The Taiga and Tundra in West SiberiaIn Siberia the best soil as and the best forest lie adjacent to each other. The ‘taiga’, as the evergreen forest of Siberia is called, contains the largest single body of conifers in the world.
This suggested the possibility of a better balanced economy for both farmer and lumberman. It means also a eventual world market for Siberian forest products.
Siberia with an area of more than 7.7 million km2, accounts for nearly 50% of the Russian Federation.
Almost the whole of Siberia is situated north of the 50th latitude and it extends northwards beyond the 70th latitude.
The polar desert, the treeless tundra and the zone of the closed needle leaf forests (taiga) are the three main biomes of the arctic regions.
In the Canadian and the Russian zone the tundra transition to the taiga and is known as forest tundra.
The vegetation grows very slowly due to climatic condition. One of the most important foods for reindeer, the reindeer moss, grows only about 1 mm annually.
The plant communities are divided into six categories: four different shrub communities, a moss-lichen community and a sedge moss community.
To the south, in the adjoining Russian taiga, boreal forest of coniferous trees, of the kind common in Central Europe, dominate: there are fir-tree, larches and pines.
Of the deciduous trees the birch is the most common. In the taiga and tundra it occurs as a bush like dwarf variety. Its leaves provide the reindeer with nourishment in the summer.
The forests of the taiga are home to a variety of lichens, mushrooms and mosses. Whereas in other countries the term taiga is used to signify the transition zone between the treeless tundra and the boreal forest, in Russia it signifies the closed boreal forest areas.
In West Siberia the transitional forest belt between the tundra and the taiga runs somewhat north of the polar circle. Forest fires are important for the regeneration of the forests of the taiga.
The reason for this is that due to the cold climate the fallen needles leaves decompose very slowly. Consequently a layer of organic waste accumulates, and the minerals contained in the organic waste cannot be absorbed by the soil and enrich it.
Burning the forests helps to mineralize the waste which then enriched the soil, providing nutrients for plants.
The Taiga and Tundra in West Siberia
