Geographic features
Estonia is a low, flat country covering 45,226 square kilometers.
It is about the size of Vermont and New Hampshire combined. Estonia
has a long, shallow coastline (1,393 kilometers) along the Baltic
Sea, with 1,520 islands dotting the shore. The two largest islands
are Saaremaa (literally, island land), at 2,673 square kilometers,
and Hiiumaa, at 989 square kilometers. The two islands are favorite
Estonian vacation spots. The country's highest point, Suur Munamägi
(Egg Mountain), is in the hilly southeast and reaches 318 meters
above sea level. Estonia is covered by about 18000 km² of forest.
Arable land amounts to about 9260 km². Meadows cover about 2520
km², and pastureland covers about 1810 km². There are more than
1,400 natural and artificial lakes in Estonia. The largest of them,
Lake Peipsi (3,555 km²), forms much of the border between Estonia
and Russia. Located in central Estonia, Võrtsjärv is the
second-largest lake (270 km²). The Narva and Emajõgi are among the
most important of the country's many rivers.
Estonia has a temperate climate, with four seasons of near-equal
length. Average temperatures range from 16.3 °C on the Baltic
islands to 17.1 °C inland in July, the warmest month, and from -3.5
°C on the Baltic islands to -7.6 °C inland in February, the coldest
month. Precipitation averages 568 millimeters per year and is
heaviest in late summer.
Estonia's land border with Latvia runs 267 kilometers; the Russian
border runs 290 kilometers. From 1920 to 1945, Estonia's border
with Russia, set by the 1920 Tartu Peace Treaty, extended beyond
the Narva River in the northeast and beyond the town of Pechory
(Petseri) in the southeast. This territory, amounting to some 2,300
square kilometers, was incorporated into Russia by Stalin at the
end of World War II. Estonia is now disputing that territorial
loss.
Environmental issues
One of the most burdensome legacies of the Soviet era is widespread
environmental pollution. The worst offender in this regard was the
Soviet army. Across military installations covering more than 800
km² of Estonian territory, the army dumped hundreds of thousands of
tons of jet fuel into the ground, improperly disposed of toxic
chemicals, and discarded outdated explosives and weapons in coastal
and inland waters. In the 1990s, during the army's withdrawal from
Estonia, extensive damage was done to discarded buildings and
equipment. In October 1993, the Estonian Ministry of Environment
issued a preliminary report summing up part of the degradation it
had surveyed thus far. The report described the worst damage as
having been done to Estonia's topsoil and underground water supply
by the systematic dumping of jet fuel at six Soviet army air bases.
At the air base near Tapa, site of the worst damage, officials
estimated that six square kilometers of land were covered by a
layer of fuel; 11 square kilometers of underground water were said
to be contaminated. The water in the surrounding area was
undrinkable. With Danish help, Estonian crews began cleaning up the
site, although they estimated the likely cost to be as much as EKR4
million. The Ministry of Environment assigned a monetary cost of
more than EKR10 billion to the damage to the country's topsoil and
water supply. However, the ministry was able to allocate only EKR5
million in 1993 for cleanup operations.
In a 1992 government report to the United Nations Conference on the
Environment and Development, Estonia detailed other major
environmental concerns. For instance, for several consecutive years
Estonia had led the world in the production of sulfur dioxide per
capita. Nearly 75 % of Estonia's air pollution was reported to come
from two oil shale-based thermal power stations operating near
Narva. The mining of oil shale in northeastern Estonia also left
gigantic mounds of limestone dotting the region. Near the town of
Sillamäe, site of a former uranium enrichment plant, about 1,200
tons of uranium and about 750 tons of thorium had been dumped into
the Gulf of Finland. This was said to have caused severe health
problems among area residents. In the coastal town of Paldiski, the
removal of waste left by Soviet army nuclear reactors was also a
major concern. The combined cost of environmental cleanup at both
towns was put at more than EKR3.5 billion.
Natural hazards: flooding occurs frequently in the spring
Environment - current issues: air heavily polluted with sulfur
dioxide from oil-shale burning power plants in northeast;
contamination of soil and groundwater with petroleum products,
chemicals at former Soviet military bases; Estonia has more than
1,400 natural and artificial lakes, the smaller of which in
agricultural areas are heavily affected by organic waste; coastal
sea water is polluted in many locations. The HBV hydrology
transport model has been used to analyze water pollution issues in
Estonia's rivers and in the Baltic Sea
Environment - international agreements:
party to: Biodiversity, Climate Change, Endangered Species,
Hazardous Wastes, Ship Pollution, Ozone Layer Protection,
Wetlands
signed, but not ratified: Climate Change-Kyoto
Protocol
