National Geographic Bee Prep — Black Sea

Name at least two countries that directly border the Black Sea in Eastern Europe.




All possible answers are listed below!



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Possible answers:

BULGARIA
GEORGIA
ROMANIA
RUSSIA
TURKEY
UKRAINE

(MOLDOVA does not quite border the Black Sea, although it does have access to the Black Sea via a port along the Danube River.)

Struve Geodetic Arc

What is the Struve Geodetic Arc, a UNESCO World Heritage Site spanning across the countries of BELARUS, ESTONIA, FINLAND, LATVIA, LITHUANIA, MOLDOVA, NORWAY, RUSSIA, SWEDEN, and UKRAINE? The UNESCO World Heritage Site webpage (↗) provides an interactive map and description:

The Struve Arc is a chain of survey triangulations stretching from Hammerfest in Norway to the Black Sea, through 10 countries and over 2,820 km. These are points of a survey, carried out between 1816 and 1855 by the astronomer Friedrich Georg Wilhelm Struve, which represented the first accurate measuring of a long segment of a meridian. This helped to establish the exact size and shape of the planet and marked an important step in the development of earth sciences and topographic mapping. It is an extraordinary example of scientific collaboration among scientists from different countries, and of collaboration between monarchs for a scientific cause. The original arc consisted of 258 main triangles with 265 main station points. The listed site includes 34 of the original station points, with different markings, i.e. a drilled hole in rock, iron cross, cairns, or built obelisks.

Surveyors from around the world and other people involved in geodesy and geography might consider adding a [probably expensive] trip through Eastern Europe onto their travel "Bucket List"! The UNESCO description is available under license Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Intergovernmental Organization 3.0 license (↗).

Russia Exports

According to National Geographic MapMaker (mapmaker.nationalgeographic.org) and other sources, the following items are major exports of RUSSIA: aluminum, ammunition and military equipment, baked goods, barley, chemicals, chocolate, coal briquettes, coal tar oil, copper wire, corn (maize), diamonds, dried legumes, electric components, electronics, equipment and machinery (communications, construction, transportation, etc.), flour, frozen fruit and nuts, gold, handicrafts, hard liquor, iron ore, linseed (flaxseed), malt grain, manufactured goods, meat, medical and scientific instruments, natural gas, nickel, oil seeds, packaged food, petroleum and petroleum products, platinum, processed cereal, rare earth elements, refined copper, rice, seafood, semi-finished iron, ships, silver, soybeans and soybean meal, sugar beets, sunflower seeds, tea, textiles, tobacco, tractors, wheat, and wood and wood products. According to the International Monetary Fund (data.imf.org), countries and territories buying and importing most of those exports (February 2017 statistics) include the Netherlands (top importer), China, Germany, Italy, Belarus, Turkey, the United States, South Korea, Poland, Japan, Kazakhstan, Finland, the United Kingdom, Ukraine, Belgium, France, India, Lithuania, Greece, and Algeria.

Russia Endangered Species

The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™ for RUSSIA in Eastern Europe and Northern Asia lists 3 extinct species*, 1 extinct-in-the-wild species (Beloribitsa fish), 32 critically endangered species, and 69 endangered species. Russia's critically endangered species include the Amur Sturgeon, Awarian Centaury plant, Crested Shelduck, Dagestanian Milk Vetch plant, Kaluga fish, Long-Fruited Brier plant, Narrow-Limbed Hornungia flowering plant, Orlov's Viper snake, Owen's Muehlbergella flowering plant, Persian Sturgeon, Saiga, Sakhalin Sturgeon, Sea-Run Taimen fish, Star Sturgeon, and Thorn Sturgeon.

Asiatic Wild Dogs, Bearded Spurge flowering plants, Black-Faced Spoonbills, Blackiston's Fish Owls (geographic extent: northern Japan and extreme eastern Russia), Caspian Seals, Cherkessian Thistle flowering plants, Hoffmann's Pika mammals, Japanese Spiky Sea Cucumbers, Mongolian Wild Horses, Sea Otters, and West Caucasian Tur (Western Tur) goat-antelopes are some endangered organisms. Species named after Russia include the Russian Desman mammal, Russian Mole Rat, Russian Spirlin fish, and Russian Sturgeon.

* Eudontomyzon sp. nov. 'migratory' lampreys, Spectacled Cormorant birds, and Stellar's Sea Cow mammals used to live in Russia but have been extinct for decades and centuries.

Long City Names in Western Russia

East of Ukraine, Krasnodarskiy Krai (Krasnodar) and Rostovskaya Oblast' (Rostov) are two federal subject regions belonging to RUSSIA, and they boast plenty of towns and cities with long names! Every city below has at least ten letters in their names.

Long city and town names in Krasnodar include Arkhangel'skaya, Arkhipo-Osipovka, Bryuhovetskaya, Goryachiy Klyuch, Kalnibolotskaya, Kamyskevatskaya, Krasnoarmeyskaya, Kushchevskaya, Medvedovskaya, Novopokrovskaya, Primorsko-Akhtarsk, Slavyansk-na-Kubani, Staroderevyankovskaya, Starominskaya, Staronizhestebliyevskaya, Staroshcherbinovskaya, Starotitarovskaya, and Starovelichkovskaya.

Long city and town names in Rostov include Anastasiyevka, Belaya Kalitva, Kamenolomni, Kamensk-Shakhtinskiy, Konstantinovsk, Krasnoarmeyskiy, Matveyev Kurgan, Novocherkassk, Novoshakhtinsk, Pervomayskoye, Semikarakorsk, and Sokolovo-Kundryuchenskoye.

Nenets Autonomous Okrug

Almost completely located above the Arctic Circle in northwestern RUSSIA, NENETSKIY AVTONOMNYY OKRUG (spelled Nenets Autonomous Okrug in English) is an administrative division lying below the Barents Sea, Kara Sea, and the Arctic Ocean. The two seas are west and east of Novaya Zemlya, a large vertically-oriented island depicted at a much too large scale on many maps - especially maps with Mercator projections. According to the Climate Zones layer of the online National Geographic MapMaker Interactive, Nenetskiy Avtonomnyy Okrug is predominantly in the Cold Polar Climate with tundra and ice, and these climatic conditions are only found in extreme northern of Russia and Canada and all of Antarctica and Greenland. In N.A.O. this climate is found in northern and eastern areas, on its islands, and on the large Kanin Peninsula in western N.A.O. The southern extent of Nenetskiy Avtonomnyy Okrug features a Humid Cold Climate with no dry season. The principal and main city of okrug include Nar'yan-Mar. As a fun fact, reindeer husbandry is a common practice throughout the N.A.O.

New Nature Reserve Coming to Eastern Russia

The International Union for Conservation of Nature announced a nature preserve aiming to protect over 80,000 acres of land including aquatic habitat for over 20 fish species, including the vulnerable Siberian Taimen. Tugursky Nature Reserve will be situated along and beside the Tugur River in eastern RUSSIA's Khabarovskiy Kray federal subject*, southwest of the Sea of Okhotsk.

* Subjects are Russia's administrative divisions, similar to provinces.

Sochi 2014 Olympics Recap

Today marked the end of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, RUSSIA. These Olympic Games will be remembered as a success, even though there were fears of terrorism before and during the games. While dozens of countries participated in the Olympics this year, athletes from only 26 countries received medals. In the medal count order (from most to least medals), the countries are Russia, United States, Norway, Canada, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, France, Sweden, Switzerland, China, South Korea, Czech Republic, Slovenia, Japan, Italy, Belarus, Poland, Finland, the United Kingdom (Great Britain), Latvia, Australia, Ukraine, Slovakia, Croatia, and Kazakhstan.

Seas North of Russia

There are several main seas that are north of the largest country on Earth, RUSSIA. They are all part of the Arctic Ocean, a water body straddling the northern latitudes above Europe, Greenland, Alaska, and Canada. The Barents Sea is north of Western Russia and north of the countries Finland and Norway. The East Siberian Sea is located north of Eastern Russia; also, it is east of the Laptev Sea and multiple islands including Kotelny (Kotel'nyy) and Novaya Sibir. Lastly, Kara Sea is east of the Barents Sea and east of Novaya Zemlya, a large island.

Dr. Paul Farmer, Making the World Healthier

If you read Mountains Beyond Mountains, written by Tracy Kidder, you would become familiar with the charitable work of one of the world's most generous and caring doctors. He is Dr. Paul Farmer, who dedicated a lot of his time to work in HAITI, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. He started caring for people in Haiti many years before the country, on the western part of Hispaniola island, was severely devastated by earthquakes in 2010. While still improving medical care for some in Haiti, he has since spread medical generosity to other parts of the world. Partners In Health is a nonprofit medical organization that he co-founded. As seen under the Where We Work tab on the PIH website, Partners in Health and Dr. Farmer also operate in LESOTHO, MALAWI, MEXICO, PERU, RUSSIA, RWANDA, the UNITED STATES (including the Navajo Nation), and other countries. Keep up the good work, Dr. Farmer and Partners in Health! It is greatly appreciated for those wanting to strive for a healthy and happy Earth!

Russia's Cities | Populations Greater Than 1 Million

Most of RUSSIA's cities that have populations of at least 1 million, as you might know, are located in the European part of Russia and west of the Ural Mountains, which divides Russia into European and Asian parts. Two famous ones are Saint Petersburg, located by the Gulf of Finland, (northeastern part of the Baltic Sea) and Moscow, the capital and Russia's largest city. Others large cities in the western/European part of Russia include Kazan', Nizhniy Novgorod, Rostov-na-Donu, Samara, Ufa, and Volgograd. Chelyabinsk and Yekaterinburg are barely in Russia's Asian side near the southern fringe of the Ural Mountains, while Novosibirsk and Omsk are comfortably in the Asian side, more particularly in southern Russia.

Sea of Azov

Located southeast of UKRAINE, the Sea of Azov is a body of water attached to the larger Black Sea thanks to the Kerchenskiy (Kerch) Strait. Being the most shallow sea in the world with a maximum depth under 50 feet, this sea is north of the Black Sea, northeast of the Crimean Peninsula, and west of southwestern RUSSIA. Ukrainian cities surrounding the Sea of Azov include Berdyans'k, Mariupol', Novoazovs'k, and Prymors'k; Russian cities near the coastline include Azov, Rostov-na-Donu (has population greater than 1 million), Starominskaya, Taganrog, and Yeysk.

Kaliningrad

Kaliningrad Oblast (also referred to as just Kaliningrad) is an Eastern European exclave that belongs to RUSSIA. This wedge-shaped exclave is situated southwest of Lithuania and northeast of Poland. The administrative center (essentially a capital) of Kaliningrad is, well, Kaliningrad! Other cities include Baltiysk (beside the Baltic Sea), Gogolevo, Malinovka, Pribezhnyy, and Volodino.

Caspian Sea

The largest lake and enclosed water body in the world, the Caspian Sea is located in Central Asia. The 5 countries of Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Turkmenistan share borders with this sea. There are at least four major sources of water flowing into the Caspian Sea, as detailed below.


● Kura (Kür) River — flows through Azerbaijan, meeting the Caspian Sea's southwest shore at the towns of Bankä and Neftçala.

● Terek River — flows through SW Russia, meeting the west shore at the Agrakhanskiy Poluostrov peninsula — the town of Lopatin is located at the tip of that peninsula.

● Ural (Zhayyq) River — flows through Kazakhstan, meeting the north shore at the towns of Atyraū, Balyqshy, and Zhumysker.

● Volga River (longest river in Europe) — flows through western Russia, meeting the northwest shore at the city of Astrakhan.

10 Largest Countries

Here are the 10 largest countries in area:

1) Russia
2) Canada
3 or 4) * United States of America
3 or 4) * China
5) Brazil
6) Australia
7) India
8) Argentina
9) Kazakhstan
10) Algeria — was formerly Sudan until South Sudan separated from Sudan

*** Visit this wikipedia page for the whole list of countries by area.

* The areas of the USA and China may vary depending on what is included and excluded from the total area; both total areas are similar.

Countries Bordering Russia

RUSSIA, by far the largest country in the world, also borders the most countries (tying with China). Russia borders 14 nations: Azerbaijan, Belarus, China, Estonia, Finland, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Mongolia, Norway, North Korea (their border is tiny), Poland, and Ukraine. Learn more about Russia by visiting my Russia post!

Lake Baikal

Siberia is the region with Asia's largest freshwater lake: Lake Baikal (Ozero Baykal).* You can find Lake Baikal in eastern and southern RUSSIA, not too far north of Mongolia. Additionally, Lake Baikal is the world's deepest lake with the second largest volume. A beautiful sight to see from the Circum-Baikal and Trans-Siberian railways, the lake was declared a World Heritage Site in 1996.
* You might already know that the Caspian Sea is Asia's - and the world's - largest saltwater body.

Russia

RUSSIA, formerly the largest portion of the Soviet Union (USSR), is the largest country in the world spanning from northern Europe to eastern Asia. Russia shares borders with 14 countries: Azerbaijan, Belarus, China, Estonia, Finland, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Mongolia, Norway, North Korea, Poland, and Ukraine. Russia also has an exclave called Kaliningrad, located in Europe southwest of Lithuania and north of Poland. The capital and largest city of Russia is Moscow (Moskva). The currency is the Russian Ruble, and its ISO 4217 currency code is RUB.

Yenisei, Angara, & Selenga Rivers

The Yenisei River (along with Angara & Selenga Rivers) flows for more than 3,400 miles, making Yenisei the 5th longest river in the world! It is also the largest river system to flow to the Arctic Ocean. The river system runs through the countries of MONGOLIA and RUSSIA. The capital of Mongolia is Ulaanbaatar, while the capital of Russia is the more well-known Moscow.