Arctic Desert Zone

There is a very special territory on Earth: the most northerly margins of Asia and the northern part of the American continent, as well as the insular territory of the Arctic bordered by the polar belt.

What is the zone of the arctic deserts? First of all, this is a special climate, where there is no clear division into the seasons. Here there is simply winter, characterized by a polar night with a temperature regime ranging from ten to fifty degrees with a minus sign, and a very short summer with a polar day and a temperature not exceeding the zero mark on the thermometer.

The zone of arctic deserts has a specific landscape: ice and snow cover huge island areas. The Franz Josef Archipelago is covered by ice by eighty seven percent, the northern island of Novaya Zemlya by forty percent, and the Ushakov islands are almost entirely icebound. The northern land (islands) is forty-five percent covered by twenty-two ice shields.

The territory of the Arctic deserts of Russia includes the territories from the northernmost point (Franz Josef Land) to the extreme southern (Wrangel Island) islands of Novaya Zemlya, Novosibirsk Islands, the Northern Land, the outskirts of the Taimyr Peninsula, and the Arctic seas located within this site.

The zone of arctic deserts is covered with snow and ice-bound almost all the year round. Atmospheric precipitation here is very rare. Their annual rate is 200-300 millimeters, and they are represented mainly by snow and frost. The climate of arctic deserts is aggravated by strong winds, frequent thick fogs and large clouds.

The relief of the islands is mostly similar. It is a flat plain on the coastal plots and high mountains on the inner site. The monotonous flat relief is characteristic only of the Novosibirsk islands. On the islands of the Arctic territory of the former Soviet Union, almost fifty-six thousand square meters of area is the area of icing. The ice shield of the New Earth is three hundred in thickness, the North Land is two hundred, and the Franz Josef Land is 100 meters. Maximum permafrost (north of the Taimyr Peninsula) exceeds five hundred meters.

What can surprise the zone of arctic deserts in terms of vegetation? Well, the very fact of having one in the permafrost zone is amazing. This zone of the desert is absolutely named, as the plant world is poor and monotonous here. The vegetation cover is torn, and the total cover does not exceed sixty-five percent. And the inner part of the islands (mountain peaks, slopes) is covered not more than three percent. The vegetation of this region is represented by mosses, lichens (mostly scaling), algae. Flowering plants of the Arctic are represented by the alpine foxtail, the Arctic pike, the buttercup, the snow quarry, the polar poppy. Three hundred and fifty species of higher plants represent the Arctic island flora, the nature of which differs significantly in the northern part from the southern one.

If the northern part of the Taimyr peninsula is characterized by herbaceous moss arctic deserts, then to the south - the Novosibirsk Islands - a replacement occurs for depleted shrub-moss deserts with the appearance of a polar willow and saxifrage. But the ice zone of the south, also represented by shrubby moss arctic deserts, is already a well-developed shrub tier with polar and Arctic willows and dryads.

Because of the low productivity of the vegetation cover, the animal world of the Arctic desert zone is very poor: lemmings and polar foxes, polar bears and here and there reindeer, walruses and seals. In Greenland, you can find a musk ox. Rocky coast in summer is the place of the colonial nest of seabirds. Gagara and seagull, guillemot and brush, goose and, of course, polar owl represent the kingdom of birds living in the most difficult conditions of ice deserts.