Poland PHYSICAL SETTING
Figure 12. Topography and Drainage
Generally speaking, Poland is an unbroken plain
reaching from
the Baltic Sea in the north to the Carpathian Mountains in
the
south. Within that plain, terrain variations generally run
in
bands from east to west. The Baltic coast lacks natural
harbors
except for the Gdansk-Gdynia region and Szczecin in the
far
northwest. The northeastern region, called the Lake
District, is
sparsely populated and lacks agricultural and industrial
resources. To the south and west of the lake district, a
vast
region of plains extends to the Sudeten (Sidetu) Mountains
on the
Czech and Slovak borders to the southwest and to the
Carpathians
on the Czech, Slovak, and Ukrainian borders to the
southeast. The
country extends 649 kilometers from north to south and 689
kilometers from east to west. Poland's total area is
312,683
square kilometers, including inland waters--a slightly
smaller
area than that of New Mexico. The neighboring countries
are
Germany to the west, the
Czech and Slovak Federative Republic to (see Glossary)
the south, Ukraine and Belarus to the east,
and
Lithuania and the Russian province of Kaliningrad to the
northeast.
Data as of October 1992
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