Latvia lies on the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea on the level northwestern part of the rising East European platform, between Estonia and Lithuania.

With the exception of the coastal plains, the ice age divided Latvia into three main regions: the morainic Western and Eastern uplands and the Middle lowlands.

Latvia has 504 km (313 mi) of sandy coastline, and the ports of Liepāja and Ventspils provide important warm-water harbors for the Baltic coast.

However, it is larger than many other European countries (Albania, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Luxembourg, North Macedonia, Malta, Montenegro, Netherlands, Slovakia, Slovenia or Switzerland).

[3] Prior to World War II, Latvia bordered eastern Poland, but as a result of boundary changes by the Soviet Union, this territory was attached to Belarus.

[3] The physiography of Latvia and its neighboring areas was formed, to a large degree, during the Quaternary period and the Pleistocene ice age, when soil and debris were pushed by glaciers into mounds and hills.

[3] In this area, the extensive glacial moraines, eskers, and drumlins have limited the profitability of agriculture by fragmenting fields and presenting serious erosion problems.

[2][3] Nearly all forests in Latvia are publicly accessible,[5] and therefore one of the most widespread pastimes of the population is picking bilberries, cranberries, mushrooms, and other bounties of the natural environment.

[7] The traditional Latvian approach to forestry with its small system of clear-cut areas combined with the network of forest territories that have seen little human influence, as well as the outflow of people from rural areas to urban ones have facilitated the emergence of a unique biological diversity in forests which home animal and bird species, that have died out or are very rare elsewhere in Europe.

[3] With a total length of 1,020 kilometers, the Daugava (or Zapadnaya Dvina in its upper reaches) originates in the Valday Hills in Russia's Tver' Oblast, meanders through northern Belarus, and then winds through Latvia for 352 km (219 mi) before emptying into the Gulf of Riga.

[3] Most Latvians opposed the flooding of historical sites and a particularly scenic gorge with rare plants and natural features, such as the Staburags, a cliff comparable in cultural significance to the Lorelei in Germany.

[3] The construction of the dam was endorsed in 1959, however, after the purge of relatively liberal and nationally oriented leaders under Eduards Berklavs and their replacement by Moscow-oriented, ideologically conservative cadres led by Arvīds Pelše.

[3] Its cold waters attract trout and salmon, and its sandstone cliff and forest setting are increasingly a magnet for tourists interested in the environment.

[3] The dangers from a lack of cooperation were brought home to Latvians in November 1990, when a polymer complex in Navapolatsk, Belarus, accidentally spilled 128 tons of cyanide derivatives into the Daugava River with no warning to downstream users in Latvia.

[3] In December it is still pitch dark at 9:00 A.M., and daylight disappears before 4:00 P.M.[3] The climate is tempered by the Gulf Stream flowing across the Atlantic Ocean from Mexico.

[3] In 1992 Latvia experienced the driest summer in recorded weather history, but unusually heavy rains in the preceding spring kept crop damage below the extent expected.

[3] Amber, million-year-old chunks of petrified pine pitch, is often found on the beaches of the Baltic Sea and is in high demand for jewelry.

[3] The future may hold potentially more valuable resources if oil fields are discovered in Latvian territorial waters, as some geologists have predicted.