Some geography

The Kuril islands

The Kuril Islands or Kurile Islands, in Russia's Sakhalin Oblast region, form a volcanic archipelago that stretches approximately 1,300 km northeast from Hokkaido, Japan, to Kamchatka, Russia, separating the Sea of Okhotsk from the north Pacific Ocean. 

Right now they belong to Russia, and they only have 16,000 inhabitants in their 15,600 km2.  They used to have a native population  related to the Ainu of Hokaido, but they were exterminated. Later they became Japanese and after the war Russia took control of all the kuriles as an Oblast adminsitrative division (the Sakhalin Oblast).

There are 56 islands and many minor rocks.

They lie between the Sea of Okhotsk and the North Pacific Ocean. There are 56 of them with a total land area of about 15,600 square kilometers and a population of 19,000. Along with millions of seabirds, crabs and fish, the Ainu people were early inhabitants on these islands. Yet a long-running dispute over these territories still continues. They are the Kuril Islands -- Russia's eastern frontier!

The Kuril Islands form part of the ring of tectonic instability encircling the Pacific Ocean referred to as the Ring of Fire. The islands themselves are summits of  stratovolcanoes that are a direct result of the subduction of the Pacific Plate under the Okhostsk, which forms the Kuril Trench some 200 kilometres (120 mi) east of the islands. The chain has around 100 volcanoes, some 40 of which are active, and many hot springs and fumaroles There is frequent seismic activity, including a magnitude 8.5 earthwquake in 1963 and one of magnitude 8.3 recorded on November15, 2006 which resulted in tsunami waves up to 1.5 metres (5 ft) reaching the California coast.

The climate on the islands is generally severe, with long, cold, stormy winters and short and notoriously foggy summers. The average annual precipitation is 30–40 inches (760–1,020 mm), most of which falls as snow.

The chain ranges from temperate to sub-Arctic climate types, and the vegetative cover consequently ranges from tundra in the north to dense spruce and larch forests on the larger southern islands. The highest elevations on the islands are Alaid volcano (highest point: 2,339 m or 7,674 ft) on Atlasov Islandat the northern end of the chain and Tyatya volcano (1,819 m or 5,968 ft) on Knashir island at the southern end.

Landscape types and habitats on the islands include many kinds of beach and rocky shores, cliffs, wide rivers and fast gravelly streams, forests, grasslands, alpine tundra, crater lakes and peat bogs. The soils are generally productive, owing to the periodic influxes of volcanic ash and, in certain places, owing to significant enrichment by seabird guano. However, many of the steep, unconsolidated slopes are susceptible to landslides and newer volcanic activity can entirely denude a landscape. Only the southernmost island has large areas covered by trees, while more northerly islands have no trees, or spotty tree cover.