There is a very special territory on Earth: the northernmost outskirts of Asia and the northern part of the American continent, as well as the island territory of the Arctic, enclosed by the boundaries of the polar belt.
What is the zone of the Arcticdeserts? 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 specificlandscape: 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 zone of the arctic desert of Russia includesfrom 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 is constrainedalmost all 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.
Рельеф островов большей частью схож.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 Northern Earth is two hundred, and the Franz Josef Land is one hundred meters. Maximum permafrost (north of the Taimyr Peninsula) exceeds five hundred meters.
What can surprise the zone of the arctic deserts invegetation plan? 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 shrimp, Arctic pike, buttercup, snow quarry, 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 Peninsulais characterized by herbaceous moss arctic deserts, then to the south - the Novosibirsk Islands - there is a replacement for depleted shrub-moss deserts with the appearance of a polar willow and saxifrage. But the ice zone of the south, also represented by shrub-moss arctic deserts, is already a well-developed shrub layer with polar and Arctic willows and dryads.
Due to low productivity of vegetation coverThe 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.
