Geography of Russia: facts and informations

Geography of Russia

Basic fact of the geography of Russia

Total superficy of Russia: Russia is the biggest country in the world. From Atlantic ocean to Artic Ocean in the North. The total territory has 17 075 200 square kilometre. One usually talk about the European Russia which is about of the whole territory 25.5% compared with the Asiatic Russia which is about 74.7%. The limit of these “two” Russia are the Ural Mountains.

Total Terrestrial border: 19 917km

Border with every country

Russia-Azerbaïdjan (284km) Russia-Bielorussia (959km) Russia-China (3645km) Russia-Estonia (294km) Russia-Finland (1313km) Russia-Georgia(723km), Russia-Kazakhstan (6846km) Russie-Lettonia (217km) Russia-Mongolia (3441km) Russie-North Korea (19km) Russia-Norway (167km), Russia-Ukraine (1576km)

Did you know?:

à 1/4 of the Russian territory is over the polar circle.

à The climate in Russia is sometimes very different from one region to another.

à The continental climate of Siberia gives very warm summer

à Russia has big rivers:

- Don

- Dniepr

- Volga

- Ienisseï

- Lena

- Amour

- Kolyma

More information about the geography of Russia

With 17,075,400 square kilometres Russia is the largest state resulting from the dismantling of the USSR (22.4 million square kilometres) which represents three quarters of the size and half the population. Canada is the second biggest country in the world!

It remains the world leader for the area (31 times the size of France) and its vast territory is home to a huge potential in terms of mineral and energy resources.

The Russia holds immense units landscapes, bordered by the icy Arctic Ocean to the north by the Bering Strait and the Pacific Ocean to the east, the Black Sea to the south. Russia has 32,180 kilometers of coastline. It has 37,653 km of borders with ten countries.

Even more than the USSR, Russia is focused on high latitudes, beyond the 50th parallel of latitude north and the third of its territory beyond the 60th parallel. As the ocean influences are low, there are natural areas well marked, succeeding from north to south with a worsening of the continent as one moves away to the east.

From north to south, a typology consists of six components used to classify the diversity bioclimatic Russian:

The tundra: located on the edge of the Arctic Ocean and the northern islands. It covers nearly 2 million sq. km. It grows mainly on a relief plains and low plateaus and reached its maximum extension in Central Siberia between the lower reaches of the Ob and Lena. The landscape plants are poor and discontinuous, mainly consisting of mosses, lichens and plants bulbs or rhizomes. The vegetation suffered the double handicap of climate and poor soil.

The taiga is the boreal forest. It is the medium most characteristic of Russia which covers 4.5 million square kilometers more than one quarter of the surface. As the tundra it extends mainly on the plains and low plateaus. Regarding the landscape plant birch and poplar predominate, spruces, pines and spruces appear in Europe and in Siberia, black pines and larches are more frequently encountered.

The hardwood forests: south of the taiga extends over almost 3 million square kilometers of forests-based ash, which charms mixed with birch and alder. The soils are more favourable to agriculture have been largely cleared but as in the taiga, they are capable of gorger water if they are poorly drained and bogs and swamps can develop.

Steppes and meadows: south of the hardwood forest to the sun rises and with it the water deficit. The vegetation adapts to these climatic conditions, it is the prairie, training continues herbaceous which is rooted in a very fine black soil, colloidal, tchernoziem. These lands include a black surface layer thick, rich in humus own grain crops. Moving south and east the summer drought is increasing, the prairie succeeds the steppe. The vegetation is open, sometimes low and leaves the soil bare. These landscapes mark a major part of Russian territory.

The Mediterranean: it is reduced to a thin fringe along the Black Sea. It cultivates the vine, tobacco, but also tea and citrus.

Mountains: Aside from the Urals who cut in two the vast plain Euro-Siberian, Russia has two large mountains on its southern borders to the east of Altai in Kamchatka, south of the northern slope Caucasus lying about 1,100 km between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. The hydrographic network consists principally of the Ob (3,700 km), the Yenisei (3,500 km), Lena (4,400 km), Love (4,350 km) which serves as a border with China and the Volga (3,500 km) which flows into the Caspian Sea.