The Lena River: diamonds, gold and frozen mammoths

The Lena River is one of the longest rivers in Asia.Its total length is 4,400 km and its basin covers 2,490,000 km².

It is located in the eastern region of Siberia, its sources are situated in the Baikal mountains, at an altitude of 1640 m, south of the Siberian Central Plateau and 20 km west of Lake Baikal (which drains into the Ienisei river basin).

The upper Lena River flows to the northeast, receives two major tributaries (the Kirenga River and the Vitim River) and empties into the Antarctic Sea (in the Laptev Sea area) southwest of the islands of New Siberia.

At the mouth it forms a delta of 10,800 km2 of surface, crossed by seven main branches, of which the most important is the Bylov, which is the easternmost one.

Although rainfall is scarce in the catchment area, at its mouththe mean flow of the river is 16,400 m3 / sec, . The volumes drained by the channels vary widely during the year, they are approximately 2,800 m³/s in January (data from 1994) rising in the end of spring and early summer to 66,500/s m³ in June.

The climate of the Lena river basin is extreme continental with minimum absolute winter temperatures that can be lower than -60ºC but can rise to more than 30ºC in the hot summer days. In Verkhoyansk, a yakuta city of 1,400 inhabitants located in the center-north of the basin, the average temperature in January is -45.8ºC while the average in July stands at 16.9ºC. The thermal amplitude is one of the largest in the planet: 62.5ºC.

Geography of Yakutia

In Eastern Siberia, beyond the Ienisei River, wide undulating reliefs and plains extend receiving the generic name of Yakutia. The area is 3,100,000 km2 but its population is slightly less than 1 million people. 

The Lena basin is inhabited mainly by the ethnic group of the Yakuts, people of Turkic origin who emigrated to the area in the 13th and 14th centuries from other parts of Siberia due to the imminent military uprising of the Mongols. When they arrived they mixed with other indigenous Siberians in the area.

The Yakuts adapted to the extreme weather conditions and accordingly developed an appropriate social and technological culture. Their productive practices allowed them to cope with very low extreme temperatures during prolonged periods and with the relatively high thermal peaks in the summer.

Politically, most of the basin belongs to the Sakha Republic (Russian Federal Republic). The Sakha Republic is the largest subnational entity in the world with 3,083 million km2.

Russian colonization of the Lena basin (Yakutia)

The history of Russian colonization in Yakutia is dramatic. In 1620 the Russians invaded the territory establishing a tribute to the skins to the natives of the country. This trade was the most important economic activity in the country. This imposition provoked bloody rebellions of the Yakuta from 1634 to 1642 that led to a true Yakut genocide by the Russian Empire.

The Russian military leader Golovin implanted an atmosphere of terror, the Yakut villages were set on fire and hundreds of people were tortured and executed. In forty years (between 1642 and 1682) the Yakut population fell by 70%.

Currently, its population is one million inhabitants (950,000), so its density is less than 0.3 inhabitants / km2. The capital, Yakutsk, has a population of 300.000. The Yakuts, which are the peoples that ancestrally inhabited this rigorous environment, constitute something more than a third of the population of the Republic.

Riverside cities

The main riverside cities of the Lena River are Ust-Kut with 45,000 inhabitants, Kirensk with 12,000, Lensk with 25,000, Oliókminsk with 10,000, Pokrovsk with 10,000 and Yakutsk, which is the capital of the republic and main city of Eastern Siberia with 300,000 inhabitants.

Yakutsk is located in the plains of the Lena river valley, east of the Siberian Central Plateau, on the left bank of the river in its middle course, about 450 kilometers from the Arctic Circle and an altitude of 100 meters above sea level. .

The city is an important cultural, scientific and economic center of the region, as well as the main port of the Lena River and supplier of diamonds. In the city there is the Federal University of the Northeast, and the Yakusky airport.

Economic activities

In the north of the country, the main activities are hunting, fishing and reindeer husbandry. In the south the Yakuts are dedicated to the breeding of horses and cattle.

Yakutia has significant mineral wealth. The deposits of diamonds and gold stand out. There are also large reserves of tungsten, mercury and iron.

The production of diamonds

The main diamond production mine is the Mirny mine (located in Mirny) which is one of the main diamond mines in the world. It was exploited as a diamond mine in the open for a long time. The mine has a depth of> 525 meters (1,722 ft) (4th in the world) and has a diameter of 1,200 m (3,900 ft), [1] and is one of the largest excavated pits in the world. While open-pit mining was suspended in 2001 since 2009, the mine has been active with underground galleries.

Fossils 

Because the soil of the territory is mostly covered by permafrost, there are abundant well-preserved fossil remains of the Pleistocene fauna, including mammoths, woolly rhinoceroses, bison, cave lions and other currently extinct animals whose exhibition in museums and sites are potentially elements of tourist attraction.

Navigation

The Lena River is an important waterway and navigable for almost its entire length, starting with the town of Kachuga at 4,125 km from its mouth. Its width reaches up to 250 m, however, there are 201 shoals between Kachuga and Ust-Kut, the main river port in the Alto Lena, so navigation is limited and services are only regular between Ust-Kut and Yakutsk. The port of Tiksi in the Arctic Ocean is connected to the railway network of the Alto Lena through the Osetrovo station, another fluvial port of Lena. Yakutsk, Olekminsk, Lensk, Kirensk and Osetrovo are the largest ports in the section of navigable rivers.

The vast delta of the Lena consists of 150 ramifications; The largest canals (from west to east) are Oleneksky (208 km long), Tumatsky (149 km), Trofimovsky (134 km) that transports up to 70 percent of the river's water, and Bykovsky (106 km), the most important channel. for navigation that connects the river with Tiksi Bay (sea port of Tiksi).

The freezing in the Alto Lena begins in mid-October and, in early November, in the Bajo Lena. The autumnal drift of the ice lasts up to 20 days; The largest thickness of ice (up to 3 m) is found in the north (downstream); in the upper firewood it reaches 50 cm. The spring drift of ice in the Alto Lena begins at the end of April and, by the end of the first ten days of June, the waters of the Lena river flow towards the Laptev Sea. The average number of days without ice is approximately 130. Ice breaking in the spring is accompanied by ice jams and a sudden increase in water levels. The most destructive flood (increase of more than 19 m of water level) in the Lena River took place in May 2001 when a part of the city of Lensk was razed, and Kirensk, Yakutsk and about 20 villages were flooded. The water level rises to 950-1,000 km upstream from the mouth of Vilui during ice jams at the mouth of the river. The daily increase of water can be 10 m in some parts of the river during ice jams.