Suomenselkä is a

drainage divide A drainage divide, water divide, ridgeline, watershed, water parting or height of land is elevated terrain that separates neighboring drainage basins. On rugged land, the divide lies along topographical ridges, and may be in the form of a single ...

in western

Finland Finland, officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It borders Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of Bothnia to the west and the Gulf of Finland to the south, ...

. Roughly long and wide, it is marked by an ensemble of northeast–southwest oriented

moraine A moraine is any accumulation of unconsolidated debris (regolith and Rock (geology), rock), sometimes referred to as glacial till, that occurs in both currently and formerly glaciated regions, and that has been previously carried along by a gla ...

s parallel to the Bothnian coastline. Rivers flowing west from Suomenselkä drain to the Gulf of Bothnia and the lakes in the east drain to the

Gulf of Finland The Gulf of Finland (; ; ; ) is the easternmost arm of the Baltic Sea. It extends between Finland to the north and Estonia to the south, to Saint Petersburg—the second largest city of Russia—to the east, where the river Neva drains into it. ...

. Geographically, the area is relatively flat, with highest altitude variations being 20 m. Because of the low relief, there are

bifurcation lake A lake bifurcation occurs when a lake (a ''bifurcating lake'') has Outflow (hydrology), outflows into two different drainage basins. In this case, the drainage divide cannot be defined exactly, as it is situated in the middle of the lake. Exampl ...

s. Historically, this very sparsely populated region separated Ostrobothnia from the southern and eastern lake regions of Finland. The landscape is marked by moraines,

esker An esker, eskar, eschar, or os, sometimes called an ''asar'', ''osar'', or ''serpent kame'', is a long, winding ridge of stratified sand and gravel, examples of which occur in glaciated and formerly glaciated regions of Europe and North Amer ...

bogs A bog or bogland is a wetland that accumulates peat as a deposit of dead plant materials often mosses, typically sphagnum moss. It is one of the four main Wetland#Types, types of wetlands. Other names for bogs include mire, mosses, quagm ...

s and

forest A forest is an ecosystem characterized by a dense ecological community, community of trees. Hundreds of definitions of forest are used throughout the world, incorporating factors such as tree density, tree height, land use, legal standing, ...

s and is difficult to cultivate or settle in. Most of the forests are pine barrens, where the main species is

Scots pine ''Pinus sylvestris'', the Scots pine (UK), Scotch pine (US), Baltic pine, or European red pine is a species of tree in the pine family Pinaceae that is native to Eurasia. It can readily be identified by its combination of fairly short, blue-gr ...

(''Pinus sylvestris''). Large bogs are common. Because it contains some of the few remaining patches of

old-growth forest An old-growth forest or primary forest is a forest that has developed over a long period of time without disturbance. Due to this, old-growth forests exhibit unique ecological features. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Natio ...

in southern Finland, it is one of the few remaining habitats for Finnish Forest Reindeer (''Rangifer tarandus fennica''). Suomenselkä is often called ''Lapin sormi'' ("a finger of Lapland"), because it extends Lapland's high snowfall and poor plant growth far south into Finland.

References

Geography of Finland Drainage divides {{Finland-geo-stub