From Iceland — The Protected Iceland

The Protected Iceland

Published July 20, 2010

The Protected Iceland
Rex Beckett

We are loving the maths and indisputable facts these days, so once again we have some wicked ass stats from our buddies over at DataMarket. This time around we have a nice graphic of the area of Icelandic nature that is protected.
The square-pie graph below represents the entire area of Iceland. As you can see a full 5% of the country is a designated national park. There are four national parks in total, but one of those is Vatnajökull, the largest glacier in Europe, so one can’t really do too much with that now can we? Nature reserves make up 3% of the total land area, while country parks (which differ from national parks somehow), and other uses make up 1% each, bringing the total amount of protected natural land to 10%. Which is a lot. Just to put it in perspective, if 10% of the U.S.A. was protected land that would be roughly Texas and Oregon combined. Think about it.

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