Selzach

Selzach is a municipality in the district of Lebern in the canton of Solothurn in Switzerland. Selzach is first mentioned in 1181 as Selsacho. Selzach has an area, , of . Of this area, or 50.3% is used for agricultural purposes, while or 38.2% is forested. Of the rest of the land, or 9.2% is settled (buildings or roads), or 1.7% is either rivers or lakes and or 0.6% is unproductive land. Of the built up area, housing and buildings made up 4.2% and transportation infrastructure made up 3.3%. Out of the forested land, 35.7% of the total land area is heavily forested and 2.5% is covered with orchards or small clusters of trees. Of the agricultural land, 32.6% is used for growing crops and 9.2% is pastures, while 1.1% is used for orchards or vine crops and 7.3% is used for alpine pastures. All the water in the municipality is flowing water. The municipality is located in the Lebern district. It stretches from the Aare river, at an elevation of , to the Hasenmatt mountain on the edge of the Jura Mountains, at an elevation of . It consists of the village of Selzach, the hamlet of Haag and former city of Altreu. The blazon of the municipal coat of arms is Gules a Salt Cellar Argent. Selzach has a population () of . , 11.9% of the population are resident foreign nationals. Over the last 10 years (1999–2009 ) the population has changed at a rate of 9.1%. Most of the population () speaks German (2,600 or 92.5%), with French being second most common (37 or 1.3%) and Italian being third (33 or 1.2%). the gender distribution of the population was 50.5% male and 49.5% female. The population was made up of 1,347 Swiss men (43.5% of the population) and 217 (7.0%) non-Swiss men. There were 1,352 Swiss women (43.6%) and 183 (5.9%) non-Swiss women. Of the population in the municipality 1,057 or about 37.6% were born in Selzach and lived there in 2000. There were 755 or 26.9% who were born in the same canton, while 574 or 20.4% were born somewhere else in Switzerland, and 292 or 10.4% were born outside of Switzerland.