What is tundra?Translated from Finnish tunturi means "barren land", "land of the enemy" or "treeless plain" In short, the place uninhabitable.Representations about it, most people are reduced to the information received from the curriculum - mosses, reindeer, permafrost, lichens - and it's all in there somewhere, far to the north.Information from popular TV programs, says the threats (primarily buildings) that are linked to global warming.
endless snow desert
Tundra can be described as a cold desert, is located around the north pole.Someone called it the southern boundary of the Arctic, someone - a territory located just outside the taiga.Each of these statements correctly explains what the tundra.
In Russia it is a strip of 300 km to 500 km stretching from the Bering Strait in the east of Finland, to the west.Incorporating arctic and subarctic zones, tundra covers about 10% of the land expanse of our country.The entire coast of the Arctic Ocean covered by this band, narrower in the European part of Russia and Siberia in general;also captured the northern part of Kamchatka.
most severe time
What is the tundra in winter?At this time, the climate becomes even more severe - in the Siberian frosts reach -51 degrees side.They are aggravated by the wind, which is due to the lack of mountains and more or less decent expanse of hills.Alternating plains and lowlands on a map marked in green, which completely covers the territory of the tundra.The sun does not rise at all, the long polar night lasts 8-9 months.This is the most difficult time for the fauna of the region.
From "black blizzard" hide everything: people, rare animals and birds.After the storms, raging for weeks, is pitted snowy desert sand resembles in appearance as cover very small and is in a moving state, which allowed one researcher tundra call it "the land of snow dunes."
time mosquito and bird nesting
Comes cold northern summer with maximum temperature not exceeding 10 degrees, but the sun is not hidden at all - come the white nights, which last 64 days.The top layer of snow melts, forming endless smaller spills, no deeper than 50-100 cm lakes that locals fearlessly cross on his bunk.Thawed and revived all around.
tundra soil is very specific - on permafrost are small gley and humus horizons.Specificity is because the water is standing, the evaporation of a small, low temperatures do not allow plant residues rot and decompose.Rainfall bit, up to 250 mm per year, but the thawed water on the surface of the soil does not have time to evaporate.All this contributes to the formation of marshes, of which there are an infinite number.
And here is the grace
What is the tundra in the summer?The whole nature of this region due to the length of this period - the plants have time to ottsvesti to give seeds.This is the world of reindeer moss, lichens and sedges, rosemary and heather are found, dwarf birch and willow Shaggy.The trees are low, because the roots can not go into the soil.
autumn huge bluish field blueberry plantations interspersed with orange cloudberry, crowberry lot, in a word, berry paradise - that is the tundra.The definition of this area as a mosquito kingdom is also true because of the number of these insects the air in the tundra is not transparent.Clouds of various midges and northern bumblebee complete the picture.The infinite variety of mushrooms.This is all food for birds.Tundra for them - a nesting place.
Millions of birds spend short summer here.There are so many that, according to eyewitnesses, the lakes are on the snow-white swans on the dark geese.Here nesting peregrine falcon, ptarmigan and snow bunting, gulls, terns and guillemots.They not only feed on mosquitoes.Northern seas, lakes and wetlands of the tundra full of fish (white sturgeon, salmon) and shellfish.From the family of rodents inhabit the tundra lemmings.If
capture these bluish and orange field berries, dark and white bird lake, to show what the tundra, the photo will be very effective.Not poor fauna of the area.Reindeer and white fox, symbols of the north, are found here in unlimited quantities.Coast - the realm of polar bears and other large animals such as walrus.
climate, and with it the nature, changing from north to south, and tundra is divided into three sub-zones: the Arctic, lichen, moss and South shrub.Even names can see how the plant world as the distance from the North Pole.
natural extension of the tundra
Then begins the territory, very slightly differs from that described above.What is the tundra and forest tundra?How are they?Some experts do not find much of a difference and a second sub-zone called first.Indeed, the difference is small.Forest-tundra refers to subarctic zone stretches, completely repeating the southern boundary of the tundra, its width varies from 30 to 300 km.The average annual temperature is higher by only 8-10 degrees, low trees are rare islands.But as the tundra comes close to coniferous forests, and the southern region it is also more or less covered by them, it is often called subzone no tundra and taiga.
