The West Siberian Plain () is a large

plain In geography, a plain, commonly known as flatland, is a flat expanse of land that generally does not change much in elevation, and is primarily treeless. Plains occur as lowlands along valleys or at the base of mountains, as coastal plains, and ...

that occupies the western portion of

Siberia Siberia ( ; , ) is an extensive geographical region comprising all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has formed a part of the sovereign territory of Russia and its predecessor states ...

, between the

Ural Mountains The Ural Mountains ( ),; , ; , or simply the Urals, are a mountain range in Eurasia that runs north–south mostly through Russia, from the coast of the Arctic Ocean to the river Ural (river), Ural and northwestern Kazakhstan.

in the west and the

Yenisei River The Yenisey or Yenisei ( ; , ) is the list of rivers by length, fifth-longest river system in the world, and the largest to drain into the Arctic Ocean. Rising in Mungaragiyn-gol in Mongolia, it follows a northerly course through Lake Baikal a ...

in the east, and the

Altai Mountains The Altai Mountains (), also spelled Altay Mountains, are a mountain range in Central Asia, Central and East Asia, where Russia, China, Mongolia, and Kazakhstan converge, and where the rivers Irtysh and Ob River, Ob have their headwaters. The ...

on the southeast. Much of the plain is poorly drained and consists of some of the world's largest swamps and floodplains. Important cities include

Chelyabinsk Chelyabinsk; , is the administrative center and largest types of inhabited localities in Russia, city of Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia. It is the List of cities and towns in Russia by population, seventh-largest city in Russia, with a population ...

Novosibirsk Novosibirsk is the largest city and administrative centre of Novosibirsk Oblast and the Siberian Federal District in Russia. As of the 2021 Russian census, 2021 census, it had a population of 1,633,595, making it the most populous city in Siber ...

Omsk Omsk (; , ) is the administrative center and largest types of inhabited localities in Russia, city of Omsk Oblast, Russia. It is situated in southwestern Siberia and has a population of over one million. Omsk is the third List of cities and tow ...

, and

Tomsk Tomsk (, ) is a types of inhabited localities in Russia, city and the administrative center of Tomsk Oblast in Russia, on the Tom (river), Tom River. Population: Founded in 1604, Tomsk is one of the oldest cities in Siberia. It has six univers ...

, as well as

Surgut Surgut ( rus, Сургу́т, p=sʊrˈgut; Khanty: Сәрханӆ, ''Sərhanł, Сө̆ркут, sörkut'') is a city in Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug, Russia, located on the Ob River near its junction with the Irtysh River. It is one of the fe ...

and Nizhnevartovsk. Winters on the West Siberian Plain are harsh and long. The climate of most of the plain areas is either subarctic or continental. The plain had large

petroleum Petroleum, also known as crude oil or simply oil, is a naturally occurring, yellowish-black liquid chemical mixture found in geological formations, consisting mainly of hydrocarbons. The term ''petroleum'' refers both to naturally occurring un ...

and

natural gas Natural gas (also fossil gas, methane gas, and gas) is a naturally occurring compound of gaseous hydrocarbons, primarily methane (95%), small amounts of higher alkanes, and traces of carbon dioxide and nitrogen, hydrogen sulfide and helium ...

reserves. Most of Russia's oil and gas production was extracted from this area during the 1970s and 80s.

Geography

The West Siberian Plain is located east of the

mostly in the territory of

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 ...

. It is one of the Great Russian Regions and has been described as the world's largest unbroken

lowland Upland and lowland are conditional descriptions of a plain based on elevation above sea level. In studies of the ecology of freshwater rivers, habitats are classified as upland or lowland. Definitions Upland and lowland are portions of a ...

– more than 50 percent is less than above sea level—and covers an area of about 2.6– which is about one third of Siberia. It extends from north to south for , reaching its maximum width of in its southern part.Physical Geography of the Soviet Union - West Siberian Plain
/ref> from the

Arctic Ocean The Arctic Ocean is the smallest and shallowest of the world's five oceanic divisions. It spans an area of approximately and is the coldest of the world's oceans. The International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) recognizes it as an ocean, ...

to the foothills of the

, and from east to west for from the

to the

. Besides the Yenisei, other main rivers in the West Siberian Plain are from west to east the

Irtysh The Irtysh is a river in Russia, China, and Kazakhstan. It is the chief tributary of the Ob (river), Ob and is also the longest tributary in the world. The river's source lies in the Altai Mountains, Mongolian Altai in Dzungaria (the northern p ...

, Ob, Nadym, Pur and Taz. There are many lakes and

swamps A swamp is a forested wetland.Keddy, P.A. 2010. Wetland Ecology: Principles and Conservation (2nd edition). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. 497 p. Swamps are considered to be transition zones because both land and water play a role in ...

and large regions of the plains are flooded in the spring. The long Yenisei River flows broadly south to north, a distance of to the Arctic Ocean, where it discharges more than 20 million litres (5 million gallons) of water per second at its mouth. Together with its tributary Angara, the two rivers flow . The valley formed by the Yenisei acts as a rough dividing line between the West Siberian Plain and the

Central Siberian Plateau The Central Siberian Plateau (; ) is a vast mountainous area in Siberia, one of the Great Russian Regions. Geography The plateau occupies a great part of central Siberia between the Yenisei and Lena rivers. It is located in the Siberian Plat ...

.Западно-Сибирская равнина

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. 1969-1978. The Siberian Uvaly is a low hilly region stretching from east to west across the plain.Сибирские Увалы

, in 30 vols. / Ch. ed.

- 3rd ed. 1969-1978. Glacial deposits extend as far south as the Ob-Irtysh confluence, forming occasional low hills and ridges, including the Ob Plateau in the south,Приобское плато
''

'' in 30 vols. — Ch. ed.

. - 3rd ed. - M. Soviet Encyclopedia, 1969-1978. (in Russian) but otherwise the plain is exceedingly flat and featureless. The Ishim Plain and the

Baraba Lowland The Baraba steppe or Baraba Lowland (), is a plain in western Siberia. It is named after Baraba Tatars, its Indigenous peoples, indigenous inhabitants. The Baraba Lowland is an important Russian agricultural region. Geography It stretches for ...

in the south are important agricultural areas. There are salt lakes in the Kulunda Plain, which extends southwards into

Kazakhstan Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a landlocked country primarily in Central Asia, with a European Kazakhstan, small portion in Eastern Europe. It borders Russia to the Kazakhstan–Russia border, north and west, China to th ...

and is limited to the south by the

Kokshetau Hills The Kokshetau Hills (; ) is a system of mountains of moderate altitude in the North Kazakhstan Region and Akmola Region, Kazakhstan.Flora of Salt Lakes of the Kulunda Plain (Southern Western Siberia)
/ref> The West Siberian Plain is very

swamp A swamp is a forested wetland.Keddy, P.A. 2010. Wetland Ecology: Principles and Conservation (2nd edition). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. 497 p. Swamps are considered to be transition zones because both land and water play a role in ...

y and soils are mostly

peat Peat is an accumulation of partially Decomposition, decayed vegetation or organic matter. It is unique to natural areas called peatlands, bogs, mires, Moorland, moors, or muskegs. ''Sphagnum'' moss, also called peat moss, is one of the most ...

Histosol In both the World Reference Base for Soil Resources (WRB) and the USDA soil taxonomy, a Histosol is a soil consisting primarily of organic materials. They are defined as having or more of organic soil material starting within 40 cm from the so ...

s and, in the treeless northern part, Histels. is one of the world's largest areas of peatlands, which are characterized by

raised bog Raised bogs, also called ombrotrophic bogs, are acidic, wet habitats that are poor in mineral salts and are home to flora and fauna that can cope with such extreme conditions. Raised bogs, unlike fens, are exclusively fed by precipitation (ombro ...

s. Vasyugan Swamp, one of the world's largest single raised bogs, covers approximately . There are numerous lakes in the vast interfluve swamps of the Ob-Taz

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 ...

Flora and fauna

The plain has eight distinct vegetation regions:

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 ...

, forest-tundra, northern

taiga Taiga or tayga ( ; , ), also known as boreal forest or snow forest, is a biome characterized by coniferous forests consisting mostly of pines, spruces, and larches. The taiga, or boreal forest, is the world's largest land biome. In North A ...

, middle taiga, southern taiga, sub-taiga forest, forest-steppe, and

steppe In physical geography, a steppe () is an ecoregion characterized by grassland plains without closed forests except near rivers and lakes. Steppe biomes may include: * the montane grasslands and shrublands biome * the tropical and subtropica ...

. The number of animal species in the West Siberian Plain ranges from at least 107 in the tundra to 278 or more in the forest-steppe region. In the south of the plain, where

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 ...

is largely absent, rich

grassland A grassland is an area where the vegetation is dominance (ecology), dominated by grasses (Poaceae). However, sedge (Cyperaceae) and rush (Juncaceae) can also be found along with variable proportions of legumes such as clover, and other Herbaceo ...

s that are an extension of the

Kazakh Steppe The Kazakh Steppe ( ), also known as the Great Steppe or Great Betpak-Dala, Dala ( ), is a vast region of open grassland in Central Asia, covering areas in northern Kazakhstan and adjacent areas of Russia. It lies east of the Pontic–Caspian step ...

formed the original vegetation, which had almost all been cleared by the early 21st century.

Geology

The West Siberian Plain consists mostly of

Cenozoic The Cenozoic Era ( ; ) is Earth's current geological era, representing the last 66million years of Earth's history. It is characterized by the dominance of mammals, insects, birds and angiosperms (flowering plants). It is the latest of three g ...

alluvial deposits and is extraordinarily flat. A rise of fifty metres in

sea level Mean sea level (MSL, often shortened to sea level) is an mean, average surface level of one or more among Earth's coastal Body of water, bodies of water from which heights such as elevation may be measured. The global MSL is a type of vertical ...

would cause all land between the

and the Ob-

confluence near

Khanty-Mansiysk Khanty-Mansiysk (, lit. ''Khanty-Mansi Town''; Khanty: , ''Jomvoćś''; Mansi: , ''Abga'') is a city in west-central Russia. Technically, it is situated on the eastern bank of the Irtysh River, from its confluence with the Ob, in the oil-ri ...

to be inundated (see also Turgai Straits, West Siberian Glacial Lake). It is a region of the Earth's crust that has undergone prolonged subsidence and is composed of horizontal deposits from as much as 65 million years ago. Many of the deposits on this plain result from ice dams that reversed the flow of the Ob and Yenisei rivers, redirecting them into the

Caspian Sea The Caspian Sea is the world's largest inland body of water, described as the List of lakes by area, world's largest lake and usually referred to as a full-fledged sea. An endorheic basin, it lies between Europe and Asia: east of the Caucasus, ...

, and perhaps the

Aral Sea The Aral Sea () was an endorheic lake lying between Kazakhstan to its north and Uzbekistan to its south, which began shrinking in the 1960s and had largely dried up into desert by the 2010s. It was in the Aktobe and Kyzylorda regions of Kazakhst ...

as well.

References

External links

NASA Images: West Siberian Plain
{{Authority control Eurasian Steppe Forests of Russia Grasslands of Russia Tundra Taiga and boreal forests Temperate coniferous forests Temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands

Geography

Flora and fauna

Geology

See also

References

External links