The largest and most populous of the Baltic states, Lithuania has 60 miles (97 km) of sandy coastline
which faces the open Baltic
Sea, between Latvia and Poland. Lithuania's major warm-water port of Klaipėda lies at the narrow mouth of Curonian Lagoon, a
shallow lagoon extending south to Kaliningrad and separated from
the Baltic sea by Curonian
Spit, where Kuršių Nerija National
Park was established for its remarkable sand dunes.The Neman River and some of its tributaries are used for internal shipping (in 2000, 89 inland ships carried 900,000 tons of cargo, which is less than 1% of the total goods traffic).
Situated between 56.27 and 53.53 latitude and 20.56 and 26.50 longitude,
Lithuania is glacially
flat, except for morainic hills in the
western uplands and eastern highlands no higher than 300 metres. The terrain is
marked by numerous small lakes and swamps,
and a mixed forest zone covers almost 33% of the country. The growing season
lasts 169 days in the east and 202 days in the west, with most farmland
consisting of sandy- or clay-loam soils. Limestone, clay,
sand, and gravel are Lithuania's primary natural resources, but
the coastal shelf offers perhaps 1,600,000 m3 (10 Mbbl) of oil deposits, and the southeast could
provide high yields of iron ore
and granite.
Lithuania has an abundance of limestone, clay,
quartz sand, gypsum sand, and dolomite, which are suitable for making high-quality
cement, glass, and ceramics. There also is an ample supply of mineral water, but
energy sources and industrial materials are all in short supply. Oil was
discovered in Lithuania in the 1950s, but only a few wells operate, and all that
do are located in the western part of the country. It is estimated that the
Baltic Sea shelf and the western region of Lithuania hold commercially viable
amounts of oil, but if exploited this oil would satisfy only about 20 percent of
Lithuania's annual need for petroleum products for the next twenty years.
Lithuania has a large amount of thermal energy along the Baltic Sea coast which
could be used to heat hundreds of thousands of homes, as is done in Iceland. In addition, iron ore deposits have been found in the southern
region of Lithuania. But commercial exploitation of these deposits probably
would require strip mining, which is environmentally unsound. Moreover,
exploitation of these resources will depend on Lithuania's ability to attract
capital and technology from abroad.Natural resources:' peat, arable land, amber
Land use:
- arable land: 33.48%
- permanent crops: 0.47%
- other: 66.05% (2011)
Total renewable water resources: 24.9 km3 (2011.
