Gydan Peninsula with a harsh climate is famous for gas and oil fields. But not only. There is a reserve on its territory. What animals live on land and in the sea, what grows there, read the article.
Where is the Gydansky Peninsula located?
It is located in the northern part of the Siberian Plain of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug. The peninsula is washed by the Kara Sea. The territory of the Gydan Peninsula is four hundred kilometers long and as wide. Its surface is represented by a hilly plain, composed of marine and glacial deposits, on the southern side turning into a hill.
It is called Tamanskaya, its height is two hundred meters. The Gydan Peninsula, whose climate is severe, is the territory of the Tazovsky District of Yamal and the Taimyr District of the Krasnoyarsk Territory.
Climate of the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug
The energy of heat and atmospheric circulation depends on solar radiation. What will be the angle of the sun's rays is determined by the location of a particular area. On the Gydan Peninsula, one centimeter square of the territory receives up to seventy kilocalories of solar radiation.
The number of days in a year with positive temperature is one hundred five to one hundred and ten. In winter, atmospheric circulation is subordinate to the Asian anticyclone. When it is weakened, transformed air masses from the Atlantic Ocean penetrate the territory of the okrug. At this time, warming and thaw sets in, a lot of snow falls.
Winter on the Gydan Peninsula is the longest climatic season of the year. In the Arctic, it lasts up to eight months. The absolute minimum temperature is minus sixty one degrees. Snow cover reaches seventy to eighty centimeters. It depends on the district. The period of steady frost lasts up to two hundred days.
In summer, the average monthly air temperature on the Gydan Peninsula is ten degrees above zero. This time falls on the month of July, when the maximum amount of precipitation falls. The exception is the tundra. Here they mostly fall in August.
Autumn on the Gydan Peninsula occurs at temperatures below ten degrees Celsius. September and October are characterized by a gradual decrease in temperature and frequent drizzling rains. Mountainous regions and tundra frost overtake in late August.
Gydansky Nature Reserve
The date of his education is one thousand nine hundred and ninety-sixth year. The purpose of the reserve is to preserve nature in connection with the impacts of anthropogenic nature during the oil and gas development of the territory. After all, geologists and drillers seriously violated deer pastures and hunting grounds with heavy machinery. Part of the lakes is poisoned by runoff and solutions, the natural habitat of birds and animals is disturbed. The reserve on the Gydan Peninsula is of great importance in preserving the bird's flyway, which runs along the Asian coasts in the north.
This is the youngest nature reserve in Tyumen. Its location is the Tazovsky district. The reserve occupies the Gydansky, Java, Deer, Mammoth and small islands peninsulas. Its area is 878174 thousand hectares. The territory of the reserve is a plain, the relief of which is soft, rugged. There are icy loose deposits and thick underground ice, the thickness of the layers is 4-5 meters. The terrain is completely covered by permafrost up to three hundred meters in depth. July and August are considered the warmest months of the year, and January is the coldest with an absolute temperature minimum of minus sixty-three degrees.
Water resources
The north of the reserve is washed by the cold sea of the Russian Arctic - Kara. This is the largest shelf zone on our planet. Therefore, fresh waters of rivers flowing into the sea affect it within two thousand kilometers from the mouth. The salinity of the water is changing. Of great importance for the West of Siberia and the Kara Sea are the Yenisei and the Ob. After all, the relief and outlines of the sea formed exactly river flows. The rivers are fed by melting glaciers. In summer, rivers are filled with water, but it is disastrously small in them. And in winter, small rivers freeze to the bottom. The tundra rivers are very winding. The lakes are shallow, therefore in winter they freeze to the full depth. The water of most of them contains few minerals.
The vegetation of the reserve
In contrast to the south of Yamal, large-herd reindeer husbandry and development of the peninsula appeared late on the Gydan Peninsula. This played a role in preserving the land cover in its natural form. The territory of the islands of the Kara Sea and the northern regions of the Gydan Peninsula are occupied by exposed soil and variegated vegetation, which are formed by mosses, creeping shrubs, lichens and grasses, among which sedge predominates. The reserve territory is rich in complex transitional bogs located in low places on the watersheds and floodplains of the rivers. In some areas where the lakes dried up, meadows with sparse grassy vegetation spread.
For many centuries, the Nenets indigenous people influenced the nature of these places. They grazed cattle, cut down trees and shrubs, specially set fires to expand the territory of grazing meadows. Now in the south of the reserve larch has become widespread. In the center is an alder, as a typical representative of the tundra subzone. Flora has up to two hundred plant species. This figure varies by location.
Birds and animals
The fauna of the reserve is relatively young. The most ancient mammoth remains are only fifty thousand years old. The Red Book of the Russian Federation is supplemented by Siberian sturgeon and white-billed loon, pisculi and red-throated goose, goat, small swan and gyrfalcon, white-tailed eagle and polar bear, walrus and northern finwale. All of them are residents of the peninsula.
The Gydan Peninsula, where the reserve is located, is famous for the nesting of the red-footed gag, the white-fronted goose, the sea-duck, the eider-comb, the tundra partridge, the sandpiper, the Asian brown-winged plover and many others. Here their nests and birds of prey - peregrine falcons and winter bugs.
Insectivorous shrews, rodents lemmings, predators live in the reserve: white bears, and brown in the summer, wolves, arctic foxes, foxes. There is a wild reindeer and elk, which is only a guest of these places.
Inhabitants of the water basin
Sturgeon, Siberian lamprey, and Arctic char are representatives of salmon species of fish in the waters washing the reserve. Coastal and inland waters abound with Siberian grayling, nelma, tugun, Arctic omul, vendace and many other fish species.
The rivers of the reserve are full of burbot, stickleback and ruff. In the past, coastal waters in the north of the reserve were full of walruses and seals. Now walrus beds are observed in some places on the territory of the White Peninsula. Beluga whales, narwhals and finwales are found here from cetaceans.
Gydan deposits
The first stage of exploration refers to the sixties of the twentieth century. The studies were carried out using seismic surveys using the method of reflected waves. Conducting exploratory marine work was organized in the nineties of the last century. After a detailed study of all the results obtained, the Kamennomyssk Sea and a northern structure with the same name were discovered.
The next stage in the development of the bowels of the coastal waters is 1999. Everything was prepared to conduct exploratory drilling of the first offshore wells. This was realized a year later, as a result of which the industrial gas content of the deposits was established. The same year was marked by seismic work on the preparation of exploratory drilling in the area of the Chugoryakhinskaya and Ob structures, where in 2002 Cenomanian gas deposits were discovered on these sites.
Since that time, regular work has been carried out in the waters of the peninsula. New deposits of the Gydan Peninsula are mapped and their commercial development begins. Currently, they contain one and a half dozen million tons of oil, two trillion cubic meters of gas and forty million tons of its condensate.