What is the tundra? Translated from Finnish tunturi means “barren land”, “enemy land” or “treeless plain” In a word, a place unsuitable for life. Most people's ideas about it come down to information obtained from the school curriculum - mosses, deer, permafrost, lichens - and all this is somewhere out there, far to the north. Information gleaned from popular television programs speaks of threats (primarily to buildings) that are associated with global warming.
Endless snow desert
The tundra can be described as a cold desert, located around the north pole. Someone calls it the southern border of the Arctic, someone calls it the territory immediately beyond the taiga. Each of these statements correctly explains what the tundra is.
In Russia, it stretches from 300 km to 500 km from the Bering Strait in the eastern part to Finland in the western. Including the Arctic and Subarctic zones, the tundra occupies about 10% of the land of our country. The entire coast of the Arctic Ocean is covered by this strip, narrower in the European part of Russia and wide in Siberia; the northern part of Kamchatka is also captured.
The most severe time
What is the tundra in winter? At this time, the climate becomes even harsher - frosts reach -51 degrees in the Siberian part. They are exacerbated by the winds, which are here because of the lack of mountains and more or less decent hills expanse. The alternating plains and lowlands on the geographical map are marked in green, which completely covers the territory of the tundra. The sun does not rise at all, the polar night lasts a long 8-9 months. This is the most difficult time for the fauna of the region.
Everyone is hiding from the “black snowstorm”: people, rare animals and birds. After storms raging for weeks, there remains a pitted snow desert that resembles a sandy one, since the cover is quite small and in a mobile state, which allowed one tundra researcher to call it "the country of snow dunes."
Time of mosquitoes and bird nesting
The cold northern summer comes with a maximum temperature not exceeding +10 degrees, but the sun does not hide at all - white nights come, which last 64 days. The upper layer of snow thaws, forming endless spills of small, not deeper than 50-100 cm, lakes that locals fearlessly cross on the bunks. Thaws and comes to life all around.
The soil of the tundra is very specific - over the layer of permafrost there are small gley and humus horizons. The specificity is explained by the fact that the waters here are stagnant, evaporation is small, low temperatures prevent plant residues from decaying and decomposing. There is little precipitation, only up to 250 mm per year, but thawed water on the surface of the soil does not have time to evaporate. All this contributes to the formation of swamps, of which there are an infinite number.
And here is grace
What is the tundra in summer? The whole nature of this region is determined by the length of this period - plants must bloom in time to give seeds. This is the world of reindeer moss, sedge and lichen, and rosemary and heather, dwarf birch and shaggy willows are found. Trees are low because the roots cannot go into the soil.
In autumn, huge blueberry fields of blueberries are interspersed with orange plantations of cloudberries, a lot of crowberries, in a word, berry paradise - this is what the tundra is. The definition of this region as a mosquito kingdom is also true, because the air in the tundra is not transparent from the number of these insects. Clouds of various midges and northern bumblebees complete the picture. An infinite number of mushrooms. This is all food for birds. The tundra is a nesting place for them.
Millions of birds spend a short summer here. There are so many of them that, according to eyewitnesses, the lakes become either snow-white from swans, or dark from geese. A peregrine falcon, a white partridge and a small bird, gulls, guillemots and terns nest here. They feed not only mosquitoes. The northern seas, lakes and swamps of the tundra are full of fish (beluga, salmon) and mollusks. From the family of rodents, the tundra is inhabited by lemmings.
If you capture these blue and orange fields of berries, dark white from the lake birds, to show what the tundra is, the photo will be very spectacular. The fauna of this area is not poor at all. Reindeer and white fox, symbols of the north, are found here in unlimited quantities. The coast is the kingdom of polar bears and other large animals such as walrus.
The climate, and with it the nature, change from north to south, and the tundra is conditionally divided into three subzones: arctic, lichen-moss and south-shrub. Even the names show how the plant world changes as it moves away from the North Pole.
Natural extension of the tundra
Then begins the territory, very slightly different from that described above. What is the tundra and forest-tundra? How do they differ? Some experts do not find much difference and call the second subzone the first. Indeed, there are few differences. Lesotundra belongs to the subarctic zone, stretches completely repeating the southern border of the tundra, its width varies from 30 to 300 km. The average annual temperature here is only 8-10 degrees higher, the trees are low, found in rare islets. But since the forest-tundra comes close to coniferous forests, and its southern regions are also more or less covered by them, it is often called the subzone not of the tundra, but of taiga.