The Oklan (; Koryak: Ыӄлан) is a river in

Kamchatka Krai Kamchatka Krai (, ) is a federal subjects of Russia, federal subject of Russia (a krai), situated in the Russian Far East. It is administratively part of the Far Eastern Federal District. Its administrative center and largest types of inhabited l ...

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

. The length of the river is and the area of is

drainage basin A drainage basin is an area of land in which all flowing surface water converges to a single point, such as a river mouth, or flows into another body of water, such as a lake or ocean. A basin is separated from adjacent basins by a perimeter, ...

. It is the second most important tributary of the Penzhina after the Belaya. The name of the river comes from the Koryak ''"yalan"'' ''(Ыӄлан)'', meaning "icy way".

History

Russian

Cossack The Cossacks are a predominantly East Slavic Eastern Christian people originating in the Pontic–Caspian steppe of eastern Ukraine and southern Russia. Cossacks played an important role in defending the southern borders of Ukraine and Rus ...

explorers reached the Oklan river basin in the 17th century and built the Aklansk fort. The fort was abandoned in 1804. At that time the indigenous

Koryaks Koryaks () are an Indigenous people#North Asia, Indigenous people of the Russian Far East who live immediately north of the Kamchatka Peninsula in Kamchatka Krai and inhabit the coastlands of the Bering Sea. The cultural borders of the Koryaks i ...

were engaged in

reindeer The reindeer or caribou (''Rangifer tarandus'') is a species of deer with circumpolar distribution, native to Arctic, subarctic, tundra, taiga, boreal, and mountainous regions of Northern Europe, Siberia, and North America. It is the only re ...

herding and fishing. The settlement was revived in the 20th century as a state farm dedicated to reindeer-breeding.

Course

The Oklan has its source in Mount Stolovaya, located in the western part of the

Ichigem Range The Ichigem Range () is a range of mountains in Magadan Oblast and Kamchatka Krai, Russian Far East. Administratively most of the range falls within the Penzhinsky District of Kamchatka Krai, but the western end reaches into the Severo-Evensk ...

, at the NW end of the

Koryak Highlands The Koryak Mountains or Koryak Highlands () are an area of mountain ranges in Far-Eastern Siberia, Russia, located in Chukotka Autonomous Okrug and in Kamchatka Krai, with a small part in Magadan Oblast. The highest point in the system is the Mo ...

. It flows roughly eastwards along the southern limits of the range area, descending into a swampy

floodplain A floodplain or flood plain or bottomlands is an area of land adjacent to a river. Floodplains stretch from the banks of a river channel to the base of the enclosing valley, and experience flooding during periods of high Discharge (hydrolog ...

with numerous small lakes where it splits into branches. Finally it meets the right bank of the Penzhina from its mouth in the Bering Sea.

Google Earth Google Earth is a web mapping, web and computer program created by Google that renders a 3D computer graphics, 3D representation of Earth based primarily on satellite imagery. The program maps the Earth by superimposition, superimposing satelli ...

Water of Russia - Оклан
/ref> The river is fed mainly by snow and freezes in October, staying under thick ice until May. The melting of the ice in the river valley continues during the summer period. The main tributaries of the Oklan are the long Khayoklam (Хайоклан) from the right and the long Bolshoy Chalbugchan (Хайоклан) from the left.

Flora and fauna

The Oklan river basin is characterized by discontinuous

permafrost Permafrost () is soil or underwater sediment which continuously remains below for two years or more; the oldest permafrost has been continuously frozen for around 700,000 years. Whilst the shallowest permafrost has a vertical extent of below ...

with

tundra In physical geography, a tundra () is a type of biome where tree growth is hindered by frigid temperatures and short growing seasons. There are three regions and associated types of tundra: #Arctic, Arctic, Alpine tundra, Alpine, and #Antarctic ...

vegetation, including

moss Mosses are small, non-vascular plant, non-vascular flowerless plants in the taxonomic phylum, division Bryophyta (, ) ''sensu stricto''. Bryophyta (''sensu lato'', Wilhelm Philippe Schimper, Schimp. 1879) may also refer to the parent group bryo ...

es,

lichen A lichen ( , ) is a hybrid colony (biology), colony of algae or cyanobacteria living symbiotically among hypha, filaments of multiple fungus species, along with yeasts and bacteria embedded in the cortex or "skin", in a mutualism (biology), m ...

s, dwarf shrubs, and

sedge The Cyperaceae () are a family of graminoid (grass-like), monocotyledonous flowering plants known as wikt:sedge, sedges. The family (biology), family is large; botanists have species description, described some 5,500 known species in about 90 ...

s.V. Yu. Neshataeva, ''Vegetation cover of the North of the Kamchatka Okrug (Kamchatsky Krai) and its geobotanical zoning'' // Ecology and geography of plants and plant communities: Proceedings of the IV International Scientific Conference. - Yekaterinburg, 2018. - April 16. — ISBN 978-5-7741-0341-6 There are

birch A birch is a thin-leaved deciduous hardwood tree of the genus ''Betula'' (), in the family Betulaceae, which also includes alders, hazels, and hornbeams. It is closely related to the beech- oak family Fagaceae. The genus ''Betula'' contains 3 ...

es and poplars growing along the river banks in the floodplain. Among the fish species in the river the

pike Pike, Pikes or The Pike may refer to: Fish * Blue pike or blue walleye, an extinct color morph of the yellow walleye ''Sander vitreus'' * Ctenoluciidae, the "pike characins", some species of which are commonly known as pikes * ''Esox'', genus of ...

and the

grayling Grayling or Greyling may refer to: Animals Fish * Grayling, generically, any fish of the genus ''Thymallus'' in the family Salmonidae ** European grayling (''Thymallus thymallus''), the type species of the genus ''Thymallus'' ** Arctic grayling ( ...

deserve mention.

References

External links

Проект переселения «Пенжинский муниципальный район» Общая характеристика (стр. 1 )

Kamchatka Krai travel guide
Rivers of Kamchatka Krai Koryak Mountains {{FarEast-Russia-river-stub

History

Course

Flora and fauna

See also

References

External links