1.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
2.
Body of water
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A body of water or waterbody is any significant accumulation of water, generally on a planets surface. The term most often refers to oceans, seas, and lakes, a body of water does not have to be still or contained, Rivers, streams, canals, and other geographical features where water moves from one place to another are also considered bodies of water. Most are naturally occurring geographical features, but some are artificial, there are types that can be either. For example, most reservoirs are created by engineering dams, similarly, most harbors are naturally occurring bays, but some harbors have been created through construction. Bodies of water that are navigable are known as waterways, some bodies of water collect and move water, such as rivers and streams, and others primarily hold water, such as lakes and oceans. The term body of water can also refer to a reservoir of water held by a plant, note that there are some geographical features involving water that are not bodies of water, for example waterfalls, geysers and rapids. Arm of the sea - also sea arm, used to describe a sea loch, arroyo - a usually dry creek bed or gulch that temporarily fills with water after a heavy rain, or seasonally. Artificial lake or artificial pond - see reservoir or impoundment, barachois - a lagoon separated from the ocean by a sand bar. Bay - an area of water bordered by land on three sides, similar to, but smaller than a gulf, bayou - a slow-moving stream or a marshy lake. Bight - a large and often only slightly receding bay, or a bend in any geographical feature, billabong - see Oxbow lake, a pond or still body of water created when a river changes course and some water becomes trapped. Boil - see Seep Brook - a small stream, canal - an artificial waterway, usually connected to existing lakes, rivers, or oceans. Channel - the physical confine of a river, slough or ocean consisting of a bed. See also stream bed and strait, earth scientists generally use the term to describe a circular or round inlet with a narrow entrance, though colloquially the term is sometimes used to describe any sheltered bay. Basin - a region of land where water from rain or snowmelt drains downhill into another body of water, such as a river, lake, creek - an inlet of the sea, narrower than a cove. Delta - the location where a river flows into an ocean, sea, estuary, lake, distributary or distributary channel - a stream that branches off and flows away from a main stream channel. Draw - a usually dry creek bed or gulch that temporarily fills with water after a heavy rain, fjord - a submergent landform which has occurred due to glacial activity. Glacier - a large collection of ice or a river that moves slowly down a mountain. Glacial Pothole - see Kettle Gulf - a part of a lake or ocean that extends so that it is surrounded by land on three sides, similar to, but larger than a bay, headland - an area of water bordered by land on three sides
3.
Sea
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A sea is a large body of salt water that is surrounded in whole or in part by land. More broadly, the sea is the system of Earths salty. The sea moderates Earths climate and has important roles in the cycle, carbon cycle. Although the sea has been traveled and explored since prehistory, the scientific study of the sea—oceanography—dates broadly to the British Challenger expedition of the 1870s. Owing to the present state of continental drift, the Northern Hemisphere is now equally divided between land and sea but the South is overwhelmingly oceanic. Salinity in the ocean is generally in a narrow band around 3. 5% by mass, although this can vary in more landlocked waters, near the mouths of large rivers. About 85% of the solids in the sea are sodium chloride. Deep-sea currents are produced by differences in salinity and temperature, surface currents are formed by the friction of waves produced by the wind and by tides, the changes in local sea level produced by the gravity of the Moon and Sun. The direction of all of these is governed by surface and submarine land masses, former changes in sea levels have left continental shelves, shallow areas in the sea close to land. The most diverse areas surround great tropical coral reefs, whaling in the deep sea was once common but whales dwindling numbers prompted international conservation efforts and finally a moratorium on most commercial hunting. Life may have started there and aquatic microbial mats are generally credited with the oxygenation of Earths atmosphere, the sea is an essential aspect of human trade, travel, mineral extraction, and power generation. It is the scene of activities including swimming, diving, surfing. However, population growth, industrialization, and intensive farming have all contributed to marine pollution. Atmospheric carbon dioxide is being absorbed in increasing amounts, lowering its pH in a known as ocean acidification. The shared nature of the sea has made overfishing an increasing problem, both senses of sea date to Old English, the larger sense has required a definite article since Early Middle English. Seas are generally larger than lakes and contain salt water, while the defining elements of size and being bounded are generally used, there is no formally accepted technical definition of sea among oceanographers. In international law, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea states that all the ocean is the sea. Earth is the known planet with seas of liquid water on its surface, although Mars possesses ice caps
4.
Drainage basin
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A drainage basin or catchment area is any area of land where precipitation collects and drains off into a common outlet, such as into a river, bay, or other body of water. Drainage basins connect into other drainage basins at elevations in a hierarchical pattern, with smaller sub-drainage basins. Other terms used to describe drainage basins are catchment, catchment basin, drainage area, river basin and water basin. In closed drainage basins the water converges to a point inside the basin, known as a sink, which may be a permanent lake. The drainage basin acts as a funnel by collecting all the water within the covered by the basin. Each drainage basin is separated topographically from adjacent basins by a perimeter, drainage basins are similar but not identical to hydrologic units, which are drainage areas delineated so as to nest into a multi-level hierarchical drainage system. Hydrologic units are defined to allow multiple inlets, outlets, or sinks, in a strict sense, all drainage basins are hydrologic units but not all hydrologic units are drainage basins. Drainage basins of the oceans and seas of the world. Grey areas are endorheic basins that do not drain to the oceans, the following is a list of the major ocean basins, About 48. 7% of the worlds land drains to the Atlantic Ocean. The two major mediterranean seas of the world also flow to the Atlantic, The Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico basin includes most of the U. S. The Mediterranean Sea basin includes much of North Africa, east-central Africa, Southern, Central, and Eastern Europe, Turkey, and the areas of Israel, Lebanon. Just over 13% of the land in the world drains to the Pacific Ocean, the Indian Oceans drainage basin also comprises about 13% of Earths land. It drains the eastern coast of Africa, the coasts of the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, the Indian subcontinent, Burma, antarctica comprises approximately eight percent of the Earths land. The five largest river basins, from largest to smallest, are the basins of the Amazon, the Río de la Plata, the Congo, the Nile, and the Mississippi. The three rivers that drain the most water, from most to least, are the Amazon, Ganga, endorheic drainage basins are inland basins that do not drain to an ocean. Around 18% of all land drains to endorheic lakes or seas or sinks, the largest of these consists of much of the interior of Asia, which drains into the Caspian Sea, the Aral Sea, and numerous smaller lakes. Some of these, such as the Great Basin, are not single drainage basins but collections of separate, in endorheic bodies of standing water where evaporation is the primary means of water loss, the water is typically more saline than the oceans. An extreme example of this is the Dead Sea, drainage basins have been historically important for determining territorial boundaries, particularly in regions where trade by water has been important
5.
Russia
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Russia, also officially the Russian Federation, is a country in Eurasia. The European western part of the country is more populated and urbanised than the eastern. Russias capital Moscow is one of the largest cities in the world, other urban centers include Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod. Extending across the entirety of Northern Asia and much of Eastern Europe, Russia spans eleven time zones and incorporates a range of environments. It shares maritime borders with Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk, the East Slavs emerged as a recognizable group in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries AD. Founded and ruled by a Varangian warrior elite and their descendants, in 988 it adopted Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantine Empire, beginning the synthesis of Byzantine and Slavic cultures that defined Russian culture for the next millennium. Rus ultimately disintegrated into a number of states, most of the Rus lands were overrun by the Mongol invasion. The Soviet Union played a role in the Allied victory in World War II. The Soviet era saw some of the most significant technological achievements of the 20th century, including the worlds first human-made satellite and the launching of the first humans in space. By the end of 1990, the Soviet Union had the second largest economy, largest standing military in the world. It is governed as a federal semi-presidential republic, the Russian economy ranks as the twelfth largest by nominal GDP and sixth largest by purchasing power parity in 2015. Russias extensive mineral and energy resources are the largest such reserves in the world, making it one of the producers of oil. The country is one of the five recognized nuclear weapons states and possesses the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, Russia is a great power as well as a regional power and has been characterised as a potential superpower. The name Russia is derived from Rus, a state populated mostly by the East Slavs. However, this name became more prominent in the later history, and the country typically was called by its inhabitants Русская Земля. In order to distinguish this state from other states derived from it, it is denoted as Kievan Rus by modern historiography, an old Latin version of the name Rus was Ruthenia, mostly applied to the western and southern regions of Rus that were adjacent to Catholic Europe. The current name of the country, Россия, comes from the Byzantine Greek designation of the Kievan Rus, the standard way to refer to citizens of Russia is Russians in English and rossiyane in Russian. There are two Russian words which are translated into English as Russians
6.
Russian language
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Russian is an East Slavic language and an official language in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and many minor or unrecognised territories. Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages and is one of the four living members of the East Slavic languages, written examples of Old East Slavonic are attested from the 10th century and beyond. It is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia and the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages and it is also the largest native language in Europe, with 144 million native speakers in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Russian is the eighth most spoken language in the world by number of native speakers, the language is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Russian is also the second most widespread language on the Internet after English, Russian distinguishes between consonant phonemes with palatal secondary articulation and those without, the so-called soft and hard sounds. This distinction is found between pairs of almost all consonants and is one of the most distinguishing features of the language, another important aspect is the reduction of unstressed vowels. Russian is a Slavic language of the Indo-European family and it is a lineal descendant of the language used in Kievan Rus. From the point of view of the language, its closest relatives are Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Rusyn. An East Slavic Old Novgorod dialect, although vanished during the 15th or 16th century, is considered to have played a significant role in the formation of modern Russian. In the 19th century, the language was often called Great Russian to distinguish it from Belarusian, then called White Russian and Ukrainian, however, the East Slavic forms have tended to be used exclusively in the various dialects that are experiencing a rapid decline. In some cases, both the East Slavic and the Church Slavonic forms are in use, with different meanings. For details, see Russian phonology and History of the Russian language and it is also regarded by the United States Intelligence Community as a hard target language, due to both its difficulty to master for English speakers and its critical role in American world policy. The standard form of Russian is generally regarded as the modern Russian literary language, mikhail Lomonosov first compiled a normalizing grammar book in 1755, in 1783 the Russian Academys first explanatory Russian dictionary appeared. By the mid-20th century, such dialects were forced out with the introduction of the education system that was established by the Soviet government. Despite the formalization of Standard Russian, some nonstandard dialectal features are observed in colloquial speech. Thus, the Russian language is the 6th largest in the world by number of speakers, after English, Mandarin, Hindi/Urdu, Spanish, Russian is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Education in Russian is still a choice for both Russian as a second language and native speakers in Russia as well as many of the former Soviet republics. Russian is still seen as an important language for children to learn in most of the former Soviet republics, samuel P. Huntington wrote in the Clash of Civilizations, During the heyday of the Soviet Union, Russian was the lingua franca from Prague to Hanoi
7.
Romanization of Russian
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Romanization of the Russian alphabet is the process of transliterating the Russian language from the Cyrillic script into the Latin alphabet. Scientific transliteration, also known as the International Scholarly System, is a system that has used in linguistics since the 19th century. It is based on the Czech alphabet and formed the basis of the GOST, OST8483 was the first Soviet standard on romanization of Russian, introduced in 16 October 1935. This standard is an equivalent of GOST 16876-71 and was adopted as a standard of the COMECON. GOST7. 79-2000 System of Standards on Information, Librarianship and it is the official standard of both Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States. Machine readable passports is an adoption of an ICAO stadards for travel documents and it was used in Russian passports for a short period during 2010–2013. The standard was substituted in 2013 by GOST R ISO/IEC 7501-1-2013, which does not contain romanization, ISO/R9, established in 1954 and updated in 1968, was the adoption of the scientific transliteration by the International Organization for Standardization. It covers Russian and seven other Slavic languages, ISO9,1995 is the current transliteration standard from ISO. It is based on its predecessor ISO/R9,1968, which it deprecates, for Russian, the UNGEGN, a Working Group of the United Nations, in 1987 recommended a romanization system for geographical names, which was based on the 1983 version of GOST 16876-71. It may be found in some international cartographic products, American Library Association and Library of Congress romanization tables for Slavic alphabets are used in North American libraries and in the British Library since 1975. The formal, unambiguous version of the system requires some diacritics and two-letter tie characters, British Standard 2979,1958 is the main system of the Oxford University Press, and a variation was used by the British Library to catalogue publications acquired up to 1975. The BGN/PCGN system is relatively intuitive for Anglophones to read and pronounce, the portion of the system pertaining to the Russian language was adopted by BGN in 1944 and by PCGN in 1947. In Soviet international passports, transliteration was based on French rules, in 1997, with the introduction of new Russian passports, a diacritic-free English-oriented system was established by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, but this system was also abandoned in 2010. In 2006, GOST52535. 1-2006 was adopted, which defines technical requirements and standards for Russian international passports, in 2010, the Federal Migratory Service of Russia approved Order No. 26, stating that all names in the passports issued after 2010 must be transliterated using GOST52535. 1-2006. The standard was abandoned in 2013, finally in 2013, Order No.320 of the Federal Migratory Service of Russia came into force. It states that all names in the passports must be transliterated using the ICAO system. This system differs from the GOST52535. 1-2006 system in two things, ц is transliterated into ts, ъ is transliterated into ie, Scholarly ¹ Some archaic letters are transcribed in different ways
8.
Sakha language
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Yakut, also known as Sakha, is a Turkic language with around 450,000 native speakers spoken in the Sakha Republic in the Russian Federation by the Yakuts. Like most Turkic languages and their ancestral Proto-Turkic, Yakut is an agglutinative language, Yakut is a member of the Northern Turkic family of languages, which includes Shor, Tuvan, and Dolgan in addition to Yakut. Like Turkish, Yakut has vowel harmony, is agglutinative and has no grammatical gender, Yakut has been influenced by Tungusic and Mongolian languages. Yakut is spoken mainly in the Sakha Republic and it is also used by ethnic Yakut in Khabarovsk Region and a small diaspora in other parts of the Russian Federation, Turkey, and other parts of the world. Dolgan, a relative of Yakut, considered by some a dialect, is spoken by Dolgans in Krasnoyarsk Region. Yakut is widely used as a lingua franca by other minorities in the Sakha Republic – more Dolgans, Evenks, Evens. About 8% of the people of other ethnicities than Yakut living in Sakha claimed knowledge of the Yakut language during the 2002 census, one characteristic feature of Yakut is vowel harmony. Yakut initial s- corresponds to initial h- in Dolgan and played an important operative rule in the development of proto-Yakut, ubrjatova suggests that the rule was either reintroduced through Evenki contact, or may be a substratal feature of the Yakut language itself. An example is shown in the meaning not, Dolgan huoq. This phonetic observation gave rise to two acknowledgements, that the phenomenon in proto-Yakut may have likewise been the result of substratal influence. g. Сахалыы сурук-бичигэ Saqalıı suruk-biçige The typical word order can be summarized as subject – adverb – object – verb, possessor – possessed, nouns have plural and singular forms. The plural is used only referring to a number of things collectively. Personal pronouns in Yakut distinguish between first, second, and third persons and singular and plural number. Although nouns have no gender, the system distinguishes between human and non-human in the third person, using кини to refer to human beings. Question words in Yakut remain in-situ, they do not move to the front of the sentence, sample question words include, туох what, ким who, хайдах how, хас how much, ханна where, and ханнык which. In this table, the Yakut numbers are written in Latin transcription, the first printing in Yakut was a part of a book by Nicolaas Witsen published in 1692 in Amsterdam. The Yakut have a tradition of epic in their language called Olonkho. Only a very few performers of this Olonkho tradition are still alive
9.
Arctic Ocean
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The Arctic Ocean is the smallest and shallowest of the worlds five major oceans. Alternatively, the Arctic Ocean can be seen as the northernmost part of the all-encompassing World Ocean, located mostly in the Arctic north polar region in the middle of the Northern Hemisphere, the Arctic Ocean is almost completely surrounded by Eurasia and North America. It is partly covered by sea ice throughout the year and almost completely in winter, the summer shrinking of the ice has been quoted at 50%. The US National Snow and Ice Data Center uses satellite data to provide a record of Arctic sea ice cover. The Arctic may become ice free for the first time in human history within a few years or by 2040, for much of European history, the north polar regions remained largely unexplored and their geography conjectural. He was probably describing loose sea ice known today as growlers or bergy bits, his Thule was probably Norway, early cartographers were unsure whether to draw the region around the North Pole as land or water. The makers of navigational charts, more conservative than some of the more fanciful cartographers, tended to leave the region blank and this lack of knowledge of what lay north of the shifting barrier of ice gave rise to a number of conjectures. In England and other European nations, the myth of an Open Polar Sea was persistent, john Barrow, longtime Second Secretary of the British Admiralty, promoted exploration of the region from 1818 to 1845 in search of this. In the United States in the 1850s and 1860s, the explorers Elisha Kane, even quite late in the century, the eminent authority Matthew Fontaine Maury included a description of the Open Polar Sea in his textbook The Physical Geography of the Sea. Nevertheless, as all the explorers who travelled closer and closer to the reported, the polar ice cap is quite thick. Fridtjof Nansen was the first to make a crossing of the Arctic Ocean. The first surface crossing of the ocean was led by Wally Herbert in 1969, in a dog sled expedition from Alaska to Svalbard, with air support. The first nautical transit of the pole was made in 1958 by the submarine USS Nautilus. Since 1937, Soviet and Russian manned drifting ice stations have extensively monitored the Arctic Ocean, scientific settlements were established on the drift ice and carried thousands of kilometres by ice floes. In World War II, the European region of the Arctic Ocean was heavily contested, the Arctic Ocean occupies a roughly circular basin and covers an area of about 14,056,000 km2, almost the size of Antarctica. The coastline is 45,390 km long and it is surrounded by the land masses of Eurasia, North America, Greenland, and by several islands. It is connected to the Pacific Ocean by the Bering Strait and to the Atlantic Ocean through the Greenland Sea, countries bordering the Arctic Ocean are, Russia, Norway, Iceland, Greenland, Canada and the United States. There are several ports and harbours around the Arctic Ocean In Alaska, in Canada, ships may anchor at Churchill in Manitoba, Nanisivik in Nunavut, Tuktoyaktuk or Inuvik in the Northwest territories
10.
Siberia
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Siberia is an extensive geographical region, and by the broadest definition is also known as North Asia. Siberia has historically been a part of Russia since the 17th century, the territory of Siberia extends eastwards from the Ural Mountains to the watershed between the Pacific and Arctic drainage basins. It stretches southwards from the Arctic Ocean to the hills of north-central Kazakhstan and to the borders of Mongolia. With an area of 13.1 million square kilometres, Siberia accounts for 77% of Russias land area and this is equivalent to an average population density of about 3 inhabitants per square kilometre, making Siberia one of the most sparsely populated regions on Earth. If it were a country by itself, it would still be the largest country in area, the origin of the name is unknown. Some sources say that Siberia originates from the Siberian Tatar word for sleeping land, another account sees the name as the ancient tribal ethnonym of the Sirtya, a folk, which spoke a language that later evolved into the Ugric languages. This ethnic group was assimilated to the Siberian Tatar people. The modern usage of the name was recorded in the Russian language after the Empires conquest of the Siberian Khanate, a further variant claims that the region was named after the Xibe people. The Polish historian Chycliczkowski has proposed that the name derives from the word for north. He said that the neighbouring Chinese, Arabs and Mongolians would not have known Russian and he suggests that the name is a combination of two words, su and bir. The region is of significance, as it contains bodies of prehistoric animals from the Pleistocene Epoch. Specimens of Goldfuss cave lion cubs, Yuka and another woolly mammoth from Oymyakon, a rhinoceros from the Kolyma River. The Siberian Traps were formed by one of the largest known volcanic events of the last 500 million years of Earths geological history. They continued for a million years and are considered a cause of the Great Dying about 250 million years ago. At least three species of human lived in Southern Siberia around 40,000 years ago, H. sapiens, H. neanderthalensis, the last was determined in 2010, by DNA evidence, to be a new species. Siberia was inhabited by different groups of such as the Enets, the Nenets, the Huns, the Scythians. The Khan of Sibir in the vicinity of modern Tobolsk was known as a prominent figure who endorsed Kubrat as Khagan of Old Great Bulgaria in 630, the Mongols conquered a large part of this area early in the 13th century. With the breakup of the Golden Horde, the autonomous Khanate of Sibir was established in the late 15th century, turkic-speaking Yakut migrated north from the Lake Baikal region under pressure from the Mongol tribes during the 13th to 15th century
11.
Taimyr Peninsula
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The Taymyr Peninsula is a peninsula in the Far North of Russia, in the Siberian Federal District, that forms the northernmost part of the mainland of Eurasia. Administratively it is part of the Krasnoyarsk Krai Federal subject of Russia, the Taymyr Peninsula lies between the Yenisei Gulf of the Kara Sea and the Khatanga Gulf of the Laptev Sea. Lake Taymyr and the Byrranga Mountains are located within the vast Taymyr Peninsula, Cape Chelyuskin, the northernmost point of the Eurasian continent, is located at the northern end of the Taymyr Peninsula. The Nenets people, also known as Samoyeds, are a people in northern arctic Russia. The Nganasan people are an indigenous Samoyedic people inhabiting central Siberia, in the Russian Federation, they are recognized as being one of the Indigenous peoples of the Russian North. The isolated location of the Nganasan people enabled them to maintain shamanistic practices even in the 20th century, MMC Norilsk Nickel conducts mining operations in the area. The company conducts smelting operations in the area of the city of Norilsk, the peninsula is the site of the last known naturally occurring muskox outside of North America, which died out about 2,000 years ago. They were successfully reintroduced in 1975, the population grew to 2,500 animals in 2002 increasing to 6,500 in 2010. The coasts of the Taymyr Peninsula are frozen most of the year, the summer season is short, especially on the shores of the Laptev Sea in the northeast. The climate in the interior of the peninsula is continental, winters are harsh, with frequent blizzards and extremely low temperatures. The following data for Cape Chelyuskin provides an indication of the experienced in the northern part of the peninsula. Siberia Russia portal Geography portal Hoppál, Mihály
12.
Severnaya Zemlya
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Severnaya Zemlya is a 37, 000-square-kilometre archipelago in the Russian high Arctic. It lies off Siberias Taymyr Peninsula, separated from the mainland by the Vilkitsky Strait and this archipelago separates two marginal seas of the Arctic Ocean, the Kara Sea in the west and the Laptev Sea in the east. The largest glacier in the Russian Federation, the Academy of Sciences Glacier, is located in Severnaya Zemlya, Severnaya Zemlya was first noted in 1913 and first charted in 1930–32, making it the last sizeable archipelago on Earth to be explored. Administratively, the islands part of Russias Krasnoyarsk Krai federal subject. In Soviet times there were a number of stations in different locations. Severnaya Zemlya is notable in connection with the ongoing multi-year Arctic sea ice decline, until recently, ice joined the islands to Eurasia even at its smallest extent during the late summer melt season, blocking the Northeast Passage between the Atlantic and Pacific. By the late summer of 2012, however, the permanent ice had reached a record low extent, later in the 19th century Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld during the Vega Expedition sailed very close to this land in 1878 but did not notice it. However, Hovgaard was prevented from accomplishing his objectives after having become trapped in thick ice, the archipelago was not put on the map until the 1913–1915 Arctic Ocean Hydrographic Expedition of icebreakers Taimyr and Vaigach. The chief organiser and first captain of the Vaygach was officer Aleksandr Vasiliyevich Kolchak of the Imperial Russian Navy, the expedition was privately financed and was launched in 1910, being led by Boris Vilkitsky on behalf of the Russian Hydrographic Service. On 3 September 1913, members of Vilkitskys expedition landed on what is now known as Cape Berg on October Revolution Island and they raised the Russian flag on the shore and named the new territory Tayvay Land, after the first syllable of their icebreakers names. During the days that followed Vilkitskys expedition charted parts of the Laptev Sea coast of what they believed to be a single island. Barely six months later in early 1914, by order of the Secretary of the Imperial Navy, in 1926 the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR renamed the still not fully explored land Severnaya Zemlya. On 15 May 1928 the islands were overflown by Umberto Nobile and his crew in the Airship Italia, Ushakov and his team established a small base at Golomyanny —the western end of Sredniy Island, off October Revolution Islands western coast. From there they made multiple trips into the interior and the coastlines of the larger islands. The first detailed map drawn by the expeditions cartographers showed Severnaya Zemlya to be divided into four main islands, geographic features of the territory were named after communist organisations, events and personalities. g. Cape Unslicht becoming Mys Peschanyy and Proliv Yungshturm Yuny Strait, during the Cold War era the islands of Severnaya Zemlya continued to be studied by a team of geologists from NIIGA in St. Petersburg between 1948 and 1954 under B. Egiazarov who compiled a geological map. Also more accurate maps were drawn by means of data gathered from aerial photography surveys
13.
New Siberian Islands
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The New Siberian Islands are an archipelago in the Extreme North of Russia, to the North of the East Siberian coast between the Laptev Sea and the East Siberian Sea north of the Sakha Republic. The first news about the existence of the New Siberian Islands was brought by a Cossack, Yakov Permyakov, in 1712, a Cossack unit led by M. Vagin reached the Great Lyakhovsky Island. At the beginning of the 19th century, the islands were explored by Yakov Sannikov, Matvei Gedenschtrom. In 1809–10 Yakov Sannikov and Matvei Gedenschtrom went to the New Siberian Islands on a cartographic expedition, Yakov Sannikov reported the sighting of a new land north of Kotelny in 1811. This became the myth of Zemlya Sannikova or Sannikov Land, in 1886 Eduard von Toll, during his first visit to the New Siberian Islands, thought that he had seen an unknown land north of Kotelny Island. He guessed that this was the so-called Zemlya Sannikova, polar explorer and scientist Eduard Toll paid a further visit to this island group in the spring of 1892, accompanied only by one Cossack and three natives. He traveled over the ice in sleds drawn by dogs and reached the south coast of Great Lyakhovsky Island. Along the southern coast of this island he found well-preserved bones, ivory, peat, wood and these sediments are cemented by permafrost and have accumulated periodically over the last 200,000 years. In September 2014, the Russian Navy re-established a Soviet era naval base which had abandoned since 1993. Very close to Bunge Lands northwestern coast lie two islands, Zheleznyakov Island, right off the NW cape and east of it. Both islands have a length of about 5 km, nanosnyy Island 76. 283°N140. 416°E /76.283,140.416 is a small island located due north off the northern bay formed by Kotelny and Bunge. It is C-shaped and only 4 km in length, but its importance lies in the fact that it is the northernmost island of the New Siberian group, Jeannette Island Henrietta Island Bennett Island Vilkitsky Island Zhokhov Island The New Siberian Islands are low-lying. Their highest point is Mt. Malakatyn-Tas on Kotelny island, with an elevation of 374 m, the New Siberian Islands once formed major hills within the Great Arctic Plain that covered the northern part of Late Pleistocene Beringia between Siberia and Alaska during the Last Glacial Maximum. At this plains greatest extent, sea level was 100–120 m below modern sea-level and this plain did not undergo extensive glaciation during the Late Pleistocene or the Last Glacial Maximum because it lay in the rain shadow of the Northern European ice sheet. During the frigid polar climate of the Last Glacial Maximum,17,000 to 24,000 BC, fragments of these ice caps remain on Jeannette, Henrietta, and Bennett Islands. Traces of former small slope and cirque glaciers in the form of buried ground ice deposits are preserved on Zhokhov Island, the sea submerged the Great Arctic Plain within a relatively short time span of 7,000 years during the Early–Middle Holocene. As noted by Digby and numerous publications, this archipelago consists of a mixture of folded and faulted sedimentary. The De Long Islands consist of early Paleozoic, middle Paleozoic, Cretaceous and these sedimentary, metamorphic, and igneous rocks are mantled by loose Pleistocene and Holocene sediments that range in thickness from a fraction of a meter to about 35 meters
14.
Arctic Cape
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The Arctic Cape is a headland in Severnaya Zemlya, Russia. With a distance of 990.7 km to the North Pole, stretching out towards the Arctic Ocean by the Molotov Glacier, it is the northernmost point of Komsomolets Island, which in turn is the northernmost island of the archipelago. Under Joseph Stalin the cape was known as Cape Molotov, the Arctic Cape is not the northernmost point of Russia. That distinction goes to Cape Fligely on Rudolf Island, an island in the Franz Josef Land archipelago, the northernmost point of mainland Asia is Cape Chelyuskin. This cape also marks the Kara Seas northeastern limit, which is the end of a line running from Cape Kohlsaat in Franz Josef Land to the Arctic Cape
15.
Kara Sea
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The Kara Sea is part of the Arctic Ocean north of Siberia. It is separated from the Barents Sea to the west by the Kara Strait and Novaya Zemlya, and it is named for the Kara River, which is now relatively insignificant but which played an important role in the Russian conquest of northern Siberia. The word kara is derived from kara, which in several Turkic languages means black, the Kara Sea is roughly 1,450 kilometres long and 970 kilometres wide with an area of around 880,000 km2 and a mean depth of 110 metres. Compared to the Barents Sea, which receives relatively warm currents from the Atlantic, the Kara receives a large amount of fresh water from the Ob, Yenisei, Pyasina, and Taimyra rivers, so its salinity is variable. Its main ports are Novy Port and Dikson and it is important as a fishing ground although the sea is ice-bound for all but two months of the year. Significant discoveries of petroleum and natural gas, the East-Prinovozemelsky field, in 2014, US government sanctions resulted in Exxon having until September 26 to discontinue its operations in the Kara Sea. The International Hydrographic Organization defines the limits of the Kara Sea as follows, the Eastern limit of Barentsz Sea. Komsomolets Island from Cape Molotov to South Eastern Cape, thence to Cape Vorochilov, then to Cape Unslicht on Bolshevik Island. Thence to Cape Pronchisthehev on the main land, there are many islands and island groups in the Kara Sea. The largest group in the Kara Sea is by far the Nordenskiöld Archipelago, with five large subgroups, other important islands in the Kara Sea are Bely Island, Dikson Island, Taymyr Island, the Kamennyye Islands and Oleni Island. Despite the high latitude all islands are unglaciated except for Ushakov Island at the northern limit of the Kara Sea. The Kara Sea was formerly known as Oceanus Scythicus or Mare Glaciale, since it is closed by ice most of the year it remained largely unexplored until the late nineteenth century. In 1556 Stephen Borough sailed in the Searchthrift to try to reach the Ob River, not until 1580 did another English expedition, under Arthur Pet and Charles Jackman, attempt its passage. They too failed to penetrate it, and England lost interest in searching for the Northeast Passage, in 1736–1737 Russian Admiral Stepan Malygin undertook a voyage from Dolgy Island in the Barents Sea. The two ships in this expedition were the Perviy, under Malygins command and the Vtoroy under Captain A. Skuratov. After entering the little-explored Kara Sea, they sailed to the mouth of the Ob River, Malygin took careful observations of these hitherto almost unknown areas of the Russian Arctic coastline. With this knowledge he was able to draw the first somewhat accurate map of the Arctic shores between the Pechora River and the Ob River, frozen in for the winter in the Chukchi Sea, Nordenskiöld waited and bartered with the local Chukchi people. The following July, the Vega was freed from the ice and he became the first to force the Northeast Passage
16.
East Siberian Sea
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The East Siberian Sea is a marginal sea in the Arctic Ocean. It is located between the Arctic Cape to the north, the coast of Siberia to the south, the New Siberian Islands to the west and Cape Billings, close to Chukotka and this sea borders on the Laptev Sea to the west and the Chukchi Sea to the east. This sea is one of the least studied in the Arctic area, the sea shores were inhabited for thousands of years by indigenous tribes of Yukaghirs, Chukchi and then Evens and Evenks, which were engaged in fishing, hunting and reindeer husbandry. They were then absorbed by Yakuts and later by Russians, major industrial activities in the area are mining and navigation within the Northern Sea Route, commercial fishing is poorly developed. The largest city and port is Pevek, the northernmost city of mainland Russia, the present name was assigned to the sea on 27 June 1935 by Decree of the Soviet Government. Before that, the sea had no name was intermixedly called in Russia as Indigirskoe, Kolymskoe, Severnoe, Sibirskoe or Ledovitoe. The International Hydrographic Organization defines the limits of the East Siberian Sea as follows, the Eastern limit of Laptev Sea. A line from the Northernmost point of Wrangel Island to the Northern sides of the De Long Islands and Bennett Island, from the Northernmost point of Wrangel Island through this island to Cape Blossom thence to Cape Yakan on the main land. Because it is open towards the Arctic Ocean in the north, the gulfs of the East Siberian Sea, like the Kolyma Bay, the Kolyma Gulf. There are no islands in the middle of the East Siberian Sea, but there are a few islands and island groups in its waters, like Ayon Island. The total area of the islands is only 80 km2, some islands mostly consist of sand and ice and gradually erode. The total catchment area is 1,342,000 km2, among the rivers flowing into the East Siberian Sea, the Indigirka, Alazeya, Uyandina, Chukochya, Kolyma, Rauchua, Chaun, and Pegtymel are the most important. Only a few rivers are navigable, the coastline of the sea is 3,016 km long. It makes large bends, sometimes stretching deep into the land, fine bends are rare and occur only in the river deltas. The coastal section between the New Siberian Islands and the mouth of the Kolyma River is uniform, with low and it extends landwards to the marshy tundra filled with numerous small lakes. In contrast, the coast to the east of the Kolyma River is mountainous, about 70% of the sea is shallower than 50 m, with predominant depths of 20–25 m. North-east to the mouth of the Kolyma and Indigirka rivers, there are deep trenches on the seabed, the region of small depths in the western part forms the Novosibirsk shoal. The greatest depths of about 150 m are found in the part of the sea
17.
Russian explorers
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At 17,075,400 square kilometres, Russia is the largest country in the world, covering more than a ninth of the Earth’s land mass. In the times of the Soviet Union and the Russian Empire the countrys share in the land mass reached 1/6. Most of these territories were first discovered by Russian explorers, contiguous exploration in Eurasia and the building of overseas colonies in Russian America were some of the primary factors in Russian territorial expansion. As early as the 11th century Russians from the Novgorod Republic had occasionally penetrated into Siberia, in the 14th century the Novgorodians started exploring the Kara Sea and the West-Siberian river Ob. Russians were among those rare medieval Europeans who traveled deep into Central Asia or visited South Asia, by the beginning of the Age of Discovery, most of the former principalities of Kievan Rus were re-integrated by the Grand Duchy of Moscow. The road to Asia was opened, and in 1581 Yermak Timofeyevich crossed the Ural Mountains with a band of adventurers, defeated the Siberian Khanate, the rapid exploration of the vast territories of Siberia was led primarily by Cossacks and Pomors hunting for valuable furs, spices and ivory. In 1648 the Bering Strait between Asia and North America was passed through for the first time by Fedot Popov and Semyon Dezhnyov, the journeys of Ivan Petlin and Nicolae Milescu established contacts between Moscow and Ming China. By the early 18th century Russians under Vladimir Atlasov had colonised Kamchatka, with over 3,000 people directly and indirectly involved, the expedition was one of the largest exploration enterprises in history by its geographic scale and results. Russians mapped most of the Alaskan coasts and nearby islands, explored the areas of the peninsula. More Russian circumnavigations followed, notably led by Otto Kotzebue, Ferdinand Wrangel. These voyages brought multiple discoveries in Alaska and the Pacific, in 1820-1821 a round-the-world expedition led by Faddey Bellingshausen and Mikhail Lazarev on sloops Vostok and Mirny discovered the continent of Antarctica. In the 19th century the exploration of the inner areas of Siberia intensified. The complex orographic systems of Central and Eastern Siberia were established by scientists as Alexander Middendorf, Ivan Chersky. In the middle of the century, around the time of the Amur Annexation, the Russian conquest of Central Asia was accompanied by the penetration of many explorers into the depths of Eurasia, including Mongolia, Jungaria and Tibet. Notable explorers in this direction included Chokan Valikhanov, Pyotr Semyonov-Tyan-Shansky, Pyotr Chikhachyov, Nikolay Przhevalsky, Grigory Grumm-Grzhimaylo, Bronislav Grombchevsky, gombojab Tsybikov was the first European explorer in Lhasa, but he travelled by the customary road of Buryat pilgrims. The late 19th century and the early 20th century was marked by a renewed interest in Arctic exploration, many expeditions of that era met a tragic fate, like the voyages of Eduard Toll, Georgy Brusilov, Vladimir Rusanov and Georgy Sedov, yet brought some valuable geographic results. Modern era polar icebreakers, dating from Stepan Makarovs Yermak, made Arctic voyages safer, during the International Geophysical Year in 1957-1958 the Soviet Union established its presence in the Antarctic, starting a series of Soviet Antarctic Expeditions. At the latter location, on the site of the Vostok Station, in 1957 the Soviet Union opened the Space Age by launching the first Earth-orbiting artificial satellite, Sputnik 1
18.
Salinity
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Salinity is the saltiness or amount of salt dissolved in a body of water. This is usually measured in g salt k g sea water, a contour line of constant salinity is called an isohaline – or sometimes isohale. Salinity in rivers, lakes, and the ocean is conceptually simple, conceptually the salinity is the quantity of dissolved salt content of the water. Salts are compounds like sodium chloride, magnesium sulfate, potassium nitrate, the concentration of dissolved chloride ions is sometimes referred to as chlorinity. Operationally, dissolved matter is defined as that which can pass through a fine filter. Salinity can be expressed in the form of a mass fraction, Seawater typically has a mass salinity of around 35 g/kg, although lower values are typical near coasts where rivers enter the ocean. Rivers and lakes can have a range of salinities, from less than 0.01 g/kg to a few g/kg. The Dead Sea has a salinity of more than 200 g/kg, whatever pore size is used in the definition, the resulting salinity value of a given sample of natural water will not vary by more than a few percent. A bottled seawater product known as IAPSO Standard Seawater is used by oceanographers to standardize their measurements with enough precision to meet this requirement, measurement and definition difficulties arise because natural waters contain a complex mixture of many different elements from different sources in different molecular forms. The chemical properties of some of these depend on temperature and pressure. Many of these forms are difficult to measure with high accuracy, different practical definitions of salinity result from different attempts to account for these problems, to different levels of precision, while still remaining reasonably easy to use. For many purposes this sum can be limited to a set of eight major ions in natural waters, the major ions dominate the inorganic composition of most natural waters. Exceptions include some pit lakes and waters from some hydrothermal springs, the concentrations of dissolved gases like oxygen and nitrogen are not usually included in descriptions of salinity. However, carbon dioxide gas, which when dissolved is partially converted into carbonates and bicarbonates, is often included. Silicon in the form of acid, which usually appears as a neutral molecule in the pH range of most natural waters. The term salinity is, for oceanographers, usually associated with one of a set of measurement techniques. As the dominant techniques evolve, so do different descriptions of salinity, the distinctions between these different descriptions are important to physical oceanographers but are obscure and confusing to nonspecialists. Salinities were largely measured using titration-based techniques before the 1980s, titration with silver nitrate could be used to determine the concentration of halide ions to give a chlorinity
19.
Yukaghir people
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The Yukaghir, or Yukagir are a people in East Siberia, living in the basin of the Kolyma River. The Tundra Yukaghirs live in the Lower Kolyma region in the Sakha Republic, by the time of Russian colonization in the 17th century, the Yukaghir tribal groups occupied territories from the Lena River to the mouth of the Anadyr River. The number of the Yukaghirs decreased between the 17th and 19th centuries due to epidemics, internecine wars and Tsarist colonial policy, some of the Yukaghirs have assimilated with the Yakuts, Evens, and Russians. Currently, Yukaghirs live in the Sakha Republic and the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug of the Russian Federation, according to the 2002 Census, their total number was 1,509 people, up from 1,112 recorded in the 1989 Census. According to the latest 2001 all Ukrainian census,12 Yukaghirs are living in Ukraine, only 2 of them indicated Yukaghir as their native language. For the remaining others it is Russian and for 1 it is some other tongue, genetically, Yukaghirs have 31% of parental Haplogroup C-M217, which is dominant among Mongolian and Evenk-Tungusic peoples. Of the extinct groups, the most important were the Khodynts, the Anaoul, sometimes the Chuvan are considered a separate tribe. The Chuvantsy language has been extinct since the early 20th century, in 2002,1,087 identified themselves as Chuvan compared to more than 1,300 in 1989. The Vadul are mainly involved in reindeer herding while the Odul are mostly hunter-gatherers, the Vadul are also known as Tundra Yukaghir. The Odul are also known as Taiga Yukaghir or Kolyma Yukaghir, the Vadul and Odul languages are as different as German is from Dutch. Both are nearing extinction, and Odul is in a weaker state compared to Vadul. In the 1989 census, more than 700 of the Yukaghirs identified as Vadul while fewer than 400 were Odul, the Yukaghir are one of the oldest peoples in North-Eastern Asia. Originally they lived over a territory from Lake Baikal to the Arctic Ocean. By the time of the first encounter with Russians, Yukaghir were divided into twelve tribes with around 9,000 people, the Yukagir ethnonym is “Odul” or “Vadul”, which means “mighty”. Tribal divisions among the Yukaghir are fading now, although in every census from 1926, significant number of tribesmen identified themselves with tribal divisions like Anaoul, Odul and Vadul rather than describing themselves as Yukaghir. The Soviet government actively discouraged this tendency and now only the most elderly identify this way. In the 2002 census, out of the 1,509 Yukaghirs,51 identified themselves as Omok,40 as Alais,21 as Odul,17 as Vadul,6 as Khangait and 4 as Detkil, the head of every clan was an elder or “Ligey Shomorokh”. His was the word in all aspects of life
20.
Evens
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The Evens are a people in Siberia and the Russian Far East. They live in some of the regions of the Magadan Oblast and Kamchatka Krai, according to the 2002 census, there were 19,071 Evens in Russia. According to the 2010 census, there were 22,383 Evens in Russia and they even speak their own language called Even language, one of the Tungusic languages. The Evens are close to the Evenks by their origins and culture, officially, they were considered to be of Orthodox faith since the 19th century, but the Evens managed to preserve different forms of non-Christian beliefs, such as shamanism. Traditional Even life is centred upon nomadic pastoralism of domesticated reindeer, there were 104 Evens in Ukraine,19 of whom speaking Even. The ancestor of the Evens were believed to have migrated from the Transbaikal area to the areas of eastern Siberia. The Ewen herders also rode their reindeer, the economy was supplemented by winter hunts to obtain wild game. Hunters sometimes rode reindeer, sometimes moved along on wooden skis, today, they are all known as Eveni. The traditional lodgings of the Evens were conical tents which were covered with animal skins, in the southern coastal areas, fish skins were used. Settled Evens used a type of earth and log dugout, sheds were erected near the dwellings in order to house stocks of frozen fish and meat. The Soviet years marked significant changes for the Evens, the Soviets created a written language for them and did away with illiteracy among the Evens in the 1930s. Many nomadic Evens chose to settle down, joined the kolkhozes and engaged themselves in cattle-breeding, viktor Lebedev, freestyle wrestler James Forsyth, A History of the Peoples of Siberia,1992 Vitebsky, Piers. Reindeer People, Living with Animals and Spirits in Siberia, the Red Book of the Peoples of the Russian Empire, The Evens Aboriginal Peoples of the Russian North, Links to On-Line Resources Notes on the Evens and Evenks
21.
Evenks
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The Evenks are a Tungusic people of Northern Asia. In Russia, the Evenks are recognized as one of the Indigenous peoples of the Russian North, with a population of 35,527, According to the 2010 census, there were 37,843 Evenks in Russia. In China, the Evenki form one of the 56 ethnic groups recognized by the Peoples Republic of China, with a population of 30,875. There are also 535 Mongolized Evenki in Mongolia, referred to as Khamnigan, the Ewenki language forms the northern branch of the Manchu-Tungusic language group and is closely related to Even and Negidal in Siberia. By 1600 the Evenks or Ewenki of the Lena and Yenisey valleys were successful reindeer herders, by contrast the Solons and the Khamnigans had picked up horse breeding and the Mongolian deel from the Mongols. The Solons nomadized along the Amur River and they were closely related to the Daur people. To the west the Khamnigan were another group of horse-breeding Evenks in the Transbaikalia area, also in the Amur valley a body of Siberian Evenki-speaking people were called Orochen by the Manchus. The ancestors of the south-eastern Evenks have most likely been in the Baikal region of Southern Siberia since the Neolithic era, the language of these tribes took precedence over the languages of the aboriginal population. Vasilevich is meaning the Tungusic languages, and the aborigianals are the Kets in Evenkia and Yukagirs in Yakutia. Elements of more modern Evenk culture, including conical tent dwellings, bone fish-lures, from Lake Baikal, “they spread to the Amur and Okhotsk Sea…the Lena Basin…and the Yenisey Basin”. In the 17th century, the Russian empire made contact with the Evenks, Cossacks, who served as a kind of “border-guard” for the tsarist government, imposed a fur tax on the Siberian tribes. The Cossacks exploited the Evenk clan hierarchy and took hostages from the highest members in order to ensure payment of the tax, although there was some rebellion against local officials, the Evenks generally recognized the need for peaceful cultural relations with the Russians. Contact with the Russians and constant demand for fur taxes pushed the Evenks east all the way to Sakhalin island, in the 19th century some groups migrated south and east into Mongolia and Manchuria. Today there are still Evenk populations in Sakhalin, Mongolia, and Manchuria, traditionally they were a mixture of pastoralists and hunter-gatherers—they relied on their domesticated reindeer for milk and transport and hunted other large game for meat. Today “he Evenks are divided into two large groups…engaging in different types of economy and these are the hunting and reindeer-breeding Evenks…and the horse and cattle pastoral Evenks as well as some farming Evenks”. The Evenks lived mostly in areas of what is called a taiga and they lived in conical tents made from birch bark or reindeer skin tied to birch poles. When they moved camp, the Evenks would leave these frameworks, during winter, the hunting season, most camps consisted of one or two tents while the spring encampments had up to 10 households. Their skill of riding the domesticated reindeer allowed the Evenks to “colonize vast areas of the eastern taiga which had previously been impenetrable”
22.
Reindeer
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This includes both sedentary and migratory populations. While overall widespread and numerous, some of its subspecies are rare, for this reason, it is considered to be vulnerable by the IUCN. Reindeer vary considerably in colour and size, both sexes can grow antlers annually, although the proportion of females that grow antlers varies greatly between population and season. Antlers are typically larger on males, hunting of wild reindeer and herding of semi-domesticated reindeer are important to several Arctic and Subarctic peoples. In traditional festive legend, Santa Clauss reindeer pull a sleigh through the sky to help Santa Claus deliver gifts to children on Christmas Eve. The name Rangifer, which Carl Linnaeus chose for the genus, was used by Albertus Magnus in his De animalibus. This word may go back to a Saami word raingo, for the origin of the word tarandus, which Linnaeus chose as the specific epithet, he made reference to Ulisse Aldrovandis Quadrupedum omnium bisulcorum historia fol. However, Aldrovandi – and before him Konrad Gesner – thought that rangifer, in any case, the tarandos name goes back to Aristotle and Theophrastus – see In history below. Because of its importance to many cultures, Rangifer tarandus and some of its subspecies have names in many languages, the name rein is of Norse origin. The Finnish name poro may also stem from the same, the word deer was originally broader in meaning, but became more specific over time. In Middle English, der meant a wild animal of any kind. Cognates of Old English dēor in other dead Germanic languages have the sense of animal, such as Old High German tior, Old Norse djúr or dýr, Gothic dius, Old Saxon dier. The name caribou comes, through French, from Mikmaq qalipu, meaning snow shoveler, in Inuktitut, spoken in eastern Arctic North America, the caribou is known by the name tuktu. In the western North American Arctic, the used by the Iñupiat is tuttu. Across the range of a species, individuals may display considerable morphological, genetic, COSEWIC developed Designated Unit attribution to add to classifications already in use. The species taxonomic name Rangifer tarandus was defined by Carl Linnaeus in 1758, the subspecies taxonomic name, Rangifer tarandus caribou was defined by Gmelin in 1788. Based on Banfields often-cited A Revision of the Reindeer and Caribou, Genus Rangifer, R. t. caboti, R. t. osborni and R. t. terraenovae were considered invalid and included in R. t. caribou. Some recent authorities have considered them all valid, even suggesting that they are quite distinct and he affirms that true woodland caribou is very rare, in very great difficulties and requires the most urgent of attention
23.
Yakuts
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Yakuts are Turkic people who mainly inhabit the Sakha Republic. The Yakut language belongs to the Siberian branch of the Turkic languages, Yakuts mainly live in the Republic of Sakha in the Russian Federation, with some extending to the Amur, Magadan, Sakhalin regions, and the Taymyr and Evenk Autonomous Districts. The Yakuts are divided into two groups based on geography and economics. Yakuts in the north are historically semi-nomadic hunters, fishermen, reindeer breeders, while southern Yakuts engage in animal husbandry focusing on horses, the ancestors of Yakuts were Kurykans who migrated from Yenisey river to Baikal Lake. The Yakuts originally lived around Olkhon and the region of Lake Baikal, beginning in the 13th century they migrated to the basins of the Middle Lena, the Aldan and Vilyuy rivers under the pressure of the rising Mongols. The northern Yakuts were largely hunters, fishermen and reindeer herders, while the southern Yakuts raised cattle and horses. In the 1620s the Tsardom of Muscovy began to move into their territory and annexed or settled down on it, imposed a fur tax and managed to suppress several Yakut rebellions between 1634 and 1642. Russian brutality in collection of the pelt tax sparked a rebellion and aggression among the Yakuts, the Yakut population alone is estimated to have fallen by 70 percent between 1642 and 1682 because of the Grand Duchy of Muscovy expeditions. The discovery of gold and, later, the building of the Trans-Siberian Railway, by the 1820s almost all the Yakuts had been converted to the Russian Orthodox church, although they retained, and still retain, a number of Shamanist practices. Yakut literature began to rise in the late 19th century, a national revival occurred in the early 20th century. In 1922, the new Soviet government named the area the Yakut Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. The last conflict of the Russian Civil War, known as the Yakut Revolt, occurred here when Cornet Mikhail Korobeinikov, a White Russian officer, led an uprising and a last stand against the Red Army. In the late 1920s through the late 1930s, Yakut people were systematically persecuted and its possible that hunger and malnutrition resulting from the period resulted in a decline in the Yakut total population from 240,500 in 1926 to 236,700 in 1959. By 1972, the population began to recover, Yakut males belong to Haplogroup N3a. Currently, Yakuts form a plurality of the total population within the vast Sakha Republic. According to the 2010 Russian census, there were a total of 466,492 Yakuts residing in the Sakha Republic during that year, or 49. 9% of the total population of the Republic. According to the 2010 census, some 87% of the Yakuts in the Sakha Republic are fluent in the Yakut language, the Sakha/Yakut language belongs to the Northern branch of the Siberian group of Turkic languages. It is most closely related to the Dolgan language, slightly less closely related languages include Tuvan and Shor
24.
Lena River
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The Lena is the easternmost of the three great Siberian rivers that flow into the Arctic Ocean. It is the 11th longest river in the world and has the 9th largest watershed and it is also the 3rd largest river in Asia. It is the largest among the rivers watershed is entirely within the Russian territorial boundaries. From Yakutsk it enters the lowlands and flows north until joined by its tributary the Aldan River and its most important left-hand tributary. In the upper section west and northwest of Lake Baikal the river flows mostly north and it turns west and then south losing another 600 meters in 128 km, to Chanchur, where there is a ranger station. 4222, Kachug, start of navigation, road to Irkutsk,4197, Verkholensk, mouth of the Kulenga River, northwest through mountains, Tutura River. 4108, Zhigalovo, start of service, including hydrofoil to Ust-Kut. In the central section the river flows mostly northeast,3705, Ust-Kut, northwest of the northern tip of Lake Baikal. In Cossack times, this was the site of a portage between the Yenesei and Lena, today it is the point where the Baikal-Amur Mainline railway crosses the Lena on a bridge and it handles 80% of cargo in the Sakha Republic region. 3397, Kirensk, port and former Cossack portage,3101, The devils path, a section treacherous in flood. 3096, Shcheki, a section with cliffs and twists. 2955, Vitim, and Vitim River from the south and we are now northeast of Lake Baikal. Many dead trees in the water,2931, Peledui, Peledui River, ship repair company and salt mines. 2744, Lensk, the most important port between Kirensk and Yakutsk, road 230 km north to the Mir Mine. Here was a point of the Perlinsky Trakht, a former courier route. Lena turns southeast and then northeast,2587, Chepaevo,2547, Macha,2937, Olyokminsk, Olyokma River from the south. River widens to 2 km and has extensive flood plains,2213, Uritskoe, 2030-1850, Lena Pillars, cliffs along the right bank. 1820, Mokhsogollokh, ferry and paved road to Yakutsk on the opposite bank,1805, Pokrovsk, downstream, Tabaga Cliffs, narrows, power line and planned site of bridge for the Amur Yakutsk Mainline railroad
25.
Khatanga River
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The Khatanga River is a river in Krasnoyarsk Krai in Russia. It begins at the confluence of the rivers Kotuy and Kheta, the Khatanga River is 227 kilometres long, the area of its basin is 364,000 square kilometres. It flows into the Khatanga Gulf of the Laptev Sea, forming an estuary, there are more than 112,000 lakes, with a total surface area of 11,600 square kilometres, in the basin of the river. The Khatanga River freezes up in late September–early October and breaks up in early June and its main tributaries are the Nizhnyaya River, Bludnaya River, Popigay River, Novaya River, and Malaya Balakhnya. The Khatanga River teems with different kinds of fish, including ryapushka, omul, muksun, white salmon, taimen, loach, the river port of Khatanga is located on the river. Russian fur traders first reached the Khatanga about 1611, katanga River List of largest unfragmented rivers
26.
Olenyok River
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The Olenyok River is a major river in northern Siberian Russia, west of the lower Lena River and east of the Anabar River. It is 2,292 kilometres long, of which around 1,000 kilometres is navigable, average water discharge is 1,210 cubic metres per second. Its major tributary is the Arga-Sala River, the Olenyok is known for its abundant fish. It is frozen for eight months every year and the climate in its area is harsh because of the direct influence of the Arctic. Dyangylakh or Dzhyangylakh 73. 089°N120. 140°E /73.089,120.140 is a large delta island at the mouth of the Olenek River. There are many islands in its immediate vicinity, like Eppet Island off its eastern side. Dyangylakh is 21 kilometres long and 16 kilometres wide, in 1633 Ivan Rebrov reached the Olenyok from the Lena delta and built a fort. In 1642–44 Rebrov and Fedot Alekseyev Popov reached the river but were out by the natives. Pioneering Russian Arctic explorer Vasili Pronchishchev and his wife Maria Pronchishcheva died of scurvy in this area in September 1736, after their deaths, husband and wife were interred at the mouth of the Olenyok River. In 1956 the Olenekian Age of the Triassic Period of geological time was named for rock strata in the Olenyok area, historical data Excavations at the burial site of the couple Dyangylakh
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Omoloy River
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The Omoloy River is a stream in Siberia east of the Lena River. It flows northwards across the tundra into the Laptev Sea and its mouth is located in the eastern coast of the Buor-Khaya Gulf. The Omoloy River freezes up in October and stays under ice until late May or early June, latitude,71.2269 N, Longitude,131.9619 E The basin of the Omoloy River is part of the Sakha administrative region of Russia. Its main tributaries are the Kuranah and the Arga Yuriah, both join the Omoloy from its left side more than halfway down its course, the now extinct Beringian steppe bison used to have its habitat in the area of the Omoloy River. Location Laptev Sea Basin Biostratigraphy of the Late Cenozoic East Siberia Ecological problems 1995 Expedition
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Yana River
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The Yana River, is a river in Sakha in Russia, located between the Lena to the west and the Indigirka to the east. It is 872 kilometres long, while the upper Yana is 1,320 kilometres long and its drainage basin covers 238,000 square kilometres, and its annual discharge totals approximately 25 cubic kilometres. Most of this occurs in May and June as the ice on the river breaks up. The Yana freezes up on the surface in October and stays under the ice until late May or early June, in the Verkhoyansk area, it stays frozen to the bottom for 70 to 110 days, and partly frozen for 220 days of the year. The river begins at the confluence of the rivers Sartang and Dulgalakh, as the Yana flows into the Yana Bay of the Laptev Sea, it forms a huge river delta covering 10,200 square kilometres. Yarok is a flat island located east of the main mouths of the Yana. The whole Yana basin is under continuous permafrost and most is larch woodland grading to tundra north of about 70°N, the principal tributaries of the Yana are, Adycha, Oldzho, Abyrabyt, Bytantay. Most of these tributaries are rivers flowing from the high Verkhoyansk Mountains. Verkhoyansk, Batagay, Ust-Kuyga, Nizhneyansk are the ports on the Yana. The Yana basin is the site of the so-called Pole of Cold of Russia, where the lowest recorded temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere are found. In the winter, temperatures in the centre of the average as low as −51 °C and have reached as low as −71 °C though in the mountains it is believed that temperatures have reached −82 °C. Yakut folklore says that, at such temperatures, if you shout to a friend and they hear you. However, when spring comes the words thaw and one can hear everything that was months ago. The Yana River area is the first known site of habitation in the Arctic. In 1633–38 Ilya Perfilyev and Ivan Rebrov sailed down the Lena and east along the Arctic coast to the mouth of the Yana, in 1636–42 Elisei Buza followed essentially the same route. In 1638–40, Poznik Ivanov ascended a tributary of the lower Lena, crossed the Verkhoyansk Range to the upper Yana and then crossed the Chersky Range to the Indigirka. During one year and two days the expedition covered 25,000 kilometres, of which 4,200 kilometres were up rivers, william Barr, Baron Eduard Von Tolls Last Expedition. Alexander von Bunge & Baron Eduard Von Toll, The Expedition to the New Siberian Islands and the Jana country, equipped by the Imperial Academy of Sciences
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Mammoth
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A mammoth is any species of the extinct genus Mammuthus, proboscideans commonly equipped with long, curved tusks and, in northern species, a covering of long hair. They lived from the Pliocene epoch into the Holocene at about 4,500 years ago in Africa, Europe, Asia and they were members of the family Elephantidae, which also contains the two genera of modern elephants and their ancestors. Mammoths stem from a species called M. africanavus, the African mammoth. These mammoths lived in northern Africa and disappeared about 3 or 4 million years ago, descendants of these mammoths moved north and eventually covered most of Eurasia. These were M. meridionalis, the southern mammoths, the earliest known proboscideans, the clade that contains the elephants, existed about 55 million years ago around the Tethys Sea area. The closest relatives of the Proboscidea are the sirenians and the hyraxes, the family Elephantidae is known to have existed six million years ago in Africa, and includes the living elephants and the mammoths. Among many now extinct clades, the mastodon is only a distant relative of the mammoths, and part of the separate Mammutidae family, which diverged 25 million years before the mammoths evolved. At the same time, the crowns of the teeth became longer, the first known members of the genus Mammuthus are the African species M. subplanifrons from the Pliocene and M. africanavus from the Pleistocene. The former is thought to be the ancestor of later forms, Mammoths entered Europe around 3 million years ago, the earliest known type has been named M. rumanus, which spread across Europe and China. Only its molars are known, which show it had 8–10 enamel ridges, a population evolved 12–14 ridges and split off from and replaced the earlier type, becoming M. meridionalis. In turn, this species was replaced by the mammoth, M. trogontherii, with 18–20 ridges. Mammoths derived from M. trogontherii evolved molars with 26 ridges 200,000 years ago in Siberia, the Columbian mammoth, M. columbi, evolved from a population of M. trogontherii that had entered North America. A2011 genetic study showed that two examined specimens of the Columbian mammoth were grouped within a subclade of woolly mammoths and this suggests that the two populations interbred and produced fertile offspring. It also suggested that a North American form known as M. jeffersonii may be a hybrid between the two species, variations in environment, climate change, and migration surely played roles in the evolutionary process of the mammoths. Take M. primigenius for example, Woolly mammoths lived in opened grassland biomes, the cool steppe-tundra of the Northern Hemisphere was the ideal place for mammoths to thrive because of the resources it supplied. With occasional warmings during the ice age, climate would change the landscape, the word mammoth was first used in Europe during the early 1600s, when referring to maimanto tusks discovered in Siberia. John Bell, who was on the Ob River in 1722 and they were called mammons horn and were often found in washed-out river banks. Some local people claimed to have seen a living mammoth, but they came out at night
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Northern Sea Route
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The entire route lies in Arctic waters and within Russias Exclusive Economic Zone. Parts are free of ice for two months per year. The overall route on Russias side of the Arctic between North Cape and the Bering Strait has been called the Northeast Passage, analogous to the Northwest Passage on the Canada side. Melting Arctic ice caps are likely to increase traffic in and the viability of the Northern Sea Route. Projected shifts in trade also imply substantial pressure on an already threatened Arctic ecosystem, the route was first conquered by Adolf Erik Nordenskiölds Vega expedition. Number of transits per flag state, shipping in Arctic Waters, A Comparison of the Northeast, Northwest and Trans Polar Passages. The Northern Sea Route Belov, M. I, istoriia otkrytiia i osveniia Severnogo Morskogo Puti,4 vols. Red Arctic Konyshev, Valery & Sergunin, Alexander, Is Russia a revisionist military power in the Arctic, defense & Security Analysis, September 2014. Russia in search of its Arctic strategy, between hard and soft power, Konyshev, Valery & Sergunin, Alexander, Russias Policies on the Territorial Disputes in the Arctic Journal of International Relations and Foreign Policy, March 2014, Vol.2, No
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Tiksi
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As of the 2010 Census, its population was 5,063. In August 1901, Russian Arctic ship Zarya headed across the Laptev Sea, during 1902, the attempts to reach Sannikov Land continued while Zarya was trapped in fast ice. Leaving the ship, Russian Arctic explorer Baron Eduard Toll and three companions vanished forever in November 1902 while traveling away from Bennett Island towards the south on loose ice floes, Zarya was finally moored close to Brusneva Island in the Tiksi Bay, never to leave the place again. The remaining members of the returned to St. Petersburg. Modern Tiksi was founded in 1933, urban-type settlement status was granted to it in 1939, during the Cold War, Tiksi saw military construction projects at Tiksi North and Tiksi West airfields. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Tiksis population has declined markedly, despite its rapid population decline, it remains the most northerly settlement with a population of over 5,000. Within the framework of administrative divisions, the settlement of Tiksi serves as the administrative center of Bulunsky District. As an administrative division, it is incorporated within Bulunsky District as the Settlement of Tiksi, as a municipal division, the Settlement of Tiksi is incorporated within Bulunsky Municipal District as Tiksi Urban Settlement. Tiksi serves as one of the ports for accessing the Laptev Sea. It is served by the Tiksi Airport, which was shut down by the Defense Ministry on October 1,2012 except for helicopters, Tiksi was connected only by helicopter flights and winter roads. The closure was criticized by Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. Following an agreement between the Defense Ministry and the Government of the Sakha Republic in April 2013, the airfield re-opened to passenger traffic in June 2013, in December 2013, President Vladimir Putin announced that the Tiksi airport would be rehabilitated along with others beyond the Arctic Circle. The Lena River is navigable in the summer months, there is infrequent passenger navigation from Yakutsk. Winters are similar to those of the subarctic regions, and have frequent. The very short summers are cooler than inland regions and see rainfall on most days. The midnight sun is above the horizon from May 11 to August 3, official website of the Sakha Republic. Registry of the Administrative-Territorial Divisions of the Sakha Republic, Закон №172-З №351-III от30 ноября2004 г. «Об установлении границ и о наделении статусом муниципального района муниципальных образований Республики Саха », в ред, Закона №1535-З №597-V от27 ноября2015 г
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International Hydrographic Organization
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The International Hydrographic Organization is the inter-governmental organisation representing hydrography. A principal aim of the IHO is to ensure that the seas, oceans. It does this through the setting of standards, the co-ordination of the endeavours of the worlds national hydrographic offices. The IHO enjoys observer status at the United Nations where it is the competent authority on hydrographic surveying. When referring to hydrography and nautical charting in Conventions and similar Instruments, it is the IHO standards, the IHO was established in 1921 as the International Hydrographic Bureau. The present name was adopted in 1970 as part of a new international Convention on the IHO adopted by the member nations. The former name International Hydrographic Bureau was retained to describe the IHO secretariat until 8 November 2016, there were substantial differences in hydrographic procedures charts, and publications. In 1889, an International Maritime Conference was held at Washington, D. C. similar proposals were made at the sessions of the International Congress of Navigation held at Saint Petersburg in 1908 and the International Maritime Conference held at Saint Petersburg in 1912. In 1919 the hydrographers of Great Britain and France cooperated in taking the steps to convene an international conference of hydrographers. London was selected as the most suitable place for this conference, and on 24 July 1919 and this is still the major purpose of the IHO. As a result of the conference, a permanent organization was formed, the IHB, now the IHO, began its activities in 1921 with 18 nations as members. The Principality of Monaco was selected as the seat of the organization as a result of the offer of Albert I, the IHO develops hydrographic and nautical charting standards. These standards are adopted and used by its 86 member countries and others in their surveys, nautical charts. Much has been done in the field of standardisation since the Bureau was founded, the IHO has encouraged the formation of Regional Hydrographic Commissions. Each RHC coordinates the national surveying and charting activities of countries within each region, the 15 RHCs plus the IHO Hydrographic Commission on Antarctica effectively cover the world. The IHO, in partnership with the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, directs the General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans programme, in 2010 the IHO introduced a new, contemporary hydrographic geospatial standard for modelling marine data and information, known as S-100. S-100 and any dependent product specifications are underpinned by an on-line registry accessible via the IHO website, S-100 is aligned with the ISO19100 series of geographic standards, thereby making it fully compatible with contemporary geospatial data standards. Because S-100 is based on ISO19100, it can be used by other providers for their maritime-related data
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Bathymetry
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Bathymetry is the study of underwater depth of lake or ocean floors. In other words, bathymetry is the equivalent to hypsometry or topography. The name comes from Greek βαθύς, deep, and μέτρον, Bathymetric maps may also use a Digital Terrain Model and artificial illumination techniques to illustrate the depths being portrayed. The global bathymetry is combined with topography data to yield a Global Relief Model. Paleobathymetry is the study of past underwater depths, originally, bathymetry involved the measurement of ocean depth through depth sounding. Early techniques used pre-measured heavy rope or cable lowered over a ships side and this technique measures the depth only a singular point at a time, and is therefore inefficient. It is also subject to movements of the ship and currents moving the line out of true and therefore is inaccurate. The amount of time it takes for the sound or light to travel through the water, bounce off the seafloor, lIDAR/LADAR surveys are usually conducted by airborne systems. Starting in the early 1930s, single-beam sounders were used to make bathymetry maps, today, multibeam echosounders are typically used, which use hundreds of very narrow adjacent beams arranged in a fan-like swath of typically 90 to 170 degrees across. The tightly packed array of narrow individual beams provides very high angular resolution, in general a wide swath, which is depth dependent, allows a boat to map more seafloor in less time than a single-beam echosounder by making fewer passes. The beams update many times per second, allowing faster boat speed while maintaining 100% coverage of the seafloor, attitude sensors allow for the correction of the boats roll and pitch on the ocean surface, and a gyrocompass provides accurate heading information to correct for vessel yaw. A boat-mounted Global Positioning System positions the soundings with respect to the surface of the earth, sound speed profiles of the water column correct for refraction or ray-bending of the sound waves owing to non-uniform water column characteristics such as temperature, conductivity, and pressure. A computer system processes all the data, correcting for all of the factors as well as for the angle of each individual beam. The resulting sounding measurements are processed either manually, semi-automatically or automatically to produce a map of the area. As of 2010 a number of different outputs are generated, including a sub-set of the measurements that satisfy some conditions or integrated Digital Terrain Models. Historically, selection of measurements was more common in hydrographic applications while DTM construction was used for engineering surveys, geology, flow modeling, 2003–2005, DTMs have become more accepted in hydrographic practice. Satellites are also used to measure bathymetry, satellite radar maps deep-sea topography by detecting the subtle variations in sea level caused by the gravitational pull of undersea mountains, ridges, and other masses. On average, sea level is higher over mountains and ridges than over abyssal plains, coastal bathymetry data is available from NOAAs National Geophysical Data Center, which is now merged into National Centers for Environmental Information
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Minute and second of arc
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A minute of arc, arcminute, arc minute, or minute arc is a unit of angular measurement equal to 1/60 of one degree. Since one degree is 1/360 of a turn, one minute of arc is 1/21600 of a turn, a second of arc, arcsecond, or arc second is 1/60 of an arcminute, 1/3600 of a degree, 1/1296000 of a turn, and π/648000 of a radian. To express even smaller angles, standard SI prefixes can be employed, the number of square arcminutes in a complete sphere is 4 π2 =466560000 π ≈148510660 square arcminutes. The standard symbol for marking the arcminute is the prime, though a single quote is used where only ASCII characters are permitted. One arcminute is thus written 1′ and it is also abbreviated as arcmin or amin or, less commonly, the prime with a circumflex over it. The standard symbol for the arcsecond is the prime, though a double quote is commonly used where only ASCII characters are permitted. One arcsecond is thus written 1″ and it is also abbreviated as arcsec or asec. In celestial navigation, seconds of arc are used in calculations. This notation has been carried over into marine GPS receivers, which normally display latitude and longitude in the format by default. An arcsecond is approximately the angle subtended by a U. S. dime coin at a distance of 4 kilometres, a milliarcsecond is about the size of a dime atop the Eiffel Tower as seen from New York City. A microarcsecond is about the size of a period at the end of a sentence in the Apollo mission manuals left on the Moon as seen from Earth, since antiquity the arcminute and arcsecond have been used in astronomy. The principal exception is Right ascension in equatorial coordinates, which is measured in units of hours, minutes. These small angles may also be written in milliarcseconds, or thousandths of an arcsecond, the unit of distance, the parsec, named from the parallax of one arcsecond, was developed for such parallax measurements. It is the distance at which the radius of the Earths orbit would subtend an angle of one arcsecond. The ESA astrometric space probe Gaia is hoped to measure star positions to 20 microarcseconds when it begins producing catalog positions sometime after 2016, there are about 1.3 trillion µas in a turn. Currently the best catalog positions of stars actually measured are in terms of milliarcseconds, apart from the Sun, the star with the largest angular diameter from Earth is R Doradus, a red supergiant with a diameter of 0.05 arcsecond. The dwarf planet Pluto has proven difficult to resolve because its angular diameter is about 0.1 arcsecond, space telescopes are not affected by the Earths atmosphere but are diffraction limited. For example, the Hubble space telescope can reach a size of stars down to about 0. 1″
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Kilometre
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The kilometre or kilometer is a unit of length in the metric system, equal to one thousand metres. K is occasionally used in some English-speaking countries as an alternative for the kilometre in colloquial writing. A slang term for the kilometre in the US military is klick, there are two common pronunciations for the word. It is generally preferred by the British Broadcasting Corporation and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, many scientists and other users, particularly in countries where the metric system is not widely used, use the pronunciation with stress on the second syllable. The latter pronunciation follows the pattern used for the names of measuring instruments. The problem with this reasoning, however, is that the meter in those usages refers to a measuring device. The contrast is more obvious in countries using the British rather than American spelling of the word metre. When Australia introduced the system in 1975, the first pronunciation was declared official by the governments Metric Conversion Board. However, the Australian prime minister at the time, Gough Whitlam, by the 8 May 1790 decree, the Constituent assembly ordered the French Academy of Sciences to develop a new measurement system. In August 1793, the French National Convention decreed the metre as the length measurement system in the French Republic. The first name of the kilometre was Millaire, although the metre was formally defined in 1799, the myriametre was preferred to the kilometre for everyday use. The term myriamètre appeared a number of times in the text of Develeys book Physique dEmile, ou, Principes de la de la nature. French maps published in 1835 had scales showing myriametres and lieues de Poste, the Dutch, on the other hand, adopted the kilometre in 1817 but gave it the local name of the mijl. It was only in 1867 that the term became the only official unit of measure in the Netherlands to represent 1000 metres. In the US, the National Highway System Designation Act of 1995 prohibits the use of highway funds to convert existing signs or purchase new signs with metric units. Although the State DOTs had the option of using metric measurements or dual units, all of them abandoned metric measurements, the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices since 2000 is published in both metric and American Customary Units. Some sporting disciplines feature 1000 m races in major events, but in other disciplines, even though records are catalogued
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Komsomolets Island
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Komsomolets Island is the northernmost island of the Severnaya Zemlya group in the Russian Arctic, and the third largest island in the group. It is the 82nd largest island on earth, about 65% of the island is covered with glaciers. Komsomolets Island is separated from October Revolution Island in the south by the Red Army Strait, the northernmost point of the island is the Arctic Cape, the launching point for many Arctic expeditions. Practically the whole of the central and southern part of the island is covered by the massive Academy of Sciences Glacier, the northern part is largely unglaciated. The area of this island has been estimated at 9,006 km² and it rises to a height of 780 m. Komsomolets Island is home to the largest ice cap in Russia, the soil of the island is mostly composed of loose loam and sands, a tundra desert scattered with mosses and lichens. The island was discovered by Boris Vilkitsky in 1913, but its insularity wasn’t proven until 1931, when Georgy Ushakov and Nikolay Urvantsev charted the archipelago during their 1930–32 expedition. In keeping with their scheme of naming the islands after events and movements of the Russian Revolution, this island was named in honour of the members of the Komsomol, the Communist Union of Youth. Media related to Komsomolets Island at Wikimedia Commons Photos of the Academy of Science Ice Cap, Facts and dramatic satellite photos of the islands of the Severnaya Zemlya group
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October Revolution Island
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October Revolution Island is the largest island of the Severnaya Zemlya group in the Russian Arctic. The area of this island has been estimated at 14,170 km2 making it the 56th largest island in the world and it rises to a height of 965 m on Mount Karpinsky. Half the island is covered with glaciers reaching down into the sea, in the sections free from ice, the vegetation is desert or tundra. October Revolution Island houses five domed ice caps, clockwise from north, they are named, Rusanov, Karpinsky, University, Vavilov and Albanov. The Rusanov and Karpinsky ice caps, located on the side of the island, feed with glaciers the Matusevich Fjord of the Laptev Sea. The Karpinsky ice cap reaches a height of 963 m. Other minor ice caps on the island include the Malyutka Glacier, the coast of the island is uneven with rugged coves and headlands. The largest bays of the island are along the northern coast, both straits connect the Kara Sea in the west with the Laptev Sea in the east. Cape October is located in the part of the island facing the Red Army Strait. The Vavilov Meteorological Station was operated from 1974 to 1988 on the part of the Vavilov Ice Cap. Arctic Ocean Hydrographic Expedition List of islands of Russia List of glaciers of Russia Media related to October Revolution Island at Wikimedia Commons
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Bolshevik Island
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Bolshevik Island is an island in Severnaya Zemlya, Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russian Arctic. The island, together with the eastern coast of what was named Emperor Nicholas II Land, was discovered by Boris Vilkitsky at the time of the 1913 Arctic Ocean Hydrographic Expedition. Its insularity, however, wasn’t proven until 1931, when Georgy Ushakov, prima Polar Station, currently the only Polar station operating in Severnaya Zemlya, is located in this island near Cape Baranov. It is the southernmost island and the second largest island in the group, the area of this island has been estimated at 11,270 km2. The island is mountainous reaching a height of 935 m, most of these ice formations do not reach the sea, ending in moraines in valleys or coastal plains having a sparse vegetation of moss and lichen. Cape Unslicht is the northernmost point of Bolshevik Island and Cape Neupokoyev at the SW end the southernmost, Ostrov Tash is a small island located on Bolsheviks southern shore. Lavrov Island and Blizky Island are located off the NE shore, the group formed by the larger Maly Taymyr and Starokadomsky islands is located further offshore off the southeastern end. The weather on the island is cold, the annual average temperature is −16 °C. List of islands of Russia List of research stations in the Arctic Media related to Bolshevik Island at Wikimedia Commons
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Kotelny Island
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Kotelny Island is part of the Anzhu Islands subgroup of the New Siberian Islands located between the Laptev Sea and the East Siberian Sea in the Russian Arctic. It is administratively and municipally part of Bulunsky District, Kotelny, Faddeyevsky and Bunge Land are usually named as separate islands on most 20th century maps, although sometimes on the newest maps the name Kotelny is applied to the whole island. A flat, low-lying, plain connecting both is known as Bunge Land, the total area of Kotelny Island is 23,165 km². Kotelny is one of the 50 largest islands in the world and these merged islands are a practically uninhabited territory belonging to the Sakha Republic of the Russian Federation. The island was discovered by a Russian merchant and hunter, Ivan Lyakhov, with the merchant Protod’yakonov. In 1770, Ivan Lyakhov noticed reindeer tracks heading seaward across the sea ice, in 1773, he and Protod’yakonov discovered the Lyakhovsky Islands by boat using the bearing of these tracks. Continuing from the Lyakhovsky Islands, they discovered Kotelny Island and named it Kettle Island after a copper kettle, the person, who visited Kotelny Island and left the copper kettle, is unknown. Formerly this island had been known as Thaddeus Island or Thaddeus Islands in some maps, under the employment of Semen and Lev Syrovatskiy, Yakov Sannikov conducted numerous hunting and cartographic expeditions between 1800 and 1810. On one of expeditions in 1805, he discovered Faddeyevsky Island. In 1809–1810 Yakov Sannikov and Matvei Gedenschtrom went to the New Siberian Islands on a cartographic expedition, Yakov Sannikov reported the sighting of a new land north of Kotelny in 1811. This became the myth of Zemlya Sannikova or Sannikov Land, in 1886 Baron Eduard Von Toll thought that he had seen an unknown land north of Kotelny. He guessed that this was the so-called Zemlya Sannikova, the western part of Kotelny Island proper, also known as Kettle Island, is the largest section of the group, with an area of 11,665 km². It is rocky and hilly, rising to 374 m on Mt. Malakatyn-Tas, the Chukochya River flows westwards to the Laptev Sea. Cape Anisy 76. 200°N139. 1167°E /76.200,139.1167 is the northernmost headland of Kotelny, cape Medvezhiyis the southernmost headland of the island. Bunge Land or Zemlya Bunge is an empty and almost barren intermediate zone. It is located between Kotelny and Faddeyevsky, which, unlike Bunge Land, could be described as proper islands, sandy and flat, its area is 6,200 km². The area that is periodically submerged accounts for over 80% of the surface and is practically devoid of vegetation. Bunge Land is named after Russian zoologist and explorer Alexander Alexandrovich Bunge, Faddeyevsky Peninsula is a large peninsula projecting from the northern end of Bunge Land eastwards with its isthmus in the north
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Maly Lyakhovsky Island
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Maly Lyakhovsky Island is the second largest of the Lyakhovsky Islands belonging to the New Siberian Islands archipelago in Laptev Sea in northern Russia. It has an area of 1,325 square kilometers, the Lyakhovsky Islands are named in honour of Ivan Lyakhov, who explored them in 1773. Maly Lyakhovsky Island consists of Upper Jurassic to lower Cretaceous turbidites, also known as flysch and these Mesozoic rocks consist of sandstones, argillites, and shales deformed into east-northeast striking folds about 7 to 20 km wide. The Mesozoic rocks are covered by a thin layer of Pliocene to Pleistocene sandy. Near the coast, the alluvial sediments grade into nearshore marine sediments containing fossil marine mollusks, thick permafrost characterized by massive ice wedges has developed in these sediments. On 29 May 2013, an expedition of North-Eastern Federal University found the remains of a 10 and it was reported that liquid blood was found in ice cavities below the belly even though the temperature at the time of excavation was –7 to –10 °C. It was speculated that this find might reveal information about the properties of mammoth blood. Rush/grass, forb, cryptogam tundra covers Maly Lyakhovsky Island and it is tundra consisting mostly of very low-growing grasses, rushes, forbs, mosses, lichens, and liverworts. These plants either mostly or completely cover the surface of the ground, the soils are typically moist, fine-grained, and often hummocky. List of mammoths Andreev, A. A. and D. M, peteet,1999, Climate and Diet of Mammoths in the East Siberian Arctic. Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York, New York, tumskoy,2002, Environmental History of the Novosibirskie Islands for the last 12 ka. 32nd International Arctic Workshop, Program and Abstracts 2002, Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado at Boulder, pp 23–25. Anonymous, nd, New Siberian Islands at the Wayback Machine aerial photographs of these islands. Sulerzhitsky, Ch. Siegert,2001, New data on the Mammoth fauna of the Laptev Shelf Land,144 KB PDF file, The World of Elephants - International Congress, Rome 2001. Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Centro di Studio per il Quaternario e lEvoluzione Ambientale, Università di Roma, Roma, grosse,2005, Lost world - Late Quaternary environment of periglacial Arctic shelves and coastal lowlands in NE-Siberia. 2nd International Alfred Wegener Symposium Bremerhaven, October,30 - November 2,2005
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Bolshoy Lyakhovsky Island
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It has an area of 4,600 km², and a maximum altitude of 270 m. The peninsula projecting towards the west of the island is the Kigilyakh Peninsula, off Bolshoy Lyakhovsky Islands southwestern cape lies a small islet called Ostrov Khopto-Terer. The Lyakhovsky Islands are named in honour of Ivan Lyakhov, who explored them in 1773, Bolshoy Lyakhovsky Island consists of highly folded and faulted Precambrian metamorphic rocks and turbidites, Mesozoic turbidites and igneous rocks, and Cenozoic sediments. Exposed in southeastern part of island, the older Precambrian. Early Proterozoic, metamorphic rocks consist of schists and amphibolites, small exposures of Late Proterozoic schistose, quartzose sandstones and phyllitic, sericite-quartz schist also occur in the southeastern part of Bolshoy Lyakhovsky Island. The bulk of this consists of Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous turbidites composed of interbedded fine-grained sandstones, thinly bedded siltstones. The Precambrian and Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous rocks are intruded by Late Cretaceous granites and granodiorites, a blanket of unconsolidated Cenozoic sediments blankets most of Bolshoy Lyakhovsky Island. Overlying these sediments are Pliocene to Pleistocene colluvial, alluvial, and nearshore marine sands, silts, the nearshore marine sediments contain the shells of marine mollusks and pieces of lignitized wood. Thick permafrost characterized by ice wedges has developed in these sediments. Contrary to the interpretations of Baron von Toll and earlier geologists, glacial tills, the oldest sediments exposed in the southern sea cliffs of Bolshoy Lyakhovsky Island consists of a layer of rocky, yellowish to greenish colored sediment. This layer is a thick Paleogene weathering crust that has developed within Permian sandstone, Saalian sediments uncomfortably overlie this paleosol. The oldest known Pleistocene sediments exposed in the sea cliffs of Bolshoy Lyakhovsky Island consist of Saalian sediments. The lower part of these sediments consist of ice-rich, silty and they contain pebbles, peat inclusions, and peat horizons. The presence of ice belts, reticulated ice interlayers, and wide, the lower part of this unit contains the pollen of sparse grass-sedge vegetation, which reflects a stadial environment. The upper part of this unit contains pollen associated with dense grass-dominated tundra. These loess-like sediments accumulated within floodplains and lakes, as they accumulated between 170,000 and 120,000 years ago, ice wedge polygons formed in these sediments as the result of extremely cold and dry conditions. Elsewhere along the coast of Bolshoy Lyakhovsky Island, the sea cliffs expose pre-Eemian floodplain, in some locations, the Eemian lake deposits are thicker and laterally continuous enough to form a complete blanket overlying older sediments. The Eemian sediments contain fossils indicative of an interglacial environment, at many localities along the sea cliffs, typically over 10 meters of Early Weichselian lacustrine and loess-like floodplain deposits overlie the Eemian and pre-Eemian sediments
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