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.
