Deserted Vasyugan swamps- this is the “geographical trend” of the north of the Tomsk region, which in the old days was called the Narym region. Historically, these were places of exile for political prisoners.
“God created paradise, and the devil created the Narym region,” said the first wave of Russian settlers - “service people under orders” and “exiles” (almost from the very beginning, Narym, located in the middle of swamps, began to be used as a place of exile). The second wave of exiles (political prisoners, starting in the 1930s) echoed: “God created Crimea, and the devil created Narym.” But this was said by those who found themselves here against their will. The indigenous inhabitants are the Khanty (obsolete "Ostyaks") and Selkups (obsolete "Ostyak-Samoyeds"), whose ancestors, as evidenced by the archaeological finds of the Kulai culture (bronze casting: hunting weapons and cult artifacts), lived in half-dugouts on the elevated areas of Vasyugan for at least three thousand years, such a thing would never have been said. But the Narym region is a land of swamps, and in Slavic folklore swamps are always associated with evil spirits.
Russian pioneers founded Tyumen (1586), Narym (1596) and Tomsk (1604) forts shortly after the completion of Ermak’s military expedition (1582-1585), which marked the beginning of the conquest of the Siberian Khanate in 1607. Judging by the documents , by 1720, in the Narym region, the newly arrived population lived in 12 settlements, but times were turbulent, the resistance of the local population was not broken, the nature was harsh, so only “service people” recruited “by the sovereign’s tax” settled among the Khanty and Selkups (Cossacks), clergy-missionaries. Peasants, artisans and traders bypassed the Vasyugan wilds, moving towards lands more favorable for living, but for the Kerzhak Old Believers persecuted by the authorities, the places were suitable - remote, impassable.
Since 1835, the systematic settlement of exiles began (a new influx of exiles came to Vasyugan in the 1930-1950s), it was mainly at their expense that the local population increased. Later, more active development of Western Siberia was facilitated by the dispossession of land among the peasants of the central provinces as a result of the reforms of 1861, and especially the Stolypin reforms. agrarian reform 1906 It was necessary to look for land for arable land, and the expedition of 1908, sent by the resettlement department of the Tomsk region to Vasyugan, went from the village of Orlovka through the Vasyugan swamps to the Chertalinsky yurts and along the Vasyugan River and found suitable sites for several more villages. Along the winter road, Vasyugan residents transported frozen fish, meat, game birds, furs, berries, and pine nuts to the city in convoys, and brought back flour, textiles, and salt. Bread was not born, but later Siberians adapted to grow potatoes, cabbage, turnips, and carrots; They also found a place to graze the cattle.
In 1949, oil was found in the western part of the swamp, the Kargasok region was nicknamed the “oil Klondike”; by the early 1970s, more than 30 oil and gas fields had already been discovered in the Vasyugan (Pionerny) and Luginets (Pudino) regions. In 1970, construction of the Aleksandrovskoye - Tomsk - Anzhero - Sudzhensk oil pipeline began, and in 1976 - the Nizhnevartovsk - Parabel - Kuzbass gas pipeline. New tracked vehicles and helicopters have made the Vasyugan swamps more accessible - but also more vulnerable. Therefore, it was decided to reserve a large part of the swamp adjacent to the watershed to preserve this natural phenomenon and environmental regulation of the region.
The natural region of Vasyugan covers not only the Vasyugan swamps, but also the basins of the right tributaries of the Irtysh and the left tributaries of the Ob. This is a flat or gently undulating plain with a slight slope to the north, cut through by a network of valleys of the Bolshoy Yugan, Vasyugan, Parabel and other rivers. The swamp lies in the Ob-Irtysh watershed area and is constantly growing.
The swamp is a repository of large reserves of fresh water. Swamp peat is a valuable raw material and a giant natural filter that cleanses the atmosphere of excess carbon and toxic substances, thereby preventing the so-called Greenhouse effect. Thus, swamps have a beneficial effect on the formation water balance and climate on large areas. Also, wetlands are the last refuge of many rare and endangered species of animals and birds driven away from habitats transformed by humans, and the basis for maintaining the traditional use of natural resources by small peoples, in particular the indigenous inhabitants of Western Siberia.
The Vasyugan swamps are the largest swamp system in the Northern Hemisphere, unique natural phenomenon, which has no analogues. They cover about 55 thousand km 2 in the northern part of the interfluve of the Ob and Irtysh on the inclined Vasyugan plateau, rising in the center of the West Siberian Plain. Peat bogs rest on a thick layer of clay and loamy sediments; their formation is facilitated by excess moisture.
According to scientists, swamps appeared in Western Siberia in the early Holocene (about 10 thousand years ago). Local legends speak of the ancient Vasyugan sea-lake, but research by geologists says that the Great Vasyugan swamp did not occur through the overgrowth of ancient lakes, but as a result of the advance of swamps onto land under the influence of humid climate and favorable orographic conditions. Initially, on the site of the current single swamp massif there were 19 separate areas with total area 45 thousand km 2, but gradually the quagmire swallowed up the surrounding area, like the advance of desert sands. Today, the region is still a classic example of active, "aggressive" marsh formation: more than half of its current area has been added in the last 500 years, and the marshes continue to grow, increasing on average by 800 hectares per year. In the central part, peat grows more intensively upward, which is why the Vasyugan swamp has a convex shape and rises 7.5-10 m above the edges; At the same time, area expansion occurs on the periphery.
The Great Vasyugan swamp at the junction of the southern taiga, middle taiga and subtaiga (small-leaved) subzones is distinguished by a wide variety of vegetation and is heterogeneous in landscape and type of swamps (upland, lowland and transitional). The landscape alternates between ridges and depressions, swamps, intra-marsh lakes, streams and rivers (tributaries of the Irtysh and Ob).
The diversity of the swamp landscape is reflected in local names separate areas. Thus, “ryams” designate areas of Siberian oligotrophic (low-nutrient, infertile) bogs with pine-shrub-sphagnum (sphagnum mosses are the source of peat formation) vegetation. “Shelomochki” - individual islands with pine-shrub-sphagnum vegetation (as on ryams) with a diameter of up to several tens of meters, rising above the surface of sedge-hypnum bogs by 50-90 cm. “Veretya” - narrow (1-2 m wide) and long (up to 1 km long) areas lying perpendicular to the surface runoff and rising 10-25 cm above the monotonous sedge-hypnum swamps; Birch, pine, Lapland and rosary-leaved willow, sedge and leaf-stem mosses grow on the branches, singly or in small groups (as in depressions).
A characteristic feature of the Vasyugan swamp is the special veretyevo-bog lowland marshes with a polygonal-cellular surface pattern (a subtype of ridge-hollow-lake swamp), confined to saucer-shaped depressions at the top of the watershed, devoid of drainage. Their “geometric pattern” is clearly visible from an airplane and on aerial photographs.
general information
Giant swamp system of Western Siberia, the largest swamp Northern Hemisphere.Location: in the northern part of the interfluve of the Ob and Irtysh, on the Vasyugan plateau in the center of the West Siberian Plain.
Administrative affiliation: a swamp on the border of the Tomsk and Novosibirsk regions, in the north-west it enters the Omsk region.
Sources of the rivers: the left tributaries of the Ob - Vasyugan, Parabel, Chaya, Shegarka, the right tributaries of the Irtysh - Om and Tara and many others.
Nearest settlements: (the swamp itself is not inhabited) Kargasok, Novy Vasyugan, Maysk, Kedrovo, Bakchar, Pudino, Parbig, Podgornoye, Plotnikovo, etc.
Nearest airports: international airport Tomsk, Nizhnevartovsk, Surgut.
Numbers
Area: approx. 55,000 km 2.Length: from west to east 573 km and from north to south about 320 km.
Waterlogged every year: about 800 hectares.
Average heights: from 116 to 146 m (at the source of the Bakchar River), slope to the north.
Fresh water reserves: up to 400 km 3.
Number of small lakes: about 800,000.
Number of rivers and streams originating from peatlands: about 200.
Climate and weather
Continental, humid (excessive moisture zone).Average annual temperature: -1.6°C.
Average January temperature: -20°C (up to -51.3°C).
Average temperature in July: +17°С (up to +36.1°С).
Average annual precipitation: 470-500 mm.
Snow cover(40-80 cm) from October to April (average 175 days).
Economy
Minerals: peat, oil, natural gas.Industry: peat mining, logging, oil and gas (in the western part of the swamp).
Agriculture(in dry areas in the vicinity of the swamp): livestock raising, growing potatoes and vegetables.
Traditional crafts: hunting and fur harvesting, gathering (berries: cranberries, lingonberries, blueberries, cloudberries; medicinal herbs), fishing.
Service sector: not developed (potentially ecotourism, extreme tourism, commercial hunting and fishing outside the reserve).
Attractions
■ Natural: the Vasyugansky biosphere reserve of federal significance (since 2014, its inclusion in the UNESCO List of sites is being considered; 1.6 million hectares are protected in Novosibirsk region and 509 hectares in the Tomsk region) - on the watershed of the Ob-Irtysh interfluve.■ Fauna: reindeer, elk, bear, wolverine, otter, sable, beaver, squirrel, etc.; waterfowl, wood grouse, hazel grouse, ptarmigan, osprey, golden eagle, white-tailed eagle, peregrine falcon, waders (curlews and godwits, including the rarest, almost extinct species - the slender-billed curlew), etc.
■ The richest berry lands: cranberries, lingonberries, cloudberries, blueberries.
■ Cultural-historical(in the vicinity): Museum of Political Exile (Narym).
Curious facts
■ There is a legend about the Devil’s creation of a swamp - liquefied earth with stunted, gnarled trees and coarse grass: “At first the earth was entirely water. God walked along it and one day he met a floating muddy bubble, which burst and the devil jumped out of it. God commanded the devil to go down to the bottom and get earth from there. Carrying out the order, the devil hid some earth behind both cheeks. Meanwhile, God scattered the delivered earth, and where it fell, dry land appeared, and on it trees, bushes and herbs. But the plants began to sprout in the devil’s mouth, and he, unable to bear it, began to spit out the soil.”■ In 1882, the West Siberian department of the Russian Geographical Society instructed N.P. Grigorovsky to check whether “peasants from Russian provinces, schismatic Old Believers, really settled along the upper reaches of the Vasyugan and the rivers flowing into it; as if they had set up villages for themselves, had arable land and livestock, and were living, secretly indulging in their fanatical devotion.” According to the report, “726 souls of both sexes lived in Vasyugan, including minors” - and this was for more than 2000 miles!
■ In 1907, immediately after Stolypin’s land reforms, up to 200 thousand family migrants and about 75 thousand walkers came to Tomsk province in search of land to start a farm.
■ For Tomsk, the Vasyugan swamps have become the same symbol as Klyuchevskoy volcano for Kamchatka or Kivach waterfall for Karelia.
■ In addition to heavy tracked vehicles, drilling rigs and oil spills at mining sites, the falling second stages of launch vehicles launching from the Baikonur Cosmodrome also pose an environmental threat to the Vasyugan swamps. They pollute the environment with residues of toxic rocket fuel.
■ When the Nizhnevartovsk - Parabel - Kuzbass gas pipeline was put into operation, blue fuel from the Myldzhinskoye, Severo-Vasyuganskoye and Luginetskoye gas condensate fields came to the homes and factories of Tomsk, to the enterprises of Kuzbass... But only the residents of the Kargasoksky district, where this gas is produced, this gas is not received (according to information from the local website).
■ The Vasyugansky Nature Reserve involves a ban on hunting and logging, and this will deprive a significant part of the work of local residents, among whom there are many professional hunters. The administration of the reserve hopes to attract former hunters to become rangers to combat poaching...
■ The name of the oil workers’ settlement Novy Vasyugan is very similar to the popular ironic name “New Vasyuki” attributed to Ostap Bender. However, this name does not appear either in the book or in the films (“The Twelve Chairs”). The colorful toponym arose among the people from a confused phrase: “Vasyuki is renamed New Moscow, Moscow - Old Vasyuki.”
The division of swamps into lowland, upland and transitional by no means exhausts their endless diversity.
Therefore, there are more detailed classifications. Based on various characteristics, swamps are divided into a number of types. A clear example can serve as the richest “collection” of marsh massifs of the West Siberian Plain. Swamp experts believe that in its expanses you can see almost all types of swamps that are found in the northern hemisphere.
Let's look at the Siberian swamps from above and, as it were, take an air trip over them. It will begin from the Far North, from the shores Kara Sea, d will end over the steppes of the Baraba Lowland.
The West Siberian Plain resembles a trapezoid in its outline: its wide base faces south, its narrow base faces north. It consists of two flat bowl-shaped depressions, between which the Siberian Uvaly stretches in the latitudinal direction - low hills up to 175-200 m in height. As a natural physical-geographical region, Western Siberia has very clear boundaries. In the west - the slopes of the Ural Mountains, in the north - the Kara Sea, in the east - the Yenisei valley and the cliffs of the Central Siberian Plateau. In the south, natural boundaries are less pronounced. The edge of the plain, gradually rising, passes into the Turgai plateau and the Kazakh small hills.
This region is very rich in large and small rivers, but its most characteristic feature is the abundance of swamps.
According to the conditions of occurrence, development, quality and quantity of peat deposits, vegetation and other features, they differ greatly from each other. These differences are closely related to natural latitudinal zonality and reveal a fairly clear pattern.
...Among the boundless green silence of the swamps, you feel like a grain of sand in the ocean. There is a feeling of abandonment, isolation from everything earthly. It’s as if all ties with the familiar world are being severed. Somewhere in the distance there is a horizon line, and all around are swamps, swamps without end and edge, riddled with rivers, interspersed with lakes, here and there with islands of forest vegetation.
The swamps are very beautiful. Like a huge motley carpet, rich, golden-red with green and brown spots. A gradual, smooth transition to dark brown tones is also common. Interspersed against this background are countless blue lakes and lakes of the most bizarre shapes, sometimes large, the area of which reaches tens and even hundreds of square kilometers, sometimes just a few meters. The blue of lakes with pairs of white swans and flocks of ducks, hummocks covered with cranberries in such abundance that their surface appears red, amber fields of ripe cloudberries, dew drops sparkling with diamonds on the eyelashes of sundews... For a swamp scientist, there are no more attractive and more beautiful landscapes on earth.
So, let's start our journey on a plane tested by the AN-2, from which everything is perfectly visible. Below us is a zone of arctic swamps. To the north of the Arctic Circle, swampy tundra stretches for many kilometers. From the height of our flight, areas resembling polygons of giant bee honeycombs are clearly visible. It’s as if an unknown land surveyor, for some unknown reason, laid out the land into sections - polygons of almost regular shape. This peculiar type of polygonal swamps is very characteristic of the tundra. The sizes of the “honeycombs” are different - from five to twenty meters in diameter. In winter, snow is blown off the surface of the swamps by the wind, and during severe frosts they become covered with deep cracks up to 80 cm deep. They are bordered by convex ridges with a layer of peat, formed during uneven freezing, thawing of permafrost and swelling of the soil. The rollers impede drainage, and a significant part of the landfill is constantly waterlogged. The accumulation of peat in such bogs is small, but it has a truly great value: peat is abundantly covered with lichens (the famous reindeer moss is a food source for reindeer husbandry), as well as shrubs and mosses.
On the shores of the Kara Sea there are also coastal swamps that are filled with sea water during strong winds. Occasionally along the river valleys you come across islands of stunted larch forest and willow trees. The severe swampiness of the tundra can be explained by three main reasons: the already mentioned location of the frozen layer close to the surface, which prevents water from penetrating deep into the interior, the flatness of the territory and the fact that the amount atmospheric precipitation here exceeds evaporation.
To the south of the polygonal ones, a zone of flat-hilly swamps begins. The mosaic landscape is composed of low (no more than two meters) hills, separated by water-logged depressions - hollows. The area of some elevations can reach several tens and even hundreds of meters. Permafrost forms a continuous shell here. The tops of the hills are covered with lichen, the slopes are covered with mosses. There are few flowering plants, they are depressed and stunted. In the hollows there is a carpet of hypnum or sphagnum mosses.
In the north of Western Siberia, frozen peatlands extend to approximately the 64th parallel. Further south, between 64 and 62 degrees northern latitude, permafrost occupies only certain areas. This is mainly a zone of large hummocky swamps. The mounds also alternate with hollows, but the sizes of both are much larger: the mounds are up to eight meters high. Similar to ancient Scythian mounds, whitish-gray from the lichens covering them, they create a unique, unique landscape. Both types of swamps often coexist. Large-hilly ones usually gravitate towards river valleys and old channels, while flat-hilly ones are located on watersheds. It is quite difficult to draw a clear boundary between them.
The hollows are covered with moist sedge communities or, again, with a moss cover. Sometimes the vegetation is poorly developed and bare peat is visible. During the summer, the peat thaws to the bottom and then the swamps become completely impassable. It is difficult to get through only where there are hummocks or small rises among the hollows.
As the hillocks grow, the winter winds blow on them more and more fiercely; the peaks are completely freed from snow and even persistent northern plants die on them. Under the influence of frost weathering, exposed peat patches become covered with cracks, which provide shelter for oppressed but persistently surviving arctic shrubs, dwarf birch, crowberry, wild rosemary, and bog myrtle. They live much better on the leeward slopes of the hillocks. At the foot, they even form closed thickets, often dominated by dwarf birch.
They tried to dig up the mounds in the swamps: it was interesting to find out what was inside. Under a layer of peat, which serves as an excellent insulator, permafrost is well preserved, and in it, like in a shell, lies a core of sand and loam, also reliably welded together with ice like cement and penetrated by numerous ice layers.
Various assumptions have been made regarding the origin of the mounds. Eventually main reason began to be considered uneven freezing of the soil. It leads to swelling of the soil, then the work of water and wind joins in. As a result, such a unique relief gradually appears.
We are moving further and further south. Behind the Siberian ridges lie convex bogs. There are a huge number of them. In fact, they occupy about half of the entire plain. The northern taiga is dominated by the so-called sphagnum lake-ridge-hollow bogs. This is truly a natural combination of ridges, hollows and lakes. The plants on them are typically oligotrophic, adapted to life on soils extremely poor in nutrients. The accumulation of peat is quite intensive, its deposits reach 2 meters in thickness.
As we move to southern taiga among the swamps there are fewer and fewer lakes until they disappear completely. The swamps become ridge-hollow, often alternating with pine-shrub-sphagnum. Nature has created optimal conditions here for peat accumulation. Its average thickness is 3-4 m, and in some massifs the peat lies to a depth of 10-12 m.
Here we are in the south of the West Siberian Plain. The southern taiga is gradually giving way to small-leaved, aspen and birch forests. The appearance of the swamps is also changing. Most of them are flat, lowland, with an abundance of sedges and green mosses. Raised pine-shrub-sphagnum bogs occur in the form of islands. Woody vegetation also occupies low ridges stretching above the surface of the bog. The herbaceous vegetation is quite diverse. Sedges, watchwort, cinquefoil, poisonous wech, and green mosses cover the surface of the swamp with a lush green carpet.
There are also swamps on the southernmost edge of Western Siberia, although this is a kind of paradox - a zone of insufficient moisture begins here. Of course, the nature of the swamps is different; they are often grassy - with a predominance of reeds or sedges. Wide swampy strips stretch along river valleys, occupy interfluves, and to the south they occupy lake basins, oxbow lakes and other depressions where close groundwater creates constant local waterlogging of the upper layers of the soil.
Grassy swamps (they are more often called marshes) sometimes stretch for tens of kilometers without interruption. The wind sways the grass, and green waves roll across the surface of the swamp. In general, this is called the Barabinskaya steppe, although more than a quarter of its territory is occupied by swamps. Loans are widely spread between the Ishim and Tobol rivers, especially in their middle reaches. Swampy grassy areas surround the lake in a wide ring, descending into lowlands and old riverbeds. Peat formation also occurs. The deposits reach 1.5 meters in thickness.
The vegetation of the loans is unique. Their natives are reed, reed grass, reed grass, and various sedges. They belong to salt-tolerant plants. Reed growing along the edges and even outside the swamps, in the zone of variable moisture, serves as a geobotanical indicator of mixed chloride-sulfate salinity. In general, there are a lot of salts in the soils of Baraba, especially in non-wetlands where there are favorable conditions for capillary rise to the surface of saline groundwater. In such places, salt stains are a common occurrence. Some dirt roads in the Barabinskaya steppe turn completely white from salt and in summer they give a strange impression: they seem to be covered with unmelting snow.
Another interesting feature: often small areas of raised bogs, the so-called ryams, are interspersed into the borrowings. Their vegetation does not tolerate salinity at all and can only exist if it is completely isolated from the rest of the swamp thanks to the deep layer of peat underlying the ryam. The convex surface of the ryams with asymmetrical slopes usually rises above the grass cover of the plot. Pine trees grow on them; sphagnum and marsh shrubs are common at their roots. The area of ryams ranges from 4-5 to several hundred hectares. How do ryams appear among the saline soils of the Western Siberian forest-steppe? The answer is quite simple. In the forest-steppe at strong winds the snow cover is blown away from open spaces, the peat deposit freezes, and salts are redistributed. A layer of fresh ice forms on top. This process is repeated several times, and with intense freezing, the desalination of individual, most watered central areas of the swamps occurs. They are then inhabited by sphagnum mosses and other plants of raised bogs. The age of the ryams varies. They arose throughout the Holocene (post-glacial time) and are still being formed.
Western Siberia is a vast storehouse of minerals. In addition to peat, coal deposits are known, iron ores, But main value consists of oil and gas reserves. This region is rich in forests, fish, fur-bearing animals, mushrooms, and berries. For successful economic development of such a swampy region, it is necessary to know as much as possible about swamps, completely restoring the history of their formation and the dynamics of development at the present time.
With the help of modern research methods, it is not so difficult to travel back thousands of years to find out in detail how and when swamps arose.
In the center of Siberian federal district, in the interfluve of the Ob and Irtysh, is the Vasyugan Swamp, the largest in Russia and the world. Much of this unique natural area is located on the territory of the Tomsk region, also capturing the Novosibirsk region, Omsk region and Khanty-Mansiysk autonomous region.The area of this swamp is the largest in the world and is about 53–55 thousand square meters. km, which exceeds the size of such European countries like Switzerland, Denmark or Estonia. The length of the swamp is approximately 570 by 320 km, it is truly huge, you can see it on the map.
According to scientists' calculations, swamping of this area began about 10,000 years ago ago and continues to this day - over the past 500 years the swamp has quadrupled in size. Local legends speak of the ancient Vasyugan sea-lake, but research by geologists says that the Great Vasyugan Swamp did not occur through the overgrowth of ancient lakes, but as a result of the encroachment of swamps onto land under the influence of a humid climate and favorable orographic conditions. Initially, on the site of the current single swamp massif there were 19 separate areas with a total area of 45,000 square meters. km, but gradually the quagmire consumed the surroundings, like the advance of desert sands.
Today, this region is still a classic example of active, “aggressive” bog formation: interesting fact that the swamps continue to grow, increasing on average by 800 hectares per year. There are more than 800 thousand lakes here, many rivers and streams originate, and the moisture evaporated from the surface maintains the climatic balance and is carried even to the territory of Eastern Siberia and Kazakhstan. The climate in the Vasyugan swamp area is continental and humid. The average temperature in January is -20 °C, in July +17 °C. Snow cover with a height of 40–80 cm lies from October to April on average 175 days a year.
Flora and fauna
Wetlands are the last refuge of many rare and endangered species of animals and birds, driven away from their habitats transformed by humans, and the basis for maintaining the traditional environmental management of small peoples, in particular the indigenous inhabitants of Western Siberia. Among the plants of swamps and lakes, the main value is provided by various medicinal herbs, as well as berries that are found in abundance in swamps: cranberries, cloudberries, blueberries, etc.
Vasyugansky swamps are considered their home by a variety of insects, animals, fish, birds. During the migration period, waterfowl and waders stop there to rest. According to the Institute of Animal Ecology and Systematics of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, up to 60% total number ducks fly during the spring migration as a diffuse front through swamp systems, and only 40% - along the valleys of large rivers. Godwits and curlews, as well as various birds of prey, including the peregrine falcon, make nests in the swamps. It is on the Vasyugan Plain in last time We saw the slender-billed curlew, which is considered an almost extinct bird species.
In places where swamps border with forests and there are rivers and lakes, there are moose, minks, sables, otters, hazel grouse and wood grouse. Until the mid-80s of the last century, there were reindeer, but today their population has practically disappeared.
About 20 species of fish live in the tributaries of the rivers originating from the Great Vasyugan Swamp. In recent years, bream, pike perch, carp, and verkhovka have become common in local reservoirs. Vulnerable and rare fish species in the area are nelma, peled, lamprey, and ruff.
The Vasyugan swamp is the main source of fresh water in the region (water reserves up to 400 km³), this is the region where there are huge reserves of peat. Explored reserves amount to more than 1 billion tons (2% of the world), the average depth is 2.4 m, the maximum is 10 m. The most important function of the swamp is to purify the atmosphere, for which it is called a giant natural filter. The peat bogs of Siberia absorb toxic substances , bind carbon and thus prevent the greenhouse effect by saturating the air with oxygen.
The deserted Vasyugan moss peat bogs are a “geographical trend” in the north of the Tomsk region, which in the old days was called the Narym region. Historically, these were places of exile for political prisoners. Russian pioneers founded Tyumen (1586), Narym (1596) and Tomsk (1604) forts shortly after the completion of Ermak’s military expedition (1582–1585), which marked the beginning of the conquest of the Siberian Khanate in 1607. Judging by the documents found in peat bogs, by 1720 in the Narym region the newly arrived population lived in 12 settlements. Since 1835, the systematic settlement of exiles began (a new influx of exiles came to Vasyugan in the 1930–1950s), it was mainly at their expense that the local population increased.
Black gold
Later, the more active development of Western Siberia was facilitated by the landlessness of the peasants of the central provinces as a result of the reforms of 1861, and especially the Stolypin agrarian reform of 1906. In 1949, oil was discovered in the western part of the swamp, The Kargasok region was nicknamed the “oil Klondike”; by the early 1970s, more than 30 oil and gas fields had already been discovered in the Vasyugan (Pionerny) and Luginets (Pudino) regions. In 1970, construction of the Aleksandrovskoye–Tomsk–Anzhero-Sudzhensk oil pipeline began, and in 1976, the Nizhnevartovsk–Parabel–Kuzbass gas pipeline.
Ecology of the Vasyugan swamp
Despite the virtual complete absence of settlements in the area where the Vasyugan swamps are located, with the development of civilization to a unique natural object began to provide bad influence the most various factors. Peat extraction disrupts the natural landscape of the Vasyugan Plain, there are negative consequences of draining swamps and poaching lead to destruction unique flora and fauna. Heavy tracked vehicles, all-terrain vehicles, construction and drilling activities, oil spills, and the use of water in drilling processes harm the wetland ecosystem.
Sewage constantly flows into rivers industrial waters, tourists leave trash behind. Second stages of rockets also pose a big problem., launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome: falling into swamps, they pollute them with the remains of highly toxic rocket fuel - heptyl. As shown by analyzes of samples of water, soil and plants of raised bogs collected in areas of pollution, the heptyl content in some of them is 5 times higher than the maximum permissible concentration.
Fires in the swamps
However, the most dangerous and most frequently repeated anthropogenic impacts on the Vasyugan ecosystems are those that destroy all natural complexes swamps, including in winter. As a result, many intra-swamp lakes of pyrogenic genesis appear, tree stands and many animals die. The increase in lake density reduces the flow of water from already swampy forest areas.
In the 20s of the last century, a seven-year fire in peat bogs in the territory of the modern Northern region of the Novosibirsk region led to the formation of Lake Tenis, the largest in the south of Western Siberia. Subsequently, its basin deepened in places to 11–18 meters, the area of the water surface approached 19 square meters. km, and the total water reserves accumulated from swampy catchment areas are about 47 million cubic meters. m.UNESCO reserve
Assessing the role and significance of the Great Vasyugan Swamp as a complex and multifunctional ecosystem and taking into account its uniqueness and significance, as well as the increasing scale of anthropogenic impacts, we have to admit actual problem his security. However for a long time The Vasyugan swamps were not even included in the preliminary lists of objects that need to be given specially protected status.
The situation moved from a dead point in 2006. The administration of the Tomsk region created the Vasyugansky complex reserve. Currently there are plans to give it the status of a World Heritage Site. natural heritage UNESCO. The Vasyugansky Nature Reserve includes a ban on hunting and logging. Although this will put a significant portion of local residents, including many professional hunters, out of work, the reserve administration hopes to attract former hunters to become game rangers to combat poaching.
Possible solutions
Creation of a specially protected natural area on the interfluve of the Ob and Irtysh represents scientific interest from a monitoring and research perspective natural processes in the largest wetland region in the world. The purpose of their organization is to preserve the complex of swamp systems of the Great Vasyugan Swamp and maintain ecological balance in the region. This corresponds not only common goals preserving biological diversity, wise use of natural resources (plant, oil), but also maintaining the balance of ecosystems in adjacent territories.
Scientists' opinions
According to scientists, the design of a large protected area - an ecological reserve - within the Vasyugan swamp system will be very promising. This should be a single massif, the basis of which can be the spaces of watershed swamps.
Within this zone, it is advisable to establish a series of scientific testing grounds similar to biosphere ones, since the allocation of only one specially protected area, even a very large area and fairly representative in terms of the characteristics of the swamp process and the structure of the swamp landscapes of the region, would be a half-measure that does not guarantee the safety of this entire territory as an ecologically valuable landscape system.
Educational establishments Russia, which conducts research in the field of environmental problems.
Pollution environment and in our country, see the review.
What are the state policies aimed at solving global problems biosphere, find out more at the link.
Development of territories
Development of the western part of the Great Vasyugan Swamp oil industry cannot serve as a factor contributing to the reduction of the boundaries of the ecological reserve. These areas are of interest for organizing a system for monitoring the progress of natural processes under conditions of anthropogenic influence, and in practice for monitoring the exploitation oil fields. As the first step of environmental and practical actions, it is necessary to form a state interregional complex nature reserve of federal significance.
A separate point of the program for the protection of the Vasyugan swamp should be a program for reforming the Russian rocket and space industry, providing for the cessation of the use of heptyl and nitrogen tetroxide as rocket fuel and oxidizer, as well as the transfer of the main rocket launch site from Baikonur to the Vostochny cosmodrome under construction in the Amur region.From the above it becomes quite clear that the Vasyugan swamp massif not only represents a unique natural phenomenon of Western Siberia, but also acts as such for Russia and the world. The geoecological functions it performs are irreplaceable and irreplaceable, therefore the only way conservation of this natural heritage can be the creation within its boundaries biosphere reserve. Considering the high cost of implementing such a project, its solution is possible at least in stages: at the first stage there are various kinds of economic restrictions, at the second stage it is possible to create the Vasyugansky nature reserve, and, finally, its transformation into a biosphere reserve.
Swamp. Hearing this word, many feel an inexplicable fear. It’s terrible to imagine how many lives were swallowed up by the dark swamps covered with mists. From time to time they sparkle with lights of spontaneously combustible gas. How can you not believe that kikimoras, waterworts and other evil spirits live there? The swamps of Russia are a special topic. They are found throughout our vast country. And there are many legends among the people. We will look at places with standing water (they can be low-lying, transitional, or high-lying) from different angles.
Secret cranberry picking
Swamps are damp, stale air, an abundance of blood-sucking mosquitoes and horse flies. In the old days it was believed that this was a place for communication with evil spirits. From legends it is known that people who, from generation to generation, received secret knowledge from their ancestors (witch doctors, healers) retired to bear corners to conduct magical rituals. Perhaps it was so. There is also an opinion that sorcerers here were engaged in collecting medicinal plants. As you know, there are a lot of them in the swamps: wild rosemary, cranberries, cloudberries, hops, string and others.
It is difficult for many to imagine: how can one build a house in a disastrous place? But there were brave men. They selected patches of dry land, built a dwelling and whiled away the years, eating game and berries. The reasons for retreating from the world were often explained very prosaically: some hermits were hiding from enemies, others from persecution by law enforcement officers. Only a select few knew the paths to their owners.
Mentally walking across all of Russia (for example, from the borders with Baltic states, Ukraine, Belarus to the Kamchatka Peninsula), we will find: swamps are found everywhere. A favorable environment for their occurrence is considered increased content moisture in the air and shallow occurrence (groundwater). These characteristics characterize the high and moderate latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere.
One of the hundred wonders of Russia
The rivers of Eastern Siberia and the Far East are very swampy at their mouths. The tundra is rich in destructive spaces, where frozen layers prevent moisture from permeating the soil. The swamps in northern Russia are impressive.
Western Siberia is called the most swampy region in the world. Just imagine the scale: they stretch over 570 kilometers from north to south and over 300 kilometers from west to east. On the Vasyugan plain, between the Ob and Irtysh rivers, there are Vasyugan swamps. They are included in the list of "One Hundred Wonders of Russia". Their area is 53 thousand square meters. km (more than the territory of some European countries).
But no matter how unsuitable for human life swamps may seem, they are of enormous ecological importance for the regions, since they perform biosphere functions (accumulative, biological, inter-circulation).
The ice age helped
The area of distribution of the West Siberian swamps is huge: 1.7 thousand kilometers from north to south and the same amount from west to east (with rare breaks). More than a quarter of the world's peat deposits are concentrated here. The heavily swampy regions of the European part include Karelia (30% of the territory, in some places up to 70%) and Kola Peninsula.
Before the swamps formed (Russia, as we already understood, does not occupy them), glaciers worked well on the area, creating a landscape of hills alternating with lowlands (all this is the bottom of the ancient sea). Swamping began approximately ten to twelve thousand years ago. If you look at it from a bird's eye view, it seems that the unsteady spaces are woven into an unusual lace, connecting with each other through peat channels.
The connection took place as follows: the scattered depressions in the relief were gradually filled with the dense remains of rotted plants, and crawled out from there, like dough from a pan, merging with each other. This one was called Karelian.
Ryams and zaimkas
Large swamps forest edge have been for two and a half thousand years. And today they are expanding, occupying the territories of interfluves, river terraces and floodplains. In the old days, many names were invented for these places.
Take, for example, round or slightly oval ryams, overgrown with bushes and forests. There are many of them in the taiga regions in the south of Western Siberia. They disperse fan-shaped, in stripes of different widths (from 100 meters to many kilometers). Thanks to the connection points, the branches form extensive systems.
Many people have heard of such a name as a loan. This is often the name given to swamps overgrown with reeds. The forests and swamps of Russia are closely interconnected. There are swamps in the wilderness. Popularly known as cleaver. Swamp forest on the plain - Yudal. The extreme stage of waterlogging is bareness.
The lake will become a swamp
The West Siberian swamps contain huge reserves of water, amounting to almost a thousand cubic kilometers. The mighty Ob carries 2.5 times less into the Kara Sea per year! It is not surprising that peat bogs are growing year after year. are huge, but there are others large swamps Russia: Tyuguryukskoye (Altai), Velikoye (Vologda) and others.
There are many lakes in our country. There are almost three million closed reservoirs. Most Baikal (1620 meters). Even under the USSR, every schoolchild knew: it contains half of our fresh water reserves. The lakes are distributed unevenly.
This depends on a number of factors. Firstly, from geological structure. But the relief, climate, at what distance from the surface of the earth groundwater lies, etc. are also important. Where the climate is arid, the number of lakes is smaller. Drainless lakes are filled with soil particles and become shallow. If you don't take care of them, they can become the very places where kikimores live. Although, it would seem, how are the lakes and swamps of Russia (and not only Russia) connected?
Many researchers say that the fate of the swamp awaits the Volga River, the speed of which, after the construction of a cascade of hydroelectric power stations (and other man-made reasons), slowed down sharply and its self-purification was disrupted. If trouble has affected one of the greatest blue arteries of the Earth, then one can imagine the fate of smaller rivers and lakes. As we already know, the existing bogs (swamps) of Russia also formed gradually.
The Amur Region is in the lead
There are not so many swamps east of the Yenisei-Father. Eastern Siberia is covered by them only ten percent. The most areas are lowlands along the valleys (including the Central Yakut, vast swampy plains of Indigirsk and North Siberian, at the base of which lies the Khatanga depression). Permafrost has an effect. Because of low temperatures humus (peat) forms and accumulates extremely slowly. The thickness of the existing layer is only one meter, although there are places where it reaches up to 5 meters. This is a legacy of those periods when the climate was warm.
In the Far East, swamps also gravitate towards the floodplains of large rivers. The Amur region is the leader (up to 36 percent of them are concentrated there). A fifth of the swamps are completely impassable. There are ripples: at the top there is a layer of peat, and underneath there are deposits of water. Kamchatka (especially the Okhotsk coast) and Sakhalin are considered swampy.
- Peat is a combustible mineral formed in the process of the death and incomplete decay of marsh plants with excess moisture and difficult air access.
- Floodplain is a section of a river valley that is flooded during high water.
- Maryu in Siberian taiga called a peaty-hummocky surface covered with shrubs and rare oppressed larches.
For many centuries, wetlands inspired fear in people and seemed something mysterious. Fogs, bogs, will-o'-the-wisps (spontaneous combustion of swamp gas) gave rise to many tales and legends. At dusk, when the outlines of swaying trees are barely visible through the darkness, it is not difficult to imagine various swamp spirits - waterworts, swamp maidens, kikimoras. The swamps were also given a bad name by diseases that often affected humans in damp areas, and by blood-sucking insects - mosquitoes and horseflies.
According to legend, in the swamps, healers and sorcerers communicated with evil spirits. But it is more likely that they were attracted to plants with medicinal properties. Swamps, along with forests and meadows, have long been not only natural pharmacies, but also hospitals. Silence and solitude, endless swamps and the intoxicating smell of wild rosemary had a calming and healing effect.
There were also such brave souls who settled in these disastrous places: they built houses on islands of dry land among impenetrable swamps and hid there from enemies and persecution by the authorities. The swamps supplied people with game, fish, and berries. Only knowledgeable people who used secret paths laid through the quicksand swamps could enter or leave such settlements. The ignorant traveler got stuck in a liquid quagmire.
There are a lot of swamps in Russia, they can be found almost everywhere - from western borders to Kamchatka. And everywhere, waterlogging is facilitated by high humidity and shallow groundwater, characteristic of high and temperate latitudes Northern Hemisphere. In the taiga regions of the European part, in Western Siberia, in the lower reaches of the rivers of Eastern Siberia and the Far East, swamps are one of the main elements of the landscape. The tundra zone is especially heavily swamped, where permafrost prevents moisture from seeping into the ground.
Among the most swampy regions in the European part are Karelia and the Kola Peninsula: swamps occupy 30% of the total area here, and in the Belomorsky region of Karelia - up to 70%. The peculiar relief created by ancient glaciers caused the appearance of a special type of swamp, which was called Karelian. The swamps are located between the hills and are connected to each other by narrow peat “channels”, forming a complex pattern reminiscent of lace fabric.
In Western Siberia, swamps stretch intermittently for 1.7 thousand km from north to south and for 1.7 thousand km from west to east. This is the most swampy region not only in Russia, but also in the world. More than a quarter of the Earth's peat bogs are concentrated here.
The flat, low-lying plain, which was once the bottom of the sea, turned out to be extremely favorable for the formation of swamps. They appeared about 10-12 thousand years ago, simultaneously in many different points, which were located in depressions of the relief. Growing by a meter every millennium, the peatlands gradually filled the depressions, and then began to go beyond their limits and merge with each other. Large swamp areas were formed about 2.5 thousand years ago. And to this day, swamps continue to capture new lands: they extend into interfluves, spreading to river terraces and floodplains.
The abundance and diversity of swamps have given rise to many names. Thus, the most common name for a swamp overgrown with bushes and forest is ryam. Most of them are in the southern taiga of Western Siberia. Usually the ryams have a round or slightly oval shape, but sometimes they are arranged in radiating fan-shaped stripes ranging from hundreds of meters to several kilometers wide. In some places the ryams are connected to form large systems.
Often a swamp overgrown with reeds, or simply a wetland, is called a borrow; swamp with dense forest - ashlar, treeless - pon-jay or goleya (galya). Similar names come from ancient Russian dialects. Among the Selkups, one of the indigenous peoples of Western Siberia, a low-lying wetland is called kalja, and in the language of the Mansi people, a swamp is called kelyg. Sometimes these local terms become the names of a swamp, river or village. For example, Big Ponja is a swamp in the basin of the Parabel River (the left tributary of the Ob). There is a Ryamovaya river in the Tom basin, as well as a settlement with the same name.
Huge water reserves are concentrated in the swamps of Western Siberia - about a thousand cubic kilometers. This is 2.5 times more than the volume of water carried annually by the Ob into the Kara Sea. This moisture concentration contributes to the further spread of peat bogs. “Tongues” slowly extend from the swamps, which, encountering obstacles in the form of hills or rivers, begin to “flow around” them. Every year, swamps reclaim thousands of hectares of land. The thickness of peat reaches 4-6 m in the forest zone of Russia, and 10 m or more in Western Siberia.
Forests in Western Siberia have been preserved in stripes in relatively dry areas along the banks of rivers, as well as on individual elevations - ridges. There is constantly a stubborn struggle between the forest and the swamp, and success is more often on the side of the swamp. If you rely only on nature, then in 5 thousand years the forest zone of Western Siberia will turn into one continuous peat bog.
The dominance of swamps is an extremely unfavorable phenomenon for people. This “aggressor” must be taken into account under any circumstances. Swamps interfere with the development of natural resources, destroy forests, meadows and arable lands, and complicate construction. Without partial drainage of the swamps in Western Siberia, it is impossible to use the colossal reserves of peat buried in bogs.
IN Central Siberia, east of the Yenisei, there are significantly fewer swamps than in Western. Directly on the right bank of the Yenisei they occupy only 10% of the area. But then their number increases again, especially in river valleys.
Despite the general dryness of the climate, the Central Yakut Lowland, the valley of the lower reaches of the Lena River and its delta are very swampy. The North Siberian and Yana-Indigirka lowlands can be called a real “kingdom of swamps”.
Swamps even penetrate into the mountains of Siberia, spreading along the flat bottoms of basins and depressions separating the ridges. Earth bound permafrost, and prolonged cold weather contribute to the accumulation of moisture. As a result, some swamps begin to rise along gentle slopes, and on the Vitim Plateau they spill over the peaks.
However, peat forms extremely slowly in Eastern Siberia, so the depth of the bogs is usually shallow. Thus, in Central Yakutia, the thickness of peat is 0.3-0.4 m on river watersheds, and up to 1 m on river terraces. The deepest swamps here are overgrown lakes. In the Verkhoyansk region, the layer of peat in place of lakes reaches 4-5 m, and in the coastal cliffs on the banks of the Lena and Aldan rivers, layers of peat up to 5 m thick can often be seen under the ice. These are relict deposits formed in previous, warmer climatic eras.
The Far East is also rich in swamps, where they have their own distinctive features. In a humid monsoon climate, with the onset of summer rains, the soil becomes saturated with water and becomes so soft that it cannot be walked or driven on, either by car or on horseback. Even powerful tracked vehicles get stuck helplessly in the sticky clay mass. In the Amur region alone, swamps occupy 36% of the area, and about 20% of them are impassable. In Primorye, swamps stretch along river valleys in long narrow ribbons. Characteristic here are the so-called ripples, which contain a layer of liquefied peat under a layer of peat deposits. Plains Khabarovsk Territory often represent continuous tracts of wetlands; sometimes they form a specific landscape - mari.
The swamps and mountains of the Far East were not spared. Treacherous bogs and saturated peat bogs are widespread on slopes and flat tops.
Sakhalin and Kamchatka, especially its Okhotsk coast, are significantly swamped. Mossy hummocky peat bogs cover not only the low-lying parts here, but also the watersheds. Due to excess moisture in summer they become impassable. Sometimes peat layers are interspersed with layers of volcanic sand that fell during eruptions.
IN Lately drainage of swampy forests, or forest reclamation, is carried out in the south of Western Siberia. In the Baraba Lowland and its neighboring areas, they are engaged in agricultural reclamation - the drainage of arable land and pastures. When starting to drain swamps, we must not forget that they are not only a nuisance, but also a storehouse of good. There is an abundance of hunting grounds and berry plantations; many rare and endangered species of plants, birds and animals; there are reserves of medicinal herbs and accumulations of sphagnum - moss, which has antiseptic and other beneficial properties.
Swamps are also unique regulators of the local climate. Obviously, part of the wetlands during reclamation should remain in their original form even in Western Siberia. Nature reserves, national parks and other protected areas can help with this. It is necessary to take care not only of forests and rivers, but also of swamps with their numerous inhabitants.
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