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Best Western Hotel...
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Stay at this Vaasa, Finland hotel offering modern, stylish accommodations featuring deluxe...
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Finland: Search for areas
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Kvarken Archipelago
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The Kvarken Archipelago (added in 2006 as an extension to the World Heritage site of the High Coast) numbers 5,600 islands and islets and covers a total of 194,400 ha (15% land and 85% sea). It features unusual ridged washboard moraines, "De Greer moraines", formed by the melting of the continental ice sheet, 10,000 to 24,000 years ago.
The Archipelago is continuously rising from the sea in a process of rapid glacio-isostatic uplift, whereby the land, previously weighed down under the weight of a glacier, lifts at rates that are among the highest in the world. As a consequence of the advancing shoreline, islands appear and unite, peninsulas expand, lakes evolve from bays and develop into marshes and peat fens. This property is essentially a "type area" for research on isostacy; the phenomenon having been first recognized and studied here.
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