Geography Of Belarus

Location:

Eastern Europe, east of Poland

Geographic coordinates:

Map references:

Commonwealth of Independent States

Area:

• Total: 207,600 km

• Land: 207,600 km

• Water: 0 km

Area comparative:

• Australia comparative: slightly smaller than Victoria

• Canada comparative: half the size of Newfoundland and Labrador

• Europe comparative: 13th place, slightly smaller than the United Kingdom and Romania

• United States comparative: slightly smaller than Kansas

Land boundaries:

• Total: 3,098 km

• Border countries: Latvia 141 km, Lithuania 502 km, Poland 605 km, Russia 959 km, Ukraine 891 km

Coastline:

0 km (landlocked)

Maritime claims:

None (landlocked)

Climate:

Transitional between continental and maritime; cold winters (average January temperatures are in the range -8°C to -2°C), cool and moist summers (average temperature 15°C to 20°C).

Terrain:

Generally flat, containing much marshland

Elevation extremes:

• Lowest point: Nyoman River 90 m

• Highest point: Dzyarzhynskaya Hara 345 m

Natural resources:

Forests, peat deposits, small quantities of oil and natural gas, granite, dolomitic limestone, marl, chalk, sand, gravel, clay

Land use:

• Arable land: 29%

• Permanent crops: 1%

• Permanent pastures: 15%

• Forests and woodland: 34%

• Other: 21% (1993 est.)

Irrigated land:

1,150 km (1998 est.)

Water resources:

About 20,000 rivers and streams, with the total length of 91,000 km, and about 11,000 lakes, including 470 lakes with the area exceeding 0.5 km each. Naroch is the largest lake (79.2 km, the deepest point about 25 m). Significant amounts of swampy area, notably in the Polesie region.

Natural hazards:

NA

Environment - current issues:

• Soil pollution from pesticide use.

• South-Eastern part of the country contaminated with fallout from 1986 nuclear reactor accident at Chornobyl, Ukraine, receiving about 60% of total fallout. Vast amounts of territory in Homyel and Mahilyow voblasts rendered uninhabitable. Roughly 7,000 km (2,700 sq.mi.) of soil were contaminated by caesium-137 to levels greater than 15 curies per km, i.e., taken from human usage for indefinite time. In 1996 the areas contaminated over 1 curies per km of caesium-137 constituted about 21% of the total territory (only 1% decrease compared to 1986), and in 2002 over 1.5 mln people still lived in this area.

Environment - international agreements:

• Party to: Air Pollution, Air Pollution-Nitrogen Oxides, Air Pollution-Sulphur 85, Biodiversity, Climate Change, Endangered Species, Environmental Modification, Hazardous Wastes, Marine Dumping, Nuclear Test Ban, Ozone Layer Protection, Ship Pollution, Wetlands

Signed, but not ratified: Law of the Sea

Geography - note:

Landlocked

Reference

External links

• Chernobyl data for Belarus

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