The West Siberian Plain is one of the greatest plains in the world. From north to south, it stretched for two and a half thousand kilometers, from west to east - a little less than two thousand. Its natural borders are: in the north - the seas of the Arctic Ocean, in the south - the Kazakh small hills, in the west - the Urals and in the east - the Yenisei. The plain is a little less than three million square kilometers.
There are many deposits of various minerals. But the main ones are hydrocarbons. The West Siberian Plain is the largest oil and gas region of the Russian Federation and one of the largest in the world.
The large area and relative uniformity of the relief caused the West Siberian Plain to include a large number of natural and climatic zones with a clear distribution from north to south. In areas adjacent to the Arctic Ocean, the dominant type of landscape is the tundra with extensive wetlands. Further south, the nature of the terrain is gradually changing. The tundra is replaced by the forest-tundra with islands of low trees, to the south - the taiga, which consists of dark coniferous species of trees, and to the south is the belt of deciduous forests. Approximately at the fifty-fifth parallel, forests are diluted with steppes and fields, and there are almost no forests on the border with Kazakhstan, with the exception of the eastern plains.
In the seventies of the last century, the West Siberian Plain was subjected to strong
anthropogenic impact. The impact continues to this day. This is due to the beginning of mass development of hydrocarbon deposits. But even now, vast areas outside hydrocarbon deposits remain wild, as they did many years ago.
Natural conditions , even on the same latitude here is a little different. This is due to the fact that the West Siberian Plain, whose climate depends on the presence of a natural barrier (Urals), which protects against warm western winds, lies in the region of transition from temperate continental to sharply continental. And if the difference between the prevailing summer and winter temperatures in the regions adjacent to the Urals is less pronounced, then the left bank of the Yenisei is already a territory where a full-fledged sharply continental climate reigns .
There are no large differences in elevations here, but nevertheless there are small elevations, lowlands and swamps, which the West Siberian Plain is especially rich in. The relief, it seems, consists of elements (the Vasyugan plain, the Kulundinskaya wound, the Baraba lowland, and so on) competing among themselves - who is lower. And only in the north are Siberian Uvaly -
ridge nine hundred kilometers long, the highest point of which barely exceeded three hundred meters.
Separately, it must be said about the rivers of the West Siberian Plain. Almost the entire territory is occupied by the Ob basin with the main tributary of the Irtysh. The eastern part of the plain enters the Yenisei basin. The territory is provided with abundant water resources. But due to the flat nature of the river and the lack of height differences, there are practically no large hydroelectric power stations on it, with the exception of the Novosibirsk River, located in the upper reaches. Despite the huge potential, the construction of a hydroelectric station on the Ob below Novosibirsk is impossible, since in this case a huge territory will be flooded.