|
Arabic
Bengali
Chinese
English
French
German
Hebrew
Hindi
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Malay
Polish
Portuguese
Spanish
Turkish
Ukrainian
Vietnamese|
WONDERS OF NATURE
Putorana Plateau. Nature miracle
There is in Russia, in the north of Siberia, a beautiful, unusual, harsh and deserted region with a slightly mysterious and musical sounding name Putorana. Journalists compare it to the "lost world" of Conan Doyle, and tourists call it "the land of ten thousand lakes and a thousand waterfalls." The appearance of the Putorana mountains, lakes and gorges is strange and peculiar, white-foam cascades on streams and rivers falling in hundred-meter leaps from black basalt cliffs are numerous and diverse, the animal world of this fabulous country is amazing and still not everything is clear in its geological history.
Getting to the Putorana Plateau is not at all easy in our motorized age. After all, the Arctic Circle serves as its southern border, and from the north it breaks off with a steep eight-hundred-meter ledge to the marshy tundra of Taimyr. Even on the map of Siberia, this "plateau on a plateau" is not easy to find. First you need to find a large light brown spot north of Lake Baikal - the Central Siberian Plateau. Almost a quarter of Russia is occupied by this largest elevated plain in the world. Like a giant flat roof, it covers a huge space between the Lena, Yenisei and Taimyr, located on average at an altitude of 500-700 meters. But the northwestern corner of this "roof" was thrown up by powerful underground forces for another kilometer. This is how the Putorana Plateau was formed. The vast territory of this northern region occupies an area larger than Belarus or Romania, but throughout its entire space there is only one permanent settlement - a weather station on Lake Agata with a "crew" of eight people. The surface of the plateau is covered with a "layer cake" formed by numerous lava outpourings. In some places, there are more than twenty layers of basalt lavas overlapping each other. Geologists call these formations "Siberian traps". They are found throughout the Central Siberian Plateau, but Putorana is the only large area entirely composed of basalts. It is the second largest trap plateau in the world after the Deccan Plateau in India. Due to the fact that the rivers and lakes of Putorana are deeply cut into the surface of the plateau for many hundreds of meters, from below you get the feeling that you are traveling through a real mountainous country, only these mountains are with flat tops. At first glance, the Putorana lakes seem similar to Scandinavian fjords: the same black vertical walls, the same winding outlines of narrow crevices that go far, sometimes hundreds of kilometers deep into rocky massifs, the same abundance of waterfalls along the banks... But in fact, these are completely different regions in origin. In Norway, the sea coast descends, and the sea floods the valleys carved by the glacier. And in Putorana there is a constant process of raising the mountains, and the rivers crash into them, deepening the tectonic faults breaking the plateau. The polar plateau is now rising by about a centimeter a year, and the process of deepening the valleys continues. Lakes Lama, Kutaramakan, Khantai, Keta, Nakomyaken are long and narrow reservoirs, as they fill the cracks that split the plateau. For the same reason, they are very deep, up to three hundred or four hundred meters. And Khantayskoye Lake (which, however, has now become a reservoir after the construction of a hydroelectric power station on the Khantayka River) has a depth of four hundred and twenty meters and, together with Lake Baikal and Teletskoye Lake, is one of the three deepest lakes in Russia. There are more waterfalls on the volcanic plateau than in any other region of our planet. Each of the dozens of lava layers that make up the mountain ranges forms a kind of step in the steep valley of the stream running down from the snowy peak of the plateau. And these streams fall into any lake by a dozen or more. And almost every stream or river has at least two or three waterfalls. Here, in the basin of the Khabarba River, there is one of the highest waterfalls in Russia, flying from a black basalt dam one hundred and three meters in one huge leap. A little to the south, on the Kureika River, is probably the most powerful waterfall in our country. In winter, the Putorana waterfalls freeze, turning into the most beautiful snow-white or bluish curtains of multi-meter icicles. These ice palaces, sometimes as high as a 15-story building, melt only by the middle of summer. On the tops of the plateau, snow also lies in August, it feeds numerous mountain rivers and streams, and in some places on the western slopes, when compacted, it forms small glaciers, of which there are about two dozen here. Sometimes giant icings appear on the rivers, which do not melt until the next winter. On these peculiar ice "bridges" you can freely cross rivers throughout the summer. On the flat surface of the Putorana Plateau, in contrast to the marshy lake valleys, it is very convenient to walk. The impression is that you are walking along Red Square. True, the pavement underfoot is not square, but hexagonal, and it is larger in size, about a meter in diameter. Basalt outcrops often form hexagonal pillars, and the covers formed from them in the upper parts of the slopes look like spectacular faceted walls erected by giants. Similar basalt columns are found in Armenia and the Kuril Islands, but only in Putoran you can walk for miles on plateaus made of natural paving stones. The vegetation of Putorana does not please the traveler's eye. Rare larches growing at the foot of the mountains rise along the slopes no higher than seven hundred meters, and in the north you will not find a plateau of trees even at a height of three hundred meters. Only alder elfin grows above, and starting from nine hundred meters, rocky mountain tundra reigns everywhere. Since the Putorana winter lasts from seven to nine months, the life of the plants is difficult and their size is small. Even a three-hundred-year-old larch in the north of Putorana is ten centimeters thick, no more. The animal world here is also not rich. The effective comparison of these flat mesas with the "lost world", based on external resemblance to the flat-topped South American mountains described in Conan Doyle's novel, is nothing more than a journalistic device. Of course, there are no ancient lizards with which the imagination of the English science fiction writer populated the mysterious plateau in the wilds of Venezuela on Putoran. But on the other hand, bighorn sheep live in the mountain tundra - the rarest animals that in Russia, except for the Putorana, can only be found ... on the ridges of Kamchatka. Small Putorana gobies are also unique in their own way. Their closest relatives live three thousand kilometers away - in Baikal. There are also rare birds here: white-winged gyrfalcon, capercaillie. And in the lower belt of mountains, typically southern plants, such as golden rhododendron, are sometimes unexpectedly encountered. Of course, only experienced travelers can decide to go to this harsh land. Yes, and they will have a hard time here. On lakes lying in deep canyons, they will be met by heavy winds. And to climb a steep ravine on a plateau, forcing countless steps of waterfalls, sometimes only experienced rock climbers can do it. By the way, in the northern part of Putorana, which lies closer to Norilsk - the only point connected by flights with the center - the ice on the lakes melts only by the beginning of August, and at the end of it, ice banks are already formed again along the edges of the reservoirs. But the polar plateau is so amazing and beautiful that neither cold, nor mosquitoes, nor steep slopes and rapids of the rivers stop adventurers who come to this wild harsh land every summer. Author: B.Wagner
Artificial leather for touch emulation
15.04.2024 Petgugu Global cat litter
15.04.2024 The attractiveness of caring men
14.04.2024
▪ Application Processors with High-Speed Wireless LAN Module and NAND Flash
▪ section of the site Palindromes. Article selection ▪ article Manual compaction of soil. Drawing, description ▪ article Are acne dangerous? Detailed answer ▪ Ligusticum Hultena's article. Legends, cultivation, methods of application
Home page | Library | Articles | Website map | Site Reviews
www.diagram.com.ua |
We recommend interesting articles Section 
See other articles Section 
Latest news of science and technology, new electronics:
All languages of this page