The lowland located in the north of Yakutia represents the territory of permafrost with characteristic permafrost landforms. These are thermokarst lakes, swamps, etc. In general, this territory is a tundra.
You can find out where the Yano-Indigir Lowland is, about the terrain, about the features of flora and fauna, about age and other information in this article.
A bit about the lowlands
A lowland is a plain whose height does not exceed 200 m above sea level. As a rule, the lowlands represent a flat surface of the earth, composed of young sea, river and lake sediments. They are located in large and smaller depressions, and can also be on platform plains and in intermontane depressions. It should be noted here that the Pre-Caspian lowland, located on the territory of Russia, is below sea level.
Another feature of the lowlands, mainly coastal, is that they are usually densely populated. And it often happens that people artificially increase the land area of these territories (for example, in the polders of Holland).
Location, length
The lowland in question stretches from Buor Haya Bay from the west to the Indigirka River in the east, and its territories occupy most of the Yakut Arctic zone.
The geographic coordinates of the Yano-Indigir Lowland are 46.602075; 39.230506.
The lowland covers more than 600 square kilometers of land located along the southern coasts of the East Siberian and Laptev Seas. There is also a vast delta of the Yana River and the mouths of other smaller rivers (Indigirka, Omoloy), on behalf of two of which this lowland got its name.
Shapes, relief
The Yano-Indigirskaya lowland has the shape of a crescent. In the widest part, its width is 300 kilometers, the average height is up to 30-80 meters above sea level (reaches 100 meters).
The lowland is a vast swampy plain located in the north-eastern part of Siberia. In combination with the
Kolyma lowland, located in the north-eastern part of Yakutia, in the basin of the Bolshaya Chukochya, Alazey and the left bank of the lower Kolyma, it forms an extensive lowland called East Siberian.
In some places, residual ridges composed of indigenous rocks rise up to 558 meters high (this is the maximum height of the Yano-Indigir Lowland).
Age, study
The described area is noted by the presence of a number of supporting and private sections of the Neopleistocene age, which contain the remains of rare fossils of fauna and flora. These sections were studied at different times by such scientists as A. A. Bunge (or Chersky, in 1891), V. F. Goncharov, B. S. Rusanov (in 1968) and N. K. Vereshchagin (1977 .).
Lazarev P. A. studied the remains of the mammoth fauna of the lowland from 1970 to 2000. Some sections of the Late Cenozoic are well studied and described in the scientific literature, but there are also sections whose location has not yet been fully studied.
In recent years, finds of the oldest remains of fossil animals and vegetation (late Neopleistocene) have been discovered in lowland areas.
Yano-Indigirskaya lowland: characteristics of the area, soils
In this lowland there is a lake called Pavylon. Rare massifs of hills from 200 to 300 meters high are found in these Siberian regions.
Perennial frozen rocks and permafrost forms prevail here. For the most part, the lowland is composed of various sea, lake and river deposits with a high content of fossil ice due to the prevalence of permafrost in these places.
Lowland has its own characteristics (there are quite a lot of them). These include thermokarst depressions (according to other Alases) with swamps, lakes, over which numerous hillocks of heaving rise above. Also on the shores of seas, rivers and lakes, you can observe the hillocks-baijarahi and polygonal soils. The latter are soils in the form of micro- and mesorelief (sizes range from a few centimeters to several hundred meters). They have the outlines of polygons, spots, rings, circles, and on the slopes - stripes.
Yano-Indigirskaya lowland: geography, animals
The role of a natural refrigerator was played by permafrost, which has preserved for decades the remains of frozen corpses of mammoths and many other mammals of the ice age. This part of vast Siberia is one of the most saturated with the remains of mammoth fauna.
In connection with the erosion by the waters of lakes and rivers of coastal areas and the thermal abrasion of the shores of the seas, the remains of the oldest animals are thawed and fall out annually.
Flora: connection with fauna
The Yano-Indigir lowland in the ice age was a huge tundra-steppe space with rich grass vegetation. In all likelihood, in these rather favorable conditions, the number of mammalian fauna reached considerable size. This was at the end of the Neopleistocene.
Niches representing natural traps were created in various places of the Arctic, where "cemeteries" were formed. In them there was a mass death of the most ancient animals.
Shrubbery and moss-lichen tundra predominate along the coast, and rare deciduous forests grow in the southern part along river valleys.
In the south of the lowland along river valleys there are sections of forest-tundra, which consist of sparse larch trees.
Today, animal species are common in this area of Siberia, which are characteristic of such zones as the tundra and forest-tundra. You can also find here some plants listed in the Red Book of Yakutia. Birch, willow, cayander, aspen, elfin, sedge, hawthorn and others mainly grow. Among fish, bream, sterlet, roach, pike, seed, perch, perch and many others are more common.
Population
The Yano-Indigirskaya Lowland is the most severe region of the Russian Arctic. Cold in the summer comes from the East Siberian Sea, as well as the Laptev metro station. And the winter cold is brought by the southern winds blowing from the highlands of Yakutia, where severe frosts reign over this season. Therefore, few plants can survive in such harsh conditions.
When Russian pioneers appeared in these cold lands, the lowland was not at all deserted. In these distant territories from civilization, the Evens and Yukagirs have long lived and still live. But the local population here has always been very small.
The locals are engaged in hunting, fishing and reindeer husbandry.
Harsh this impregnable land, but in its own way is beautiful and mysterious.