.7 million km² (Table 3.1).