Augst

Augst (Swiss German: Augscht) is a municipality in the district of Liestal in the canton of Basel-Country in Switzerland. It was known as Augusta Raurica in Roman times. Augst is first mentioned in 615 as Augustodunensem praesulem. In 752 it was mentioned as Augusta and in 1288 as Augst. Augst has an area, , of . Of this area, or 34.8% is used for agricultural purposes, while or 6.7% is forested. Of the rest of the land, or 40.2% is settled (buildings or roads), or 17.1% is either rivers or lakes. Of the built up area, industrial buildings made up 6.1% of the total area while housing and buildings made up 11.0% and transportation infrastructure made up 15.9%. Power and water infrastructure as well as other special developed areas made up 1.8% of the area while parks, green belts and sports fields made up 5.5%. Out of the forested land, 4.9% of the total land area is heavily forested and 1.8% is covered with orchards or small clusters of trees. Of the agricultural land, 18.9% is used for growing crops and 14.6% is pasture-land, while 1.2% is used for orchards or vine crops. All the water in the municipality is flowing water. The municipality is located in the Liestal district, near the mouth of the Ergolz river. It consists of the linear village of Augst. The blazon of the municipal coat of arms is Gules, a Lion's head Argent issuant langued and crowned Or. Augst has a population () of . , 16.7% of the population are resident foreign nationals. Over the last 10 years (1997–2007) the population has changed at a rate of 10.6%. Its population was comparable to its current level around 1910, or the early twentieth century. Most of the population () speaks German (804 or 84.6%), with Italian language and Serbo-Croatian being second and third most common (28 or 2.9%). There are 17 people who speak French and 1 person who speaks Romansh. the gender distribution of the population was 49.4% male and 50.6% female. The population was made up of 736 Swiss citizens (82.5% of the population), and 156 non-Swiss residents (17.