Pripet Marshes

Pripet Marshes, vast waterlogged region of eastern Europe, among the largest wetlands of the European continent. The Pripet Marshes occupy southern Belarus and northern Ukraine. They lie in the thickly forested basin of the Pripet River (a major tributary of the Dnieper) and are bounded on the north by the Belarusian Ridge and on the south by the Volyn-Podilsk and Dnieper uplands. The marshes cover an area of approximately 104,000 square miles (270,000 square km). The distinctive natural traits of the Pripet Marshes are a wide development of saturated sandy lowlands, intersected by a dense network of rivers with weakly cut riverbeds and wide floodlands, and a prevalence of pine forests amid the wide expanse of low-lying bogs and marshes.

The region experiences a warm temperate climate. The average annual precipitation reaches 22–26 inches (550–650 mm) and exceeds evaporation, giving sufficient—and in some places quite abundant—moisture. Combined with an abundance of subsoil waters and their proximity to the surface, a virtually unique soil saturation and associated bogging down of the surface are thus produced.

Numerous tributaries of the Pripet (including the Stokhid, Styr, Horyn [Goryn], Ubort, Yaselda, and Ptich rivers) course down into the swamps from the surrounding highlands, carrying in large amounts of water. In the spring, when snowmelt occurs, the region’s rivers overflow their low banks and intensify the saturation of the land. Huge marshes are developed along the course of the Pripet itself, while the middle of the river is marked by the soggy expanses of the Pinsk Marshes. The numerous lakes that dot the landscape are in various stages of choking up into additional bogs.

About one-third of the region is forested, consisting of pine, birch, alder, oak, aspen, white spruce, and hornbeam. The region has thus supported—where conditions permit—a diversified lumbering industry. Elk, lynx, wolf, fox, wild boar, roe, beaver, badger, and weasel are to be seen and are sometimes hunted. A host of birds, including black grouse, orioles, hazel grouse, woodpeckers, owls, blue tits, and ducks, inhabit the forests and marshlands. These too are hunted. Human intervention is most evident, however, in the sections of the region that are being developed and transformed into agricultural lands, where rye, barley, wheat, flax, hemp, potatoes, a variety of vegetables, and fodder grasses are cultivated.

Land-reclamation projects were first initiated in 1872 by a state-sponsored “western expedition for the drainage of swamps,” led by the Russian scholar I.I. Zhilinsky. A vast amount of land reclamation has taken place during the 20th century. A complex series of measures for achieving this formidable goal were under way during the late 20th century. They included the regulation of water drainage and the construction of reservoirs on the rivers, the regulation of river channels, afforestation of sandy uplands, and the clearing of undesirable vegetative cover.