Lyakhovsky, Novosibirsk (or Anjou) and De Longa form an island group called the Novosibirsk archipelago. It is located on the border of the East Siberian Sea and the Laptev Sea.
The Laptev Strait, 60 km wide, lies between the Lyakhovsky Islands and the mainland, while the nearby Anjou Island Group is separated by the 50-km Sannikov Strait.
Number of islands
The group includes 4 islands, covering a total area of more than 6 thousand km 2 :
- Big Lyakhovsky, its territory is more than 5 thousand km 2 ;
- Small Lyakhovsky is 1.3 km 2 ;
- Pillar, its area is only 170 km 2 ;
- two small ones - Flooded and Yaya.
Also in the Lyakhovsky Islands include 2 submarine banks - Semenovskaya and Vasilyevskaya, which were also island entities, but are now flooded by the ocean.
History
Small islands often have a tragic history of their appearance on geographical maps.
In chronicle documents, still unnamed lands first appear in 1710, when the Cossack Yakov Permyakov, who was engaged in fishing in the ocean, noticed an island opposite the mouth of Kolyma and Cape of the Holy Nose. Yakutsk governor ordered to find land and explore.
In 1712, the expedition of Mercury Vagin, who commanded 7 Cossacks, Yakov Permyakov as a pilot and three industrialists hit the road. On dog-drawn sledges, they crossed the ice to one of the islands, which would later be called Bolshoi Lyakhovsky.
Summer began, sledding became dangerous, and the expedition returned to the Holy Nose. Waiting for the winter, the Cossacks were starving, and the decision of M. Vagin to continue the search for land did not arouse their understanding. Cossacks attacked the leader of the detachment and Y. Permyakov and killed them. When the thinned expedition returned to the city, the industrialists issued the Cossack killers, and the islands were mapped.
Fame will come to the islands due to deposits of mammoth bone, which will be discovered after half a century by the Yakut Eterikan.
Since 1770, merchant Ivan Lyakhov, who received a monopoly on work from Catherine II, took up mining expensive bone on an industrial scale. He named one island Maly Lyakhovsky, the other Big, and the third piece of land studied in the ocean, studied a couple of years later, was named Kotelny in honor of the copper pot found on it.
Surveying was carried out on the Novosibirsk archipelago in 1775, the map was used until the beginning of the XIX century.
Deep Ages: Geology
It is believed that the Lyakhovsky Islands, like the entire Novosibirsk archipelago, are part of a vast continent. The islands consist of various rocks - limestones, shales, granitoids, sandstones.
The flat rocky peaks are made of granite, and the rest of the territory is soft Quaternary sediments. Numerous rivers that flow down from the tops thin out and erode soft rocks, dividing the territory into low hills and shallow short valleys. Due to the slight slope, the channels of many rivers are swampy. On the islands there are many shallow thermokarst lakes called chelbaki.
The Lyakhovsky Islands are characterized by the presence of fossil ice, which occupy up to 80% of the total area. The ice wall rises tens of meters above the sea surface.
Relief
Like the entire Novosibirsk archipelago, the Lyakhovsky Islands are low plateaus. The centuries-old permafrost has determined the terrain:
- there are hollows of thermokarst lakes;
- cracks in the ground;
- baijeraki - peat hills, under which permafrost is located;
- forest - clay dust accumulated over centuries in ice cracks forms bizarre pillars.
There are several peaks. Mount Amy-Tas (Big Lyakhovsky Island) has a height of 293 or 311 m, and Mount Malakatyn-Tas on about. Boiler room (361 m).
In places, a thin layer of soil covers thick layers of fossil ice.
The soil
The soil cover is not diverse, but there are such types of permafrost:
- gley turf;
- marsh;
- stony placers;
- silty-peaty;
- layered.
On about. The boiler house is the Arctic desert, which received its own name - Bunge Land.
Climate of the Lyakhovsky Islands
The Arctic marine climate is characteristic of these lands remote from the mainland. It is formed by warm cyclones from the Barents Sea, the Arctic front and the influence of ice-covered seas.
Ice becomes in the straits in October, connecting the islands and the mainland. Winter lasts at least 9-10 months, the average temperature is –31 0 . All this time the islands are covered with snow, strong winds blow.
In summer, frosts often occur, the average temperature in July-August is up to +5 0 . Precisely during the summer period, it is time for drizzling rains; up to 145 mm of precipitation falls during the year.
More than 3 months of the year, the islands are covered with dense fog, which is formed by winds from the Siberian wormwood and the Asian maximum.
Flora and fauna
Scientists believe that tens of thousands of years ago, the Lyakhovsky Islands represented a green plain, on which many animals lived.
Now it is a marshy Arctic tundra, covered with reindeer moss and mosses. In summer, the earth is covered with a carpet of rapidly blooming polar plants. Polar poppy, dryads, cinquefoil, gravilate and cereals constitute the centers of turf.
The islands are inhabited by arctic foxes, foxes, wolves, lemmings. Polar bears wander here. Back in the XIX century. there were so many Arctic foxes that hunters came to prey on it. Partridge and reindeer are found, which in winter go over to mainland land. Slingshot and catfish live in the rivers.
sights
Lyakhovsky Islands (photo can be seen in the article) are part of the Ust-Lensky State Nature Reserve (Yakutia), created in 1985.
On about. The boiler house is a monument to E. Tolya, who explored the archipelago in the late XIX - early XX centuries.
The main wonder of the Lyakhovsky Islands is the bones of ancient animals, which attracted merchants and travelers to these deserted lands. From the XVIII century. industrialists mined mammoth bones in these places, called ivory, which were used to make expensive trinkets.
On the Lyakhovsky Islands, bones of primitive rhinos and bulls, horses and deer have been and are still being found. At the end of the XIX century. Researcher E. Tol discovered an alder tree with preserved leaves.
Now a significant part of the Big Lyakhovsky Island is a conservation zone where the remains of mammoths are located. In 2012, at Maly Lyakhovsky a unique find was made - the carcass of a mammoth, in the circulatory system of which the blood did not freeze. This opened a new field of activity for scientists.
The inhospitable Lyakhovsky Islands are still waiting for the final solution to their secrets.