|
ENVIRONMENT Geography As the world's largest country Russia measures over 9.000 km from West to East and between 2.500 to 4.000 km from North to South. Russia with its Western enclave of Kaliningrad oblast is bounded on the North by Norway, on the West by Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine, on the South by Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakstan, Mongolia, China, People's Republic of Korea, and on the East by the USA. Russia's shores are washed by 12 seas of three oceans: the Atlantic (Baltic, Black and Azov seas), the Arctic Ocean (Barents, White, Kara, Laptev, East Siberian and Chukotka), and the Pacific Ocean (Bering, Okhotsk and the Sea of Japan). The country has a tremendous wealth of natural resources. Some 14% of the Russian territory lies beyond the Arctic Circle, within the perennial permafrost zone, with a long arctic night (occasionally, up to 60 days with the sun below the horizon). Russia displays a variety of landforms and environments. Its chief regions (from West to East) are the Russian (or East European) Plain, the Ural Mountains, the West Siberian Plain, the Central Siberian Plateau, and the Far East. The Russian Plain occupies North-Western, or European, Russia and consists of a series of low, rolling uplands and broad river basins. In the northern half of the plain, which was formerly covered by glaciers, the relief between the river valleys is strewn with lakes and swamps, while in the southern half the watersheds are higher and are cut into by valleys and ravines. The Russian Plain contains Russia's most economically important rivers, among them the Don and Volga. On the South, the Russian Plain is bordered by the Caucasus Mountains between the Black and Caspian seas. The Ural Mountains form the Eastern limit of the Russian Plain, as well as the traditional boundary between Europe and Asia, and run for about 2,100 km from North to South. The highest peak, Mount Narodnaya, reaches 1,895 m, and other summits range from 900 to 1,500 m, but the many passes make the Urals no barrier to transport. East of the Urals lies one of the most extensive lowlands in the world, the West Sibarian Plain, which is drained by the Ob and Yenisey rivers. The West Siberian Plain merges in the East with the Central Siberian Plateau, which lies mainly at heights of 300-700 m between the Yenisey and Lena river basins. This plateau is bordered on the South by minor mountain ranges that are centred on Lake Baikal. The easternmost portion of Russia is bounded by the Pacific Ocean and is fringed by various mountain chains. This Far East area also includes the Kamchatka and the Kuril and Sakhalin islands.
Climate Extending thousands of kilometres from North to South, Russia spans four climatic zones - arctic, subarctic, temperate and subtropical. Most of the country's area lies in a temperate continental climate, with all the seasons following cyclically one another, with a long cold and snowy winter and a warm summer. The continental character of the climate grows more rigorous in Siberia and the northern districts of the Far East, which have a pronounced continental climate that makes the weather generally quite severe, with wide differences between the seasonal and daily temperatures and a thick bed of permafrost under the topsoil. The absolute minimum temperature of -71 degrees C has been registered in the Oimyakon mountain depression, a short distance from Verkhoyansk, in East Siberia, rightly ranked among the cold poles of the Northern Hemisphere. Russia's Western and Eastern fringes which are fully exposed to the effect of oceans and their seas have three types of ocean-affected climate: marine, transitional, which is actually a continental variety with different extents of sea influence (in the North-West), and monsoon climate (south of the Russian Far East). The islands and the mainland littoral of the Arctic Ocean have a severe arctic and subarctic climate. At the opposite end, the resort belt on the Black Sea coast of the Caucasus, from Tuapse to Anapa, boasts a subtropical, with a warm and moist winter and a dry and hot summer. The mean daily temperatures of January across the whole of Russia, except for the Black Sea coast of the Caucasus, are below zero centigrade, ranging from -1 to -5 degrees C in the West of Russia's European part to -50 degrees C in Yakutia. The summer temperatures, too, differ sharply between the North and South of Russia, from the mean +1 degree in the north of Siberia to +25 degrees C on the Caspian Lowland. The rainfall is the most plentiful (up to 2.000 mm a year) on the mountain slopes of the Caucasus and the Altai, followed by the southern areas of the Russian Pacific coast (up to 1.000 mm), where summer monsoon rains trigger river flooding, and to a lesser extent, the forests of the East European Plain. The most arid spot in Russia is the semidesert sector of the Caspian Lowland, with its meager 150 mm of rainfall a year.
Natural territories under special protection
Apart from these preserves, Russia has 1.519 reserves, where restrictions are placed on some types of economic activity. Of these, 71 reserves have a federal status, and the rest are in the charge of regional administrations. The functions of wildlife refuges, reserves and recreational areas are combined in national natural parks, 17 of which, with a total area of 3.6 million hectares, have been established since the early 1980s. For instance, the Valdai National Park (area: 160.000 hectares) in the Novgorod Region is laid out around the hub formed by the town of Valdai and Lake Valdai. The woods of this wildlife refuge boast over 70 lakes and abound in rare plant and animal life.
|
Today, Russia has 75 preserves of a total area of 19.970.900 hectares. These wildlife refuges offer protection to members of 69% of the mammal species, 83% of the bird, 61% of the reptile, and 96% of the amphibian species, and 40% of the rare plant varieties entered in the Red Data Book. Besides 99.8% of the tree varieties growing in the country's European part are under official protection within these wildlife sanctuaries.