Geography

Belarus is a landlocked country covering an area of 207,600 sq km, making it the 85th largest country after Guyana, and just slightly smaller than the UK. It is bordered by Latvia (north), Lithuania (northwest), Poland (west), Russia (north and east) and Ukraine (south).

The country is relatively flat (the average elevation is 162 metres above sea level), and contains large tracts of marshy land, with lakes and rivers punctuating the landscape. The largest marsh territory is Polesia, which is also amongst the largest marshes in Europe. Belarus is home, along with Poland, to the Belaveskaya or, by its Polish name, Bialowieza Forest, the only virginal remaining part of the immense forest which once spread across the European Plain.

There are 11,000 lakes in Belarus, but the majority of the lakes are smaller than 0.5 square kilometres (124 acres). Three major rivers run through the country, the Neman River, the Pripyat River and the Dnepr River. Belarus' highest point is Dzyarzhynskaya Hara (Dzyarzhynsk Hill), 345 metres (1,132 ft), and its lowest point is on the Neman River, 90 metres (295 ft).

Topography

Belarus's mostly level terrain is broken up by the Belarusian Range (Byelaruskaya Hrada), a swath of elevated territory, composed of individual highlands, that runs diagonally through the country from west-southwest to east-northeast. Its highest point is the 346-metrre Mount Dzyarzhynskaya (Dzerzhinskaya, in Russian), named for Felix Dzerzhinskiy, head of Russia's security apparatus under Stalin. Northern Belarus has a picturesque, hilly landscape with many lakes and gently sloping ridges created by glacial debris. In the south, about one-third of the republic's territory around the Prypyats' (Pripyat', in Russian) River is taken up by the low-lying swampy plain of the Belarusian Woodland, or Palyessye (Poles'ye in Russian).

Nearly one-third of the country is covered with pushchy (sing., pushcha), large unpopulated tracts of forests. In the north, conifers predominate in forests that also include birch and alder; farther south, other deciduous trees grow. The Belavezhskaya (Belovezhskaya, in Russian) Pushcha in the far west is the oldest and most magnificent of the forests; a reservation here shelters animals and birds that became extinct elsewhere long ago. The reservation spills across the border into Poland; both countries jointly administer it.

Drainage

Belarus's 3,000 streams and 4,000 lakes are major features of the landscape and are used for floating timber, shipping, and power generation. Major rivers are the west-flowing Zakhodnyaya Dzvina (Zapadnaya Dvina in Russian) and Nyoman (Neman in Russian) rivers, and the south-flowing Dnyapro (Dnepr in Russian) with its tributaries, Byarezina (Berezina in Russian), Sozh, and Prypyats' rivers. The Prypyats' River has served as a bridge between the Dnyapro flowing to Ukraine and the Vistula in Poland since the period of Kievan Rus'. Lake Narac, the country's largest lake, covers eighty square kilometres.

Natural Resources

As forest covers about 34% of the total landscape, forestry products are one of the most abundant natural resources in Belarus. Other natural resources to be found in Belarus include peat deposits, small quantities of oil and natural gas, granite, dolomite limestone, marl, chalk, sand, gravel and clay. About one fifth of the territory, mostly in the South-Eastern provinces of Homyel and Mahilyow, continues to be affected by fallout from the 1986 nuclear power plant disaster in Chernobyl, Ukraine. While the amount of radiation has decreased since the disaster, most of the area is considered uninhabitable.