Yano-Indigirskaya lowland and its characteristics

The lowland, located in the north of Yakutia, is a territory of permafrost with characteristic permafrost forms of relief. These are thermokarst lakes, bogs, etc. In general, this territory is a tundra.

About where the Yano-Indigirskaya lowland is located, about the terrain, about the features of flora and fauna, about age and other information, you can find out in this article.

A little bit about lowlands

Lowland is a plain whose height does not exceed 200 m above sea level. As a rule, lowlands represent an even surface of the earth, composed of young marine, riverine and lake sediments. They are located in large and smaller depressions, and can also be on platform plains and in intermontane depressions. It should be noted here that the Caspian lowland, located on the territory of Russia, is below the level of the World Ocean.

Another feature of lowlands, mainly coastal, is that they are usually densely populated. And often it happens that people artificially increase the land area of these territories (for example, in Holland polders).

Location, extent

This lowland extends from the Buor Haya Bay from the west to the Indigirka River in the east, and its territory occupies most of the Yakutian Arctic zone.

Geographical coordinates of the Yano-Indigirskaya lowland - 46.602075; 39.230506.

The territory of the lowland occupies more than 600 square kilometers of land area located along the southern coasts of the seas of the East Siberian and Laptev. Also here is the vast delta of the Yana River and the estuaries of other smaller rivers (Indigirki, Omoloy), on behalf of two of which the name of this lowland is called.

Forms, relief

The Yano-Indigirskaya lowland has the shape of a crescent moon. In the widest part, its width is 300 kilometers, the average height is up to 30-80 meters above sea level (reaches 100 meters).

Lowland is a vast marshy plain, located in the north-eastern part of Siberia. In combination with the Kolyma Lowland in the northeastern part of Yakutia, in the basin of the Bolshaya Chukochya, Alazeya and the left bank of the lower reaches of the Kolyma, it forms a vast lowland called the East Siberian.

In some places, there are residual ridges composed of indigenous rocks, with a height of 558 meters (this is the maximum height of the Yano-Indigirskaya lowland).

Age, study

The described area is marked by the presence of a number of supporting and partial sections of the Neoplestocene age, which contain the remains of rare fossil fauna and flora. These sections were studied at different times by such scientists as AA Bunge (or Chersky, in 1891), VF Goncharov, BS Rusanov (in 1968), and NK Vereshchagin (1977) .).

Lazarev PA investigated the remains of the mammoth lowland fauna from 1970 to 2000. Some sections of the late Cenozoic are well studied and described in the scientific literature, but there are also sections whose location has not been studied to the end.

In recent years, finds of the oldest remains of fossil animals and vegetation (late Neoplestocene) have been found in lowland areas.

Yano-Indigirskaya lowland: characteristics of the area, soils

In this lowland there is a lake called Pavylon. Occurs in these Siberian regions of rare arrays of hills in height from 200 to 300 meters.

Prevalent here are perennial frozen rocks and permafrost relief forms. For the most part, the lowland is composed of various marine, lake and river deposits with a high content of fossil ice due to the prevalence of permafrost in these areas.

Lowland has its own characteristics (there are quite a few of them). These include thermokarst sinks (in other alases) with marshes, lakes, over which numerous bumps of punching rise. Also, along the shores of the seas, rivers and lakes, you can observe the Baygarahi hillocks and polygonal soils. The latter are soils in the form of micro- and mesorelief (the sizes are from several centimeters to several hundred meters). They have the outlines of polygons, spots, rings, circles, and on the slopes - strips.

Yano-Indigirskaya lowlands: geography, animals

The role of the natural refrigerator here played permafrost, which preserved for tens of thousands of years the remains of frozen corpses of mammoths and many other mammals of the glacial period. This part of the vast Siberia - one of the most saturated remnants of mammoth fauna.

In connection with the erosion of coastal areas along the lakes and rivers and thermoabrasion of the shores of the seas, thawing and loss of the remnants of the most ancient animals occurs every year.

Flora: connection with fauna

Yano-Indigirskaya lowland in the glacial period was a huge tundra-steppe space with the richest grass vegetation. In all probability, under these rather favorable conditions, the amount of mammalian fauna reached considerable dimensions. It was at the end of the neo-pleistocene.

In the most diverse places in the Arctic, niches were created, representing natural traps, where "cemeteries" were formed. In them the mass death of the most ancient animals took place.

Shrub and moss lichen tundra prevail along the coast, and in the southern part of the river valleys there are rare deciduous forests.

In the south of the lowlands along the river valleys there are areas of forest-tundra, which consist of rare-leafed larch.

Today, in this region of Siberia, there are species of animals that are typical for such zones as tundra and forest-tundra. You can find here and some plants listed in the Red Book of Yakutia. Basically, birch, willow, kayander, aspen, stilt, sedge, hawthorn, etc. grow. Among the fish, bream, sterlet, roach, pike, sid, pike perch, perch and many others are more common.

Population

The Yano-Indigirskaya lowland is the most severe region of the Russian Arctic. The cold in the summer comes from the East Siberian Sea, as well as the Laptev Sea. And winter wind brings southern winds blowing from the uplands of Yakutia, where during this period of the year severe frosts prevail. Therefore, few plants can survive in such harsh conditions.

When the Russian pioneers appeared in these cold regions, the lowland was not deserted at all. On these remote territories, the Evens and the Yukagirs have lived for a long time. But the local population here has always been very small.

Local people are engaged in hunting, fishing and reindeer breeding.

Surov is this unapproachable land, but in its own way beautiful and mysterious.