Between the arctic deserts and the taiga lies a dull area devoid of large vegetation, which Nikolai Karamzin proposed to call the Siberian word “tundra”. Attempts have been made to derive this name from the Finnish or Sami languages, in which words with a similar root mean “mountain without forest”, but there are no mountains in the tundra. And the word "tundra" has long existed in Siberian dialects.
The tundra occupies significant territories, but for a long time it was explored very sluggishly - there was nothing to explore. Only with the discovery of minerals in the Far North did they pay attention to the tundra. And not in vain - the largest oil and gas fields are located in the tundra zone. To date, the geography, animal and plant worlds of the tundra have been studied quite well.
1. Although the tundra as a whole can be characterized as a northern steppe, its landscape is far from uniform. In the tundra, there are also quite high hills, and even rocks, but low-lying areas are much more common. The vegetation of the tundra is also heterogeneous. Closer to the coast and the arctic deserts, plants do not cover the land with a solid mass, large bald spots of bare earth and stones come across. To the south, moss and grass form a solid cover, there are bushes. In the area adjacent to the taiga, trees are also encountered, however, due to the climate and lack of water, they look like sick specimens of their more southern counterparts.
2. The landscape of the tundra is diluted by water areas, which can be very extensive. The largest rivers flow through the tundra to the Arctic Ocean: the Ob, Lena, Yenisei and a number of smaller rivers. They carry gigantic volumes of water. During floods, these rivers overflow so that one cannot see the other from one bank. When the high water subsides, numerous lakes form. Water has nowhere to go out of them - low temperatures prevent evaporation, and frozen or clayey soil does not allow water to seep into the depths. Therefore, the tundra has a lot of water in a variety of forms, from rivers to swamps.
3. The average summer temperature does not exceed + 10 ° С, and the corresponding winter indicator is -30 ° С. Very little precipitation falls. An indicator of 200 mm per year is quite comparable with the amount of precipitation in the southern part of the Sahara, but with low evaporation, this is enough to increase the swampiness.
4. Winter in the tundra lasts 9 months. At the same time, the frosts in the tundra are not as strong as in the regions of Siberia located much to the south. Typically, the thermometer does not drop below -40 ° C, while in continental regions it is not uncommon for temperatures below -50 ° C. But the summer in the tundra is much cooler due to the proximity of huge masses of cold ocean waters.
5. The vegetation in the tundra is highly seasonal. At the beginning of a short summer, it comes to life in just a week, covering the ground with fresh greenery. But just as quickly it fades away with the arrival of cold weather and the onset of the polar night.
6. Due to the lack of natural obstacles, winds in the tundra can be very strong and sudden. They are especially terrible in winter in combination with snowfall. Such a bundle is called a blizzard. N can last for several days. Despite snowfalls, there is not much snow in the tundra - it is very quickly blown away in lowlands, ravines and to protruding elements of the landscape.
7. Willow is very common in the tundra, but its appearance is far from the willows growing in the European part of Russia. Willow in the tundra vaguely resembles a beautiful tree, the branches of which hang down to the ground, only in the south near the rivers. To the north, the willow is a continuous and almost insurmountable strip of intergrown bushes, nestling to the ground. The same can be said about the dwarf birch - the dwarf sister of one of the symbols of Russia in the tundra looks like a dwarf freak or a bush.
Dwarf willow
8. Poverty of vegetation leads to the fact that in an unaccustomed person in the tundra, even at an altitude below sea level, there is a mid-altitude effect - difficulty breathing. It is connected with the fact that there is relatively little oxygen in the air above the tundra. The small leaves of small plants give off very little of the gas needed to breathe into the air.
9. A very unpleasant feature of summer in the tundra is the gnat. Myriads of small insects poison the lives of not only people, but also animals. Wild reindeer, for example, migrate not only because of the climate, but also because of the midges. The invasion of insects continues for two weeks in early summer, but it can become a real natural disaster - even numerous herds of deer scatter from the midges.
10. In the tundra, edible berries grow and mature in two months. The prince, or arctic raspberry, is considered the best. Its fruits really taste like raspberries. Residents of the north eat it raw, and also dry it, boil decoctions and make tinctures. The leaves are used to brew a drink that replaces tea. Also in the tundra, closer to the south, blueberries are found. Cloudberry is widespread, ripening even at the 78th parallel. Several types of inedible berries also grow. All types of berry plants are characterized by a long but creeping root. Whereas in desert plants the roots extend almost vertically into the depths of the earth, in tundra plants the roots twist horizontally in a thin layer of fertile soil.
Princess
11. Due to the almost complete absence of fishermen, the rivers and lakes of the tundra are very rich in fish. Moreover, there is an abundance of fish of those species that are considered to be elite or even exotic to the south: omul, broadleaf, seal, trout, salmon.
12. Fishing in the tundra is very diverse. Locals who fish for purely utilitarian purposes catch the inhabitants of the river kingdom with seines in the summer. In winter, they put nets. Absolutely all the catch is used - small and trash fish goes to feed the dogs.
13. The Siberians who go fishing to the tundra prefer spinning or fly fishing. For them, fishing is also a fishing activity. But exotic lovers from the European part come fishing in the tundra, mainly for the sake of sensations - taking into account the cost of the trip, the fish caught turns out to be really golden. Nevertheless, there are many such lovers - there are even tours that include not only traveling across the tundra on all-terrain vehicles, but also fishing on the southern (but very cold) coast of the Kara Sea or the Laptev Sea.
14. They hunt deer, sables, hares and birds in the tundra: wild geese, partridge swans, etc. As in the case of fishing, hunting in the tundra is more of an entertainment or an emphasis on one's status. Although deer are hunted professionally. Meat and skins are sold in northern cities, and deer antlers are bought by businessmen from Southeast Asia. There, horns are not only a popular remedy, but also feed for artificial pearl farms.
15. Tundra, especially steppe, is a favorite habitat for Arctic foxes. These beautiful animals feel great in cold climates, and their omnivorousness allows them to be saturated even in the meager flora and fauna of the tundra.
16. There are a lot of lemmings in the tundra. Small animals are the main food for many predators. They, of course, do not throw themselves from rocks into the water by millions of individuals. Simply, having over-multiplied, they begin to behave inappropriately, rushing even at large predators, and the size of their population decreases. There is nothing good about this - next year, difficult times will come for those animals for which lemmings are food. Wise owls, noticing the decrease in the number of lemmings, do not lay eggs.
17. Polar bears, seals, and walruses live on the coast of the Arctic Ocean, but it would hardly be appropriate to consider them inhabitants of the tundra, since these animals get their food in the sea, and whether on the coast instead of the tundra there is taiga or forest steppe, for them there is basically nothing would not change.
Someone did not good luck
18. In the tundra, since the mid-1970s, a unique experiment has been taking place to restore the population of musk oxen. The experiment began from scratch - no one saw a live musk ox in Russia, only skeletons were found. I had to turn to the Americans for assistance - they had both the experience of settling musk oxen and "extra" individuals. The musk ox first took root on Wrangel Island, then on Taimyr. Now, several thousand of these animals live on Taimyr, on about. Wrangel about a thousand. The problem is a large number of rivers - musk oxen would have settled further, but they cannot cross them, so they have to be brought to each new region. Small herds already live in the Magadan region, Yakutia and Yamal.
19. Those who are a little familiar with the behavior of swans know that the nature of these birds is far from angelic. And the swans living in the tundra refute the axiom that only man kills for fun, and animals kill only for food. In the tundra, swans pounce on creatures they do not like without any purpose to eat them. The objects of attack are not only birds, but also polar foxes, wolverines and other representatives of a poor animal world. Even predatory hawks are afraid of swans.
20. The modern Nenets, who make up the bulk of the tundra population, have long ceased to live in camps. Families live permanently in small villages, and the camps are one distant tents, in which men live, looking after the herd of deer. The children are going to the boarding school by a helicopter. He also brings them on vacation.
21. The Nenets practically do not eat vegetables and fruits - they are too expensive in the North. At the same time, reindeer herders never suffer from scurvy, which has claimed many lives in much more southern latitudes. The secret is in sheep's blood. The Nenets drink it raw, getting the necessary vitamins and minerals.
In Alaska, sledges would carry
22. Apart from dogs, the Nenets have no other domestic animals - only specially bred dogs can survive the severe cold. Even such dogs suffer from the cold and then they are allowed to spend the night in the tent - it is very difficult to manage a herd of deer without dogs.
23. In order to ensure elementary survival, a Nenets family needs a minimum of 300 reindeer, and there are centuries-proven proportions of the distribution of the herd into producers, females, riding reindeer, castrates, calves, etc. The income from the delivery of one reindeer is about 8,000 rubles. To buy a regular snowmobile, you need to sell about 30 deer.
24. The Nenets people are very friendly, so the incident that happened in December 2015, when two top employees of the Gazprom company who had come to hunt, were killed in the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug as a result of a shootout with the Nenets, seems to be completely wild. There was not a single person for tens of kilometers around the scene of the incident ...
25. The tundra "trembles". Due to the general hanging temperature, the permafrost layer becomes thinner, and the methane underneath begins to break through to the surface, leaving huge holes of great depth. While such funnels are counted in units, however, in the case of large amounts of methane emissions, the climate can change much more than the alarmists of the greenhouse effect predicted at the peak of the popularity of this theory.
