Geography
Kaluga Oblast is located in the central part of the East European Plain. The Smolensk Highland (height—279 meters) lays in the western and north-western part of the oblast, while the Central Russian Highland - in the eastern part. The territory of the oblast is covered by hills, and in some parts by flat plains interspersed by numerous river valleys, hollows, and ravines.
From the north to the south, the territory of the oblast extends for more than 220 km from 53° 30' to 55° 30' N, and from west to the east – by 220 km. The territory of the oblast is 29,900 km².
Kaluga Oblast borders with Bryansk, Smolensk, Moscow, Tula, and Oryol Oblasts, as well as with Moscow (since 1 July 2012).
There are 2,045 rivers with a total length of 11,853 km, of which 256 have a length of more than 10 km each, with a total length of 7,638 km (including the Oka and the Desna), and 1,763 rivers and streams with a length of less than 10 km each, with a total length of 4,215 km. There are also 17 water reservoirs with a water storage capacity of 79 mln m³ (Lyudinovskoe — 30 mln m³, Kirovskoe-Verkhnee — 7.8 mln m³, Brynskoe — 14 mln m³, Yachenskoe — 5 mln m³, Milyatinskoe — 7.6 mln m³, Slobodskoe — 3.7 mln m³). Out of 473 ponds of common use, there are 213 ponds with a water storage capacity of up to 50,000 m3 equipped with basic discharge facilities. The main rivers are: the Oka, the Ugra, the Zhizdra, and the Bolva (all those rivers' names are of Lithuanian language origin).
The climate is moderately continental; the average temperature in January is - 9°C, the average temperature in July is + 17°C. The precipitation rate per annum is 650 mm. The vegetation period is 177–184 days.
Vegetation: mixed coniferous broad-leafed forests (birch, aspen, pine, fir, oak, alder, and lime).
Soil: derno-podzolic, moderate coal clay, clay sand, and sand.
Read more about this topic: Kaluga Oblast
Famous quotes containing the word geography:
“Yet America is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it will not wait long for metres.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs, from the most casual matters of geography and history to the profoundest laws of atomic physics or even of pure mathematics and logic, is a man-made fabric which impinges on experience only along the edges. Or, to change the figure, total science is like a field of force whose boundary conditions are experience.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)
“Where the heart is, there the muses, there the gods sojourn, and not in any geography of fame. Massachusetts, Connecticut River, and Boston Bay, you think paltry places, and the ear loves names of foreign and classic topography. But here we are; and, if we tarry a little, we may come to learn that here is best. See to it, only, that thyself is here;—and art and nature, hope and fate, friends, angels, and the Supreme Being, shall not absent from the chamber where thou sittest.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)