The Dusse-Alin, is a

mountain range A mountain range or hill range is a series of mountains or hills arranged in a line and connected by high ground. A mountain system or mountain belt is a group of mountain ranges with similarity in form, structure, and alignment that have aris ...

Khabarovsk Krai Khabarovsk Krai (, ) is a federal subjects of Russia, federal subject (a krai) of Russia. It is located in the Russian Far East and is administratively part of the Far Eastern Federal District. The administrative centre of the krai is the types of ...

, in the

Russian Far East The Russian Far East ( rus, Дальний Восток России, p=ˈdalʲnʲɪj vɐˈstok rɐˈsʲiɪ) is a region in North Asia. It is the easternmost part of Russia and the Asia, Asian continent, and is coextensive with the Far Easte ...

. Although it is named after this range, the

Dusse-Alin Tunnel The Dusse-Alin Tunnel () is a two-kilometre-long railway tunnel on the Baikal–Amur Mainline (BAM) in Siberia, 88 kilometres east of Novy Urgal. Although it is named after the Dusse-Alin located about further northeast, the line crosses the Bu ...

of the

Baikal–Amur Mainline The Baikal–Amur Mainline (, , , ) is a broad-gauge railway line in Russia. Traversing Eastern Siberia and the Russian Far East, the -long BAM runs about 610 to 770 km (380 to 480 miles) north of and parallel to the Trans-Siberian Railway. ...

is located about to the southwest.

History

The range was first roughly mapped by Russian explorer

Alexander von Middendorf Alexander Theodor von Middendorff (; 18 August 1815 – 24 January 1894) was a Russian zoologist and explorer of Baltic German and Estonian extraction. He was known for his expedition in 1843–45 to the extreme north and east of Siberia, descr ...

in 1844. In the wake of his studies, a large Russian military expedition led by Nikolai Khristoforovich Akhte continued the exploration of the area between 1849 and 1853. The German surveyor of the Russian service

Ludwig Schwarz Ludwig Schwarz, S.D.B. (born 4 June 1940) was the Catholic bishop of the Diocese of Linz, Austria from 2005 - 2015. Life Ludwig Schwarz was the first of nine children and grew up in Most pri Bratislave. After the expulsion of his family fr ...

took part in the expedition as an astronomer. Together with topographers Stepan Vasilievich Krutiv and

Alexei Argunov Alexey ( ; ), is a Russian and Bulgarian male given name derived from the Greek ''Aléxios'' (), meaning "Defender", and thus of the same origin as the Latin Alexius. Similar Ukrainian and Belarusian names are romanized as Oleksii (Олекс ...

, as well as geologist Nikolay Gavrilovich Meglitsky, the Dusse-Alin range area was studied and topographically surveyed in detail. Based on their measurements, the first accurate map of the Dusse-Alin was drawn. In 1861 German botanist and geologist of the Russian service Fyodor Schmidt carried out thorough physiographic and geological research in the area of the range. In 1987 a section of the central and southern part of the range was declared a

protected area Protected areas or conservation areas are locations which receive protection because of their recognized natural or cultural values. Protected areas are those areas in which human presence or the exploitation of natural resources (e.g. firewood ...

(zapovednik), the Bureya Nature Reserve.PAs of Russia (Bureya Nature Reserve)
/ref>

Geography

The Dusse-Alin and the

Yam-Alin The Yam-Alin () is a mountain range in Amur Oblast and Khabarovsk Krai, Russian Far East.Google Earth The range is part of the Ezop/Yam-Alin volcanic zone. History The range is located in a remote area and was unexplored until mid 19th century. ...

to the north of it are northern prolongations of the

Bureya Range The Bureya Range (, ''Bureinskiy Khrebet'') is a mountain range in the Khabarovsk Krai and Jewish Autonomous Oblast in the southern part of the Russian Far East. The Dusse-Alin Tunnel on the Baikal Amur Mainline crosses the range to enter the A ...

. The mountains display alpine relief and stretch for about .Дуссе-Алинь
—

Great Soviet Encyclopedia The ''Great Soviet Encyclopedia'' (GSE; , ''BSE'') is one of the largest Russian-language encyclopedias, published in the Soviet Union from 1926 to 1990. After 2002, the encyclopedia's data was partially included into the later ''Great Russian Enc ...

: (in 30 vols.) - Ch. ed.

A.M. Prokhorov Alexander Mikhailovich Prokhorov (born Alexander Michael Prochoroff, ; 11 July 1916 – 8 January 2002) was an Australian-born Russian physicist and researcher on lasers and masers, in the former Soviet Union. He shared the Nobel Prize in Ph ...

. - 3rd ed. - M .: Soviet Encyclopedia, 1969-1978. The main ridge extends from north to south and in the middle it curves westwards for roughly , then it extends northwards again. The highest point of the range is an unnamed peak with a height of located roughly in the central part.Topographic map N-53; M 1: 1,000,00
/ref> To the northwest of the range the

Ezop Range The Ezop Range () is a range of mountains in far North-eastern Russia. Administratively it belongs partly to Amur Oblast and partly to the Khabarovsk Krai of the Russian Federation. The range is part of the Ezop / Yam-Alin volcanic zone. Geogr ...

extends westwards. In the north it connects with the southern end of the

and the

stretches roughly southwestwards at the southwestern end. To the east of the range flows the

Amgun The Amgun () is a river in Khabarovsk Krai, Russia that flows northeast and joins the river Amur from the left, 146 km upstream from its outflow into sea. The length of the river is . The area of its drainage basin, basin is . The Amgun is f ...

river.

Hydrography

The Dusse-Alin forms the watershed between the rivers of the

Bureya Bureya may refer to: *Bureya (river), a tributary of the Amur in Amur Oblast and Khabarovsk Krai, Russia **Bureya Dam, a hydroelectric dam on the Bureya river **Bureya grayling, a fish found in the Bureya river *Bureya, Russia, an urban-type settlem ...

and

Selemdzha The Selemdzha () is a river in the Amur Region of Russia. It is the biggest, left tributary of the Zeya. The length of the river is 647 km. The area of its basin 68,600 km². Course The Selemdzha has its source where three mountain r ...

basins, and those of the

basin. Among the rivers having their sources in the slopes of the range are the left and right Bureya, that give origin to the Bureya river, as well as the Nilan — a left tributary of the Amgun, and several right tributaries of the Kerby, also a left tributary of the Amgun.Water of Russia - Амгунь
/ref>

Flora

The lower slopes of the range are covered with

spruce A spruce is a tree of the genus ''Picea'' ( ), a genus of about 40 species of coniferous evergreen trees in the family Pinaceae, found in the northern temperate and boreal ecosystem, boreal (taiga) regions of the Northern hemisphere. ''Picea'' ...

and

larch Larches are deciduous conifers in the genus ''Larix'', of the family Pinaceae (subfamily Laricoideae). Growing from tall, they are native to the cooler regions of the northern hemisphere, where they are found in lowland forests in the high la ...

forests up to altitudes of , followed by thickets of

dwarf cedar ''Pinus sibirica'', or Siberian pine, in the family Pinaceae is a species of pine tree that occurs in Siberia from 58°E in the Ural Mountains east to 126°E in the Stanovoy Range in southern Sakha Republic, and from Igarka at 68°N in the lowe ...

and

mountain tundra Alpine tundra is a type of natural region or biome that does not contain trees because it is at high elevation, with an associated harsh climate. As the latitude of a location approaches the poles, the threshold elevation for alpine tundra gets ...

at higher elevations.

Notes

References

{{Reflist

External links

Lake Medvezhye (Bear Lake), Dusse Alin mountain range (2325m), Khabarovsk region in the Far East of Russia. Picture by photographer Andrey Grachev, July 2021
Mountain ranges of Khabarovsk Krai