Multifunctional land use: The Eisenwurzen region of the Austrian Alps

Abstract

Although the Austrian Alps have never been a typical industrialized zone, a few industrialized regions developed. A very good example is the so called Eisenwurzen region with it's iron industry at the Erzberg (Iron Mountain). The term Eisenwurzen refers to a combination of the German word for iron (Eisen) as well as a regional dialect expression for root (Wurzel or Wurzen), which indicates the availability of iron. The iron mountain was and still is one of the largest iron deposits in Europe and was utilized in surface mining. With the beginning of the 15th century the availability of iron led to the development of a booming iron industry (Sandgruber 1997). © 2007 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.