One of the largest mountain systems of the mainland, stretching over 4,500 kilometers, with a total area of more than one and a half million square kilometers, is the mountains of Southern Siberia. Hidden in the depths of Asia, starting from the plain of the west and extending to the coast of the Pacific Ocean, these chains form a watershed between the great Siberian rivers flowing into the Arctic Ocean and the no less famous reservoirs of the Far East that give their waters to the Pacific.
The belt of the mountains of Southern Siberia has a significant height above sea level and is clearly divided into landscape zones. More than 60% is mountain
taiga. The surface
relief over the entire extent is highly crossed, with huge amplitudes of heights, this is caused by a wide variety of terrain and contrasts of natural and climatic conditions.
Geology
The mountains of southern Siberia were not formed at once. At first, tectonic uplifts occurred in the Baikal region and in the Eastern Sayan mountains, as evidenced by Precambrian and Lower Paleozoic rocks. Altai, the Western Sayan and the Salair Ridge formed in the Paleozoic. Later all, already in the Mesozoic, the Eastern Transbaikalia rose. Mountain building continues to this day, as evidenced by the annual earthquakes and movements of the earth's crust in the form of slow subsidence or uplifts. The mountains of southern Siberia were also formed under the influence of quaternary glaciation. Glaciers with a powerful layer covered not only all the massifs, but also far reaching the plains of the southwest. It was the glaciers that divided the ridges and formed rocky niches, due to which the ridges became narrow and sharp, the slopes became steep, and the gorges became deep.
Climate and terrain types
Throughout the entire territory, the mountains of Southern Siberia have negative average annual temperatures, that is, long winters with very large frosts. On the western slopes, summers are rainy and the snow cover is powerful - up to three meters. For this reason, the mountains of Southern Siberia in these places are covered with moist taiga (fir, cedar), there are many swamps and magnificent meadows. On the eastern slopes and in the basins, precipitation is much less, the summers are hot and very dry, the landscapes are most often steppe. Among all the ranges, the mountains of Southern Siberia rise beyond the snowy borders only in Altai, in the Eastern Sayan Mountains and on the Stanovoye Highlands - only there glaciers lie. Especially a lot of them in Altai - 900 square kilometers of glaciation.
Homeland of great rivers
It is there that all the great Siberian rivers originate: the Ob, Irtysh, Yenisei, Lena, Amur. They flow first in narrow picturesque valleys between steep impregnable cliffs. The course is incredibly fast - the slopes of the channel reach several tens of meters per kilometer of movement. At the bottom of almost all rivers, glaciers in the form of curly cliffs, "ram's foreheads", crossbars and moraines left traces. The mountains of Southern Siberia, the map of which is studied even at school, formed lakes in their hollows and circuses of exceptional beauty. There are many, and some others are more beautiful. For example, the cascading Multinsky in Altai, where Teletskoye is the local pearl, and the amazing Aya. Grand and magnificent, the cleanest lake in the world is Baikal. Beautiful Markakol, Ulug-Khol, Toja.