Comprehensive information on the West Siberian Plain

The West Siberian Plain is the largest plain in Asia and the third largest plain in the world. It is 2,000 kilometers long from north to south, 1,500 kilometers wide from east to west, and covers an area of ??2.6 million square kilometers. The altitude in the south is 220 to 300 meters, and the altitude in the middle and north is 50 to 150 meters. From north to south, tundra, forest, forest steppe, and grassland landscapes are distributed in parallel, with typical latitudinal zonal distribution patterns. Most of the area is covered by subarctic coniferous forests. There are rivers such as the Yenisey River, the Ob River, the Irtysh River, and the Taz River. The population density in the central and northern parts is low, while the southern part continues to develop with the development of fuel and metal resources, forming an industrial and mining base centered on the Tyumen Oil Field, Kuzbass Coal Field, and Tomsk Iron Mine. Basic introduction Chinese name: Western Siberian Plain Foreign name: Western Siberian Plain Alias: Zapadnosibirskaya Ravnina Administrative region category: Russia Area: 2.6 million square kilometers Climate conditions: Subarctic continental climate Famous attractions: Yenisey River, Ob River long from north to south : 2000 kilometers East-west width: 1500 kilometers Altitude: 50 to 300 meters Main cities: Novosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk Geographical location, topography, physical geography, topography, climate, hydrology, soil, human geography, resources, Residents, economy, culture, more information, extremely cold, swampy, geographical location The largest plain in Asia - the West Siberian Plain, is located in Russia. It is bounded by the Yenisei River in the east, the Ural Mountains in the west, the Kazakh hills and the Sayan Mountains in the south, and the Kara Sea in the north, including Tyumen Oblast, Omsk Oblast, Novosibirsk Oblast, Tomsk Oblast, Altai Territory, and Krai Parts of Myrovo Oblast. It is 1,000-1,900 kilometers wide from east to west, 2,500 kilometers long from north to south, and covers an area of ??2.74 million square kilometers. It is one of the famous great plains in the world. It is low-lying and open, with an altitude of 50-150 meters in the central and northern parts, and an altitude of 220-300 meters in the western, southern and eastern edge areas. The Ob River and the Irtysh River run through the entire territory. Topography: The terrain of this area is low and flat, with widespread swamps. It has a subarctic and frigid continental climate. From north to south, tundra, forest, forest steppe, and grassland landscapes are distributed in parallel, with typical latitudinal zonal distribution patterns. Most of the area is covered by subarctic coniferous forests. It is rich in oil and natural gas resources and has the famous Tyumen Oilfield area. The population density in the central and northern parts is low, while the southern part continues to develop with the development of fuel and metal resources, forming an industrial and mining base centered on the Tyumen Oil Field, Kuzbass Coal Field, and Tomsk Iron Mine. The total forest area is 60 million hectares. Most of the Balabin, Ishim and Kurunda grasslands in the south have been cultivated. It is one of the most important dairy livestock and grain-producing areas in Russia. Physical Geography Terrain This area is characterized by being high in the south and low in the north, with 80% of the area being very flat plains. The West Siberian Plain only has some very low hills in some places, and the rest of the vast area is extremely flat. People call the West Siberian Plain the flattest plain in the world because the difference in terrain height between its north and south directions of 3,000 kilometers does not exceed 100 meters. The reason why the West Siberian Plain is so flat is because its underground is a hard and ancient crust. It is located inside the Eurasian plate and has relatively stable geology. In addition, the cold climate reduces weathering and the ancient crust is more easily preserved. West Siberian Plain - Aerial Photography Climate Due to its proximity to the alpine zone, the West Siberian Plain has an extremely cold climate and few animals and plants. The temperature difference between winter and summer in the West Siberian Plain varies greatly. Summer temperatures are hot and short-lived. In the south, the temperature is generally 20°C and can reach a maximum of 35°C-40°C. In the north, the temperature is generally around 10℃. The average temperature in January is -20℃--25℃, and the coldest temperature can reach -50℃--52℃. The West Siberian Plain is dry in winter and does not receive much rainfall in summer. The annual average in the north does not exceed 400 mm, and in the south it is 400-500 mm. So the West Siberian Plain is an extremely cold plain. Here, bowls and buckets of milk are frozen into ice cubes; steel placed in the open air loses its toughness and breaks as soon as it is broken; truck drivers must be particularly careful, otherwise, the rubber tires will burst with the slightest vibration. . Hydrology of the West Siberian Plain The main rivers on the West Siberian Plain are the Ob-Irtysh River and the Yenisey River. Among them, the Irtysh River originates from Xinjiang, China. It is the only outflow river in China that flows into the Arctic Ocean, and it is also the only outflow river in Central Asia. Because the terrain of the West Siberian Plain is very flat, the river flow here is very slow. Every spring, the Ob River, which flows from south to north, always thaws in the upper reaches first, causing freezing floods. The Ob River system runs through the entire territory and flows into the Arctic Ocean. With a total length of 3,650 kilometers, it is the longest river on the plain. The river network is densely covered (about 2,000 large and small rivers), with numerous lakes and contiguous swamps. The downstream in the north was still frozen at this time. As a result, water from the upstream could not pass smoothly and was flooded by ice water. This situation year after year has resulted in the formation of large swamps and wetlands. The most prominent resource in the West Siberian Plain is oil, such as the world-famous Tyumen Oilfield. The plains also have vast grasslands and developed animal husbandry. Due to the cold climate, most of the vegetation here is coniferous forest.

Soil The surface of the West Siberian Plain is characterized by numerous swamps, accounting for more than 50% of the plain. The far north is a tundra zone, and the south is a forest tundra zone. Due to low-lying terrain, low evaporation and poor drainage, many lakes and swamps are formed here despite low rainfall. Every summer, there is often hundreds of kilometers of ocean. This vast plain contains extremely rich oil, natural gas and other resources. West Siberian Plain The vegetation of the West Siberian Plain includes tundra, forest swamp, taiga, forest steppe and treeless steppe. The subarctic coniferous forest is continuous and widespread. The West Siberian Plain also has thick permafrost, with the thickest part reaching 1,377.6 meters, which is many times thicker than the thickest permafrost layer on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. In some villages, you can often see some crooked wooden houses, some of which have half of them sunk underground. This is also caused by frozen soil. After the surface layer of permafrost melts, the foundation becomes very soft. Due to the uneven stress on various parts, the house tilted this way and that. Human Geography Resources Siberia is rich in natural resources. Mineral deposits include oil, natural gas, coal, gold, diamonds, etc. The distribution of various resources is relatively concentrated, and there are many large mineral deposits. There are large areas of fertile chernozem and chernozem land in Western Siberia that need to be developed; the famous Siberian Forest covers the vast area of ??Siberia, and its timber stock accounts for more than 75% of the former Soviet Union; there are numerous large and small lakes and dozens of Thousands of large and small rivers give Siberia a large amount of water resources. Lake Baikal, the world's deepest and largest freshwater lake, has a freshwater reserve of 23,600 cubic kilometers, accounting for about 20% of the world's freshwater reserves and more than 80% of the former Soviet Union's freshwater reserves. Siberia was the largest freshwater fish producing area in the former Soviet Union, with freshwater fish production accounting for more than 25% of the total production in the former Soviet Union. Scenery of the West Siberian Plains Residents Siberia is the habitat of nomadic peoples. Beginning in the second half of the 16th century, Tsarist Russia expanded across the Ural Mountains to Siberia and cut off large tracts of territory that originally belonged to China. After the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway from 1895 to 1905, the area began to be developed on a large scale, and the population, mainly of Russian ethnicity, moved eastward in large numbers. During the first five-year plan of the former Soviet Union (1928-1932), the industries along the Kuznetsk Coalfield and the Trans-Siberian Railway developed greatly. In the 1950s, the development of hydropower resources of the Angara-Yenisei River was implemented. Large oil and gas fields in Western Siberia have been developed since the mid-1960s. In the mid-1970s, construction began on the 4,275-kilometer second Siberian railway, the Baikal-Amur Railway (Tashet-Soviet Port), which was opened to traffic in November 1984. Siberia is an important energy and raw material base. On this basis, the petrochemical industry, coal chemical industry, non-ferrous metal mining, and metallurgical industries are also very developed. The steel industry has begun to take shape, and the machinery industry has developed, but it does not have supporting facilities and is still weak. Agriculture is more developed in southern West Siberia, with wheat, dairy and meat livestock industries as the main sectors. The population is about 40 million. Russians account for more than 80%, Ukrainians and Belarusians account for about 5%, and others include Komi, Yakuts, Tuvans, etc. The population is distributed along the railway lines. The main cities in Siberia include Novosibirsk and Krasnoyarsk. Economy of the West Siberian Plain Before the October Revolution, the Russian Communist Party pursued a predatory economic policy in Siberia and did not take many measures that were beneficial to local economic development. The level of development of productivity in the region is very low, and economic development lags far behind the level of Russia as a whole. In the entire economic structure, agriculture has an absolute advantage. In 1913, Siberia's total agricultural output value accounted for 78% of the region's total industrial and agricultural output value. In the same year, Siberia's total industrial output value was only 1.5% of Russia's. At that time, except for the mining industry, other industrial sectors in Siberia were extremely backward. There is almost no ferrous metallurgy. The intermediate products and final products produced by heavy industry, especially the products of the processing industry sector, account for a negligible proportion. Almost all light industry products must be imported from the European part of Russia. The tsarist colonial policy hindered resource development and industrialization in Siberia. After the October Revolution, resource development and industrialization in Siberia accelerated. After the October Revolution, the economic development of Siberia entered a new historical period. After decades of development, Siberia has gradually formed a national economic system dominated by resource development. Over the course of more than half a century, the face of Siberia has changed significantly. With the laying of the Trans-Siberian Railway, productivity here began to develop at an unprecedented rate. In the 20 years from 1897 to 1917, the number of cities along the railway increased from 40 to 63, and the number of residents in each city increased by 2, 4 or even 8 times. In the 1930s, the second coal metallurgical base of the former Soviet Union was built in the Ural-Kuzbass region. The Ural-Kuznetsk Coal and Metallurgical Complex became the basis for the industrialization of the Ural and Siberian regions. The purpose of establishing the complex is to gradually shift the industrial center of gravity to the eastern region in a planned manner and to create conditions for eliminating the economic backwardness of the newly developed areas. During the Second World War, Siberia was the rear area of ??the former Soviet Union, and its economic development rate was higher than that of other regions. From 1941 to 1945, the amount of infrastructure investment here accounted for almost a quarter of the Soviet Union.

In 1942, Siberia produced more than a quarter of the former Soviet Union's steel and steel products, a third of its pig iron, and nearly half of its coal and coke. In the 1950s, plans to develop the natural resources of the Angara-Yenisei region in Eastern Siberia began. This is a sign that productivity is moving further eastward. This project is larger and takes longer to build than the Ural-Kuznik complex. The implementation of the Angara-Yenisei Development Plan has greatly promoted the productivity development of Krasnoyarsk Territory and Irkutsk Oblast. Siberia's economy has therefore entered a stage of rapid development. The goal of this stage is to develop the natural resources of Siberia more extensively and to establish several large-scale regional production organizations with complex production structures on this basis. In the 1960s, the development of the Tyumen oil and gas field, the largest oil and gas base in the former Soviet Union, turned Western Siberia into a region attracting the most capital and labor. The development of the Tyumen oil and gas field greatly exceeds the Ural-Kuzbass coal and metallurgical base and the Angara-Yenisei complex system in terms of scale. The development of the Tyumen Oilfield enabled the former Soviet Union to catch up with and surpass the United States in crude oil production in less than 20 years, becoming the country that produces the most crude oil in the world. West Siberian City One of the key engineering projects in the 1970s was the laying of the second major transportation artery to the Pacific Ocean - the BKA Railway. The construction of the 3,145-kilometer-long BAI Railway across Siberia and the Far North and Far East is another major step for the former Soviet Union to accelerate the economic development of Siberia and the Far East. With the construction of this railway, the focus of resource development has gradually been pushed to the vast area in the Near North. The rich reserves of coal, iron, copper, zinc, nickel, asbestos, mica, apatite and forest resources are likely to be heavily exploited in the near future. In the future, the population in the areas along the railway will continue to increase, and several industrial centers and new cities will gradually be built here. In the 1980s, 50 research institutes of the Siberian Branch of the former Soviet Academy of Sciences and nearly 200 scientific research units of various competent departments jointly formulated a comprehensive development plan for Siberia's natural resources, referred to as the Siberia Plan. The Siberia plan is based on the characteristics of Siberia and the Far East, taking into account the overall situation of the former Soviet Union, and selecting those sectors that have a decisive impact on the entire national economy as the main development direction. This is a larger-scale long-term comprehensive plan for the comprehensive development of Siberia. Currently, Siberia is in an unprecedented stage of development. Due to the long-term imbalance between various departments of the national economy, coupled with the lack of funds, labor and other factors, its economic development has been restricted. In order to solve these problems, the Russian Federation has actively adjusted domestic policies and measures during the development and construction process of Siberia, further expanded opening up to the outside world, actively introduced funds and advanced technology and equipment, and continuously expanded economic and trade relations with other countries, including China. Technical cooperation. Culture In Siberia, on the banks of the Yenisey River, there live some ethnic minorities - Khakassians, Angara, Lena, Altai and Sayan mountains, the pearl of Eastern Siberia - Lake Baikal. Lake Baikal is the deepest and possibly oldest lake in the world, with a history of 25 million years. It contains almost 25% of the world's fresh water reserves, and it is very clear and transparent. The white disk with a diameter of 30 centimeters can still be seen 40 meters underwater in Lake Baikal. The altitude of Lake Baikal is about 500 meters. There are 1,850 species of animals and 850 species of plants living in Lake Baikal, many of which are endemic here. The main attraction of the Krasnoyarsk Territory is the Sayan Pillars, a unique nature reserve in the Eastern Sayan Mountains. The abrupt rocks form 80 groups of cliffs with a height of 100 meters. Some cliffs have names consistent with their shapes: old man, peasant woman, golden eagle, feather, castle, etc. This is a favorite place for mountaineering and rock climbing enthusiasts. The fascinating water tour starts from Krasnoyarsk and goes down the Yenisey River to the far north, to Dudinka and Dixon. Tuvans, Yakuts, Buryats. For example, there are only 80,000 people in Khakassia and less than 200,000 in Tuva. The people of these ethnic groups have unique ventriloquism arts. The performers do not sing the words, just use their throats to make sounds, which sometimes sound like a band playing, sometimes like the tapping of hooves, sometimes like the howls of hundreds of wild animals. They learn this art from childhood, but far from everyone can learn it. Interestingly, the ventriloquists were only men. Siberia's severe cold itself is also famous. Sometimes the cold reaches minus 40 or 50 degrees Celsius. And minus 25 to 30 degrees Celsius simply doesn't attract the attention of local residents. This is a common temperature in winter. Summer in southern Siberia is very hot, with temperatures reaching 30 degrees Celsius. You can swim, although the water is often a bit cold: even in July the water temperature can only reach 17-18 degrees. There are many artificial "sea" here - the reservoirs of numerous hydropower stations. Southern Siberia is home to some large cities - Omsk, Novosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk and Irkutsk. Buryatia is located southeast of Lake Baikal and is the center of Russian Buddhism. There are more than thirty Buddhist monasteries - lamasery here. Like all steppe nomads, the Buryats have always loved horses. Horse owners always remember what each horse "looks like." Friendly horses are the main characters of many legends and stories. Mare’s milk – Mare’s milk is highly regarded for its medicinal properties.

The adjacent Tuva *** and state-owned monument mark the center of Asia. The roads here are few and difficult, but the magical natural environment attracts tourists. Relatively recently, another way of traveling has emerged in Russia - Arctic tourism. Take a helicopter from Moscow to the Spitsbergen Islands, then take a helicopter to an ice tent camp near the North Pole. Here tourists will spend a few days, but they will not be lonely: riding on a dog sled, running on a ski machine, hiking along ice floes, floating in a balloon over the white and silent land. There is even a polar sauna and recreational equipment in the camp. As long as the weather is suitable, they will take a helicopter and sprint to the geographical pole with coordinates of 90°00′00″. Happy tourists can call their relatives and friends through satellite phones and happily stay in the northernmost part of the earth. Click to take a photo. More information Extremely cold The West Siberian Plain is an extremely cold plain. Here, bowls and buckets of milk are frozen into ice cubes; steel left in the open air loses its toughness and collapses. Truck drivers must be particularly careful, otherwise, the rubber tires will burst with a slight shock. The village of Oymyakon in northeastern Siberia is the "cold pole of the northern hemisphere". From December to February of the following year, The monthly average temperature here is below -45°C, with the lowest ever reaching -73°C. There is a thick layer of permafrost here, with the thickest part reaching 1,377.6 meters, which is thicker than the thickest frozen soil layer on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in my country. Many times thicker. In some villages, you can often see some crooked wooden houses, some of which have been partially sunk into the ground. This is also due to the fact that the foundation of the frozen soil has become very soft. The uneven stress on each part caused the house to tilt. The Western Siberian Plain covers an area of ??2.6 million square kilometers and is located between the Yenisey River and the Ural Mountains. The terrain is low and the Ob River passes through it from south to north. The Great Plains, which flows into the Arctic Ocean, is the longest river on the plains. It is sparsely populated and has rich mineral deposits waiting to be developed. Why is the Western Siberian Plain so swampy? It was naturally covered by ice sheets during the Ice Age. Many "small" pits will be left, and the forest here is dense, and the soil is suitable for the forest. It has high humus content and is relatively fertile. It is also affected by the frigid and sub-arctic continental climate, and the temperature is low, resulting in less water evaporation. In addition, forests have good water retention properties, so they accumulate a lot of water, forming a lot of swamps. The West Siberian Plain has heavy rains in winter and spring, and the river flow is not smooth, which brings sufficient water sources to the swamps. The West Siberian Plain has a high latitude and widespread frozen soil. , it is difficult for surface water to seep down, and it is "difficult for water to enter the ground", causing a large amount of water to accumulate on the surface. The West Siberian Plain has a high latitude, small solar radiation, and weak evaporation.

(The reason also applies to the swamps in the Sanjiang Plain area of ??Northeast my country)