Polesia

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Polesia

Polesia, Polissya, or Polesie is one of the largest European swamp

Swamp

A swamp is a wetland featuring temporary or permanent inundation of large areas of land, by shallow bodies of water. A swamp generally has a substantial number of hammock , or dry-land protrusions, covered by aquatic vegetation, or vegetation that tolerates periodical inundation....
y areas, located in the south-western part of the Eastern-European Lowland, mainly within Belarus

Belarus

Belarus is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered by Russia to the north and east, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the north....
and Ukraine

Ukraine

Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east; Belarus to the north; Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary to the west; Romania and Moldova to the southwest; and the Black Sea and Sea of Azov to the south....
but also partly within Poland

Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe. Poland is bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian Enclave and exclave, to the north....
and Russia

Russia

Russia , or the Russian Federation , is a list of countries spanning more than one continent country extending over much of northern Eurasia....
. The swamp areas of Polesia are known as the Pripyat Marshes (after the Pripyat River

Pripyat River

The Pripyat River is a river in Eastern Europe, of approximately 710 km length. It flows east through Ukraine, Belarus, and Ukraine again, draining into the Dnieper....
) or Pinsk Marshes

Pinsk Marshes

The Pinsk Marshes or Pripyat Marshes are a vast territory of wetlands along the Pripyat River and its tributaries from Brest, Belarus to Mogilev and Kiev ....
(after the major local city of Pinsk

Pinsk

Pinsk , a town in Belarus, in the Polesia region, traversed by the river Pripyat River, at the confluence of the Strumen River and Pina rivers. The region is known as the Pinsk Marshes....
).

name Polesia is from a Slavic

Slavic languages

File:Slavic europe.svgThe Slavic languages , a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of Central Europe, and in the northern part of Asia....
root and loosely translates as "woodland

Woodland

Ecologically, a woodland is an area covered in trees, usually at low density, forming an open habitat, allowing sunlight to penetrate between the trees, and limiting shade....
".

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Encyclopedia

Polesia, Polissya, or Polesie is one of the largest European swamp

Swamp

Belarus

Belarus is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered by Russia to the north and east, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the north....
and Ukraine

Ukraine

Poland

Russia

Pripyat River

The Pripyat River is a river in Eastern Europe, of approximately 710 km length. It flows east through Ukraine, Belarus, and Ukraine again, draining into the Dnieper....
) or Pinsk Marshes

Pinsk Marshes

Pinsk

Pinsk , a town in Belarus, in the Polesia region, traversed by the river Pripyat River, at the confluence of the Strumen River and Pina rivers. The region is known as the Pinsk Marshes....
).

Name

The name Polesia is from a Slavic

Slavic languages

Woodland

Ecologically, a woodland is an area covered in trees, usually at low density, forming an open habitat, allowing sunlight to penetrate between the trees, and limiting shade....
". Polesie is the Polish

Polish language

Polish , an official language of Poland, has the largest number of speakers of any West Slavic languages. Polish-speakers use the language in a uniform manner through most of Poland, and it has a regular orthography....
spelling; other names include , , ; Latin

Latin

Latin is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Military history of the Roman Empire, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe....
: Polesia.

An inhabitant of Polesia is called Poleszuk
Poleszuk

Poleszuk is the name given to the people who populated the swamps of Polesia.The Poleszuk dialect is close to both Ukrainian language, Belarusian language and Polish language languages....
in Polish; Palashuk in Belarusian, Polishchuk in the local Ukrainian dialect, and Poleshchuk in Russian. Polesie is widely acknowledged by scholars as the region where the oldest elements of ethnography and culture of Eastern Slavs are preserved.

Geography

Polesia is a marshy region lining the Pripyat River

Pripyat River

The Pripyat River is a river in Eastern Europe, of approximately 710 km length. It flows east through Ukraine, Belarus, and Ukraine again, draining into the Dnieper....
in Southern Belarus (Brest

Brest, Belarus

For other uses, see BrestBrest , formerly also Brest-on-the-Bug and Brest-Litovsk, is a city in Belarus at the border with Poland opposite the city of Terespol, where the Western Bug River and Mukhavets River rivers meet....
, Pinsk

Pinsk

Kalinkavichy

Kalinkavicy is a town in the Homiel Voblast of south-eastern Belarus. Kalinkavicy is located beside the Pripyat River, opposite the town of Mazyr, and is the site of one of country's most important railway junctions....
, Homel), Northern Ukraine (in the Volyn

Volyn Oblast

Volyn Oblast is an administrative divisions of Ukraine in north-western Ukraine. Its Capital city is Lutsk. Kovel is the westernmost town and the last station in Ukraine of the rail line running from Warsaw through to Kiev....
, Rivne

Rivne Oblast

Rivne Oblast is an administrative divisions of Ukraine of Ukraine. Its Capital city is Rivne.The area of the region is 20,100 km?; its population is 1.2 million....
, Zhytomyr

Zhytomyr Oblast

Zhytomyr Oblast is an administrative divisions of Ukraine of northern Ukraine. The capital city of the oblast is the city of Zhytomyr....
, Kiev

Kiev Oblast

Kiev Oblast, also written as Kyiv Oblast is an Administrative_divisions_of_Ukraine in central Ukraine.The Capital of the oblast is the city of Kiev , also being the capital of Ukraine....
, and Chernihiv Oblast

Chernihiv Oblast

Chernihiv Oblast is an administrative divisions of Ukraine of northern Ukraine. The capital city of the oblast is the city of Chernihiv....
s), and partly in Poland (Lublin

Lublin

Lublin is the largest city in Poland east of the Vistula, and the capital of Lublin Voivodeship with a population of 355,954 . It is List of cities and towns in Poland....
) and Russia (Bryansk

Bryansk

Bryansk is a types of settlements in Russia in Russia, located 379 km southwest from Moscow. It is the administrative center of Bryansk Oblast....
). It is a flatland

Flatland

Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions is an 1884 in literature science fiction novella by the England schoolmaster Edwin Abbott Abbott.As a satire, Flatland offered pointed observations on the social hierarchy of Victorian era culture....
within the watershed

Drainage basin

A drainage basin is an extent of land where water from rain or snow melt drains downhill into a body of water, such as a river, lake, reservoir, estuary, wetland, sea or ocean....
s of the Western Bug

Western Bug

The Bug or Buh River , sometimes called the Western Bug to distinguish it from the Southern Bug, flows from central Ukraine to the west, forming part of the boundary between Ukraine and Poland, passes along the Poland-Belarusian border and into Poland, and empties into the Narew river near Serock ....
and Prypyat rivers. The two rivers are connected by the Dnieper-Bug Canal

Dnieper-Bug Canal

Dnieper-Bug Canal or Dnepr-Bug Canal, or Dneprovsko-Bugsky Canal is a ship canal that connects Dnieper river and Western Bug river. It provides navigational access between the Baltic Sea and Black Sea water systems....
, built during the reign of Stanislaw August Poniatowski, the last king of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

The Polish?Lithuanian Commonwealth was one of the largest and most populous countries in 16th and 17th-century Europe, formed by a Union of Lublin of Kingdom of Poland and Grand Duchy of Lithuania in 1569....
.

Notable tributaries of the Pripyat are the Horyn (Goryn

Goryn

Goryn may refer to the following places:*Goryn, Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship *Goryn, L?dz Voivodeship *Goryn, Masovian Voivodeship *Goryn, Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship ...
), Stokhod (Stokhod, Stokhid), Styr, Ptsich, Yaselda rivers. The largest towns in the Pripyat basin are Pinsk

Pinsk

Stolin

Stolin is a town in the Brest Voblast of Belarus. Nowadays, Stolin is the center of the largest district in Brest voblast. The population of Stolin is 12,500 people ....
, Davyd-Haradok

Davyd-Haradok

Davyd-Haradok is a city in the southwestern Belarusian voblast of Brest Province. It has 7,681 inhabitants .External links*...
. Huge marshes were reclaimed from the 1960s to the 1980s for farm

Farm

A farm is an area of land, including various structures, devoted primarily to the practice of producing and managing food , fibers and, increasingly, fuel....
land. The reclamation is believed to have harmed the environment along the course of the Pripyat.

This region suffered severely from the Chernobyl disaster

Chernobyl disaster

The Chernobyl disaster was a nuclear reactor accident in the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union. It is considered to be the worst nuclear power plant disaster in history and the only level 7 instance on the International Nuclear Event Scale....
. Huge areas were polluted by radioactive elements and are considered unsuitable for living.

Polesia has rarely been a separate administrative unit. However, there was a Polesie Voivodeship

Polesie Voivodeship

Polesie Voivodeship was an administrative unit of interwar Poland . It ceased to exist in September 1939, following Germany and Soviet aggression on Poland ....
the Second Polish Republic

Second Polish Republic

The Second Polish Republic, Second Commonwealth of Poland or interwar Poland is the Republic of Poland between World War I and World War II....
, as well as a Polesia Voblast

Polesia Voblast

Polesia Voblast ) was an administrative division in BSSR. It was created on January 15, 1938. It included territories of eastern Polesia and consisted of 15 raions....
in Byelorussian SSR

Byelorussian SSR

The Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic was one of Republics of the Soviet Union of the Soviet Union. It was one of the four original founding members of the Soviet Union in 1922, together with the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, the Transcaucasian SFSR and the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic....
.

The Polish part of the region includes the Polesie National Park

Polesie National Park

Polesie National Park is a List of National Parks of Poland in Lublin Voivodeship, eastern Poland, in the Polish part of the historical region of Polesie....
(Poleski Park Narodowy), established 1990, which covers an area of . This and a wider area adjoining it (up to the Ukrainian border) make up the UNESCO

UNESCO

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations established on 16 November 1945....
-designated West Polesie Biosphere Reserve

Biosphere reserve

A biosphere reserve is an international conservation designation given by UNESCO under its Programme on Man and the Biosphere . The World Network of Biosphere Reserves is the collection of all 531 biosphere Nature reserve in 105 countries ....
, which borders a similar reserve (the Shatskiy Biosphere Reserve

List of biosphere reserves in Ukraine

This is a complete list of Biosphere Reserves in Ukraine.* Chernomorskiy, 1984* Askania-Nova, 1985* Carpathian Mountains, 1992* Danube Delta, 1998, join with Romania...
) on the Ukrainian side.

There is also a protected area

Protected area

Protected areas are locations which receive protection because of their environmental, cultural or similar value. The term protected area includes marine protected area, which refers to protected areas whose boundaries include some area of ocean....
called Pribuzhskoye-Polesie in the Belarusian part of the region.