Siberian History (Part 1): Geography of Siberia
Red: Siberian Federal District
Red & dark orange: Geographic Russian Siberia
Red & both oranges: North Asia (greatest extent of Siberia); Historical Siberia (and present Siberia in some usages)
The topography of Siberia can be divided into three main zones: 1) In the north is a great treeless tundra, extending along the whole Arctic coast; 2) the middle zone is a broad belt of forest, from the Ural Mountains to the Sea of Okhotsk; 3) the southern zone is arable land that gradually becomes semi-arid desert steppes, stretching from the southern Ural Mountains to beyond the Mongolian border.
In a tundra environment, low temperatures and short growing seasons hinder tree growth. The vegetation is mostly dwarf shrubs, sedges, grasses, mosses and lichens. Scattered trees do grow in some regions. There are three types of tundra (Arctic, alpine and Antarctic), and the Siberian tundra is mainly Arctic tundra. (Alpine tundra grows on mountains all around the world, including in Siberia.)
The tundra is dry, inhospitable and desolate. For most of the year, it is covered in trackless snow. Tufts of coarse grass, and swards of moss & lichen, grow on it, but not much else. Fierce Arctic gales called purgas force the snowy surface into long, hard, fluted waves (by drifting, packing and scoring it).
Beneath the surface is permafrost, a thick substratum of “geological ice”, very deep in places. In summer, the surface thaws only to a shallow depth, and beneath that the ground is hard and impervious to water. Evaporation is the only way water can escape, as it cannot drain downwards.
Melting snow saturates the topsoil, and therefore over time it has become covered with a dense layer of grey Arctic moss. Moss grows out of decaying moss, year after year, and the whole tundra has become a huge spongy peat bog.
The boundary region between the tundra and the taiga zone is called the tree line or timberline. Here, along the tundra's southernmost margins, some trees grow. The soil is shallow and they tend to grow extremely sideways. Many trees become gnarled and twisted from straining towards the meagre Arctic light. Some twist in upon themselves.
In early summer, the meltwater collects into perfectly round lakes. Stones are squeezed to the surface, forming neat concentric circles, with the larger stones on the outside and the smaller ones inside.
The soil contracts from low temperatures, and becomes brittle enough to crack. During spring, meltwater trickles into the cracks and frost fissures, and later freezes into ice wedges, breaking the soil into even-sided polygons.
The tundra wildlife is limited – reindeer, polar bears, Arctic foxes and lemmings.
A taiga environment (also called boreal/snow forest) is characterized by coniferous forests, mostly made up of pines, spruces and larches. The Russian taiga has all three of these types of trees, but the eastern Siberia tundra is basically a huge larch forest.
Dahurian larch trees in the Kolyma region of north-eastern Siberia.
The Siberian taiga begins about 320 – 640km inland from the northern coast. First there are scattered larches, struggling to find patches of thawed ground. Then, by degrees, there are denser stands of pine, fir, spruce, cedar and birch. Their intertwining branches eventually form a thick canopy above the forest floor. Even at noon, the heart of the taiga is bathed in twilight.
The wildlife of the taiga is very diverse – brown & black bears, wolves, wolverines, wild boar, badgers, lynxes, elks, polecats, stoats, squirrels, sables (a species of marten) and hares. There are hundreds of species of birds, including ducks and geese.
Eventually, the taiga becomes a mixed forest zone of poplars, elms, maples, aspens and limes. This mixed forest zone then thins out towards the southern steppes, which are rich in arable land and pastureland. In some places, the western Siberian steppe is as fertile as the black soil of Ukraine.
Ukok Plateau, part of the mammoth steppe in Siberia and Mongolia.
The steppe of south-western Siberia.
On its margins, it turns to sand. For about 3,200km, southern Siberia skirts a “land of summer snow”, where thick salt deposits lie beneath the desert sun.
Temperature-wise, Siberia goes to extremes. Winters are severe, but the brief summers can be extremely hot, even in the upper latitudes.
There are several great mountain ranges in Siberia – the Altai Mountains, Sayan Mountains, Yablonoi Mountains, Stanovoy Range, Verkhoyansk Range, and the volcanoes of Kamchatka Peninsula.
The Altai Mountains are located in Central and East Asia, where the borders of Russia, China, Mongolia and Kazakhstan come together. This is also where the Irtysh and Ob Rivers have their headwaters. The Altai Mountains merge with the Sayan Mountains in the north-east. In the south-east, they gradually become lower, and merge into the high plateau of the Gobi Desert.
The Sayan Mountains are located in southern Siberia, Russia, and northern Mongolia. They formed part of the border between Russia and Mongolia in the past. This is where the tributaries begin that eventually merge to become the Yenisei River.
The Eastern Sayan Mountains stretch 1,000km from the Yenisei River to the south-west end of Lake Baikal. The Western Sayan Mountains form the eastern continuation of the Altai Mountains.
The Yablonoi Mountains begin in Mongolia and extend north-east into Siberia. They pass just east of Lake Baikal, and are about 1,600km long. These mountains form the divide between the rivers that empty into the Arctic and Pacific Oceans. They can be considered a south-western extension of the Stanovoy Range.
These mountains are found in the Transbaikal, a mountainous region east of Lake Baikal. They divide the Transbaikal into two great terraces of almost equal size.
The Stanovoy Range runs south-west to north-east for over 900km, stretching from the Olyokoma River to the Uchur River. In the past, it served as the border between Russia and China; and it divides the watersheds of the Arctic and Pacific Oceans. Many glaciers, the main source of the Lena River, can be found in these mountains.
The Verkhoyansk Range forms a huge arc between the Lena and Adan Rivers (to the west) and the Yana River (to the east). It is parallel to the Lena River.
The Kamchatka Peninsula is divided by a spine of volcanic summits that form a nearly-continuous ridge. The Klyuchevskaya Sopka is the tallest mountain in Siberia at 4,750m.
Along the whole eastern coast of Siberia, various ranges break off into the sea in shattered headlands and cliffs. In the past, they were broken off from mountain ranges on the Northwestern Pacific Coast of the USA, by cataclysms such as earthquakes and volcanoes. Between these two coasts are chains of volcanic islands with bare, steep coasts that appear similarly sundered and torn.
Siberia's three great rivers that flow into the Arctic Ocean are the Ob, Yenisei and Lena Rivers. They are formed in the mountains of Southern Siberia, the glaciers of the Altai Mountains, and the borderlands of Mongolia. They give off many tributaries to the east & west, and flow northwards towards the Arctic.
The Ob River is the westernmost of these three rivers, and it is the seventh-longest river in the world. It forms where the Biya and Katun Rivers merge, in the Altai Mountains.
The Yenisei River is the middle river, the fifth-longest river in the world. It begins in Mongolia, and empties into the Yenisei Gulf in the Kara Sea (part of the Arctic Ocean).
The Lena River is the easternmost river, the eleventh-longest river in the world. It is the longest river that is entirely within Russia, and begins in the Baikal Mountains south of the Central Siberian Plateau. It empties into the Laptev Sea (a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean).
Siberia's fourth great river is the Amur River. It forms on the Mongolian Plateau south of Lake Baikal, and flows into the Pacific Ocean, between the Sea of Okhotsk and the Sea of Japan. The island of Sakhalin is located opposite the river mouth, and to the south & east of Sakhalin are the Kuril Islands.
Novaya Zemlya is an archipelago in the Arctic Ocean, and the easternmost point of Europe. It is made up of two islands – the Severny Island (north) and Yuzhny Island (south), separated by the Matochkin Strait. To the west is the Barents Sea, and to the east is the Kara Sea, where the Yenisei River ends.
The Yamal Peninsula is part of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug in north-western Siberia. It is surrounded by the Kara Sea, with the Baydaratskaya Bay to the west and the Gulf of Ob to the east. At the northern end of the 700km-long peninsula is Bely Island, with the Malygina Strait separating them. In the Nenets language, “Yamal” means “end of the land”.
The Taymyr Peninsula is the northernmost extension of Eurasia.
The New Siberian Islands are an archipelago in the Far North of Russia. They are north of the East Siberian Coast, with the Laptev Sea to the west and the East Siberian Sea to the east. The Lyakhovsky Islands are the southernmost group of the New Siberian Islands.
