Area | 13,100,000 km2 (5,100,000 sq mi) |
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Population | 37 million (2021 census) |
Population density | 2.6 per km2 (7.4 per mi2) |
GDP (PPP) | $1.3 trillion (2022) |
GDP (nominal) | $600 billion (2022) [1] |
GDP per capita | $16,000 (2022) |
Ethnic groups | Majority Slavic Minority Tungusic, Mongolic and Turkic peoples |
Religions | Majority Orthodox Christian |
Demonym | Siberian, North Asian |
Countries | Russia |
Languages | Official languages Other languages |
Time zones | |
Internet TLD | .ru |
Calling code | Zone 7 |
Largest cities | |
UN M49 code | 151 – Eastern Europe 150 – Europe 001 – World |
North Asia | |
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Russian name | |
Russian | Северная Азия |
Romanization | Severnaya Aziya |
North Asia or Northern Asia is the northern region of Asia,which is defined in geographical terms and consists of three federal districts of Russia:Ural,Siberian,and the Far Eastern. The region forms the bulk of the Asian part of Russia. North Asia is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to its north;by Eastern Europe to its west;by Central Asia and East Asia to its south;and by the Pacific Ocean and Northern America to its east. It covers an area of 13,100,000 square kilometres (5,100,000 sq mi),or 8.8% of Earth's total land area;and is the largest subregion of Asia by area,occupying approx. 29.4% of Asia's land area,but is also the least populated,with a population of around 37 million,accounting for merely 0.74% of Asia's population.
Topographically,the region is dominated by the Eurasian Plate,except for its eastern part,which lies on the North American,Amurian,and Okhotsk Plates. It is divided by three major plains:the West Siberian Plain,Central Siberian Plateau,and Verhoyansk-Chukotka collision zone. The Uralian orogeny in the west raised Ural Mountains,the informal boundary between Asia and Europe. Tectonic and volcanic activities are frequently occurred in the eastern part of the region as part of the Ring of Fire,evidenced by the formation of island arcs such as the Kuril Islands and ultra-prominent peaks such as Klyuchevskaya Sopka,Kronotsky,and Koryaksky. The central part of North Asia is a large igneous province called the Siberian Traps,formed by a massive eruption occurred 250 million years ago. The formation of the traps coincided with the Permian–Triassic extinction event.
North Asia,geographically,is a subregion of Asia. However,because it was colonised and incorporated into Russia,some international organisations either consider or classify North Asia as part of Eastern Europe along with European Russia. European cultural influences,specifically Russian,are predominant in the entire region,due to it experiencing Russian emigration from Europe starting from the 16th century. [2] Slavs and other Indo-Europeans make up the vast majority of North Asia's population,and over 85% of the region's population is of European descent. [3] [4]
The region was first populated by hominins in the Late Pleistocene,approximately 100,000 years ago, [5] and modern humans are confirmed to arrived in the region by 45,000 years ago [6] [7] with the first humans in the region having West Eurasian origins. [8] Its Neolithic culture is characterized by characteristic stone production techniques and the presence of pottery of eastern origin. [8] The Bronze Age began during the 3rd millennium BCE, [9] with influences of Indo-Iranian cultures as evidenced by the Andronovo culture. During the 1st millennium BCE,polities such as the Scythians and Xiongnus emerged in the region,who often clashed with its Persian and Chinese neighbors in the south. The Göktürks dominated southern Siberia during the 1st millennium CE,while in the early 2nd millennium,the Mongol Empire and its successor states ruled the region. The Khanate of Sibir was one of the last independent Turkic states in North Asia before its conquest by the Tsardom of Russia in the 16th century. Russia would then gradually annex the region into its territory until the Convention of Peking was signed in 1860. After the October Revolution in 1917,the region was contested between the Bolsheviks and Whites until the Soviet Union asserted full control in 1923. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 left Russia as the administrator of the region.
For geographical and statistical reasons,the United Nations geoscheme and various other classification schemes will not subdivide countries,and thus place all of Russia in Europe or the Eastern Europe subregion.
There are no mountain chains in North Asia to prevent air currents from the Arctic flowing down over the plains of Siberia and Turkestan. [10]
The plateau and plains of North Asia comprise the West Siberian Lowlands;the Angara Shield,with the Taymyr Peninsula,the coastal lowlands (the East Siberian Lowland and the North Siberian Lowland),and the Central Siberian Plateau (the Anabar Plateau,the Lena Plateau,the Lena-Angara Plateau,the Putorana Plateau,the Tunguska Plateau,and the Vilyuy Plateau);and the Central Yakutian Lowland. [11] Western Siberia is usually regarded as the Northwest Asia,Kazakhstan also sometimes included there. However,Northwest Asia sometimes refers to the South Caucasus or its nearby areas.[ citation needed ]
The geomorphology of Northern Asia in general is imperfectly known,although the deposits and mountain ranges are well known. [11]
To compensate for new sea floor having been created in the Siberian basin,the whole of the Eurasian Plate has pivoted about a point in the New Siberian Islands,causing compression in the Verkhoyansk mountains,which were formed along the eastern margin of the Angara Shield by tectonic uplift during the Mesozoic Era. There is a southern boundary to this across the northern margin of the Alpine folds of Afghanistan,India,Nepal,and Bhutan,which at the east of Brahmaputra turns to run south towards the Bay of Bengal along the line of the Naga Hills and the Arakan Yoma,continues around Indonesia,and follows the edge of the continental shelf along the eastern seaboard of China. The Eurasian Plate and the North American Plate meet across the neck of Alaska,following the line of the Aleutian Trench,rather than meeting at the Bering Straits. [11]
Northern Asia is built around the Angara Shield,which lies between the Yenisey River and the Lena River. It developed from fragments of Laurasia,whose rocks were mainly Precambrian crystalline rocks,gneisses,and schists,and Gondwana. These rocks can be found in the Angara Shield,Inner Mongolian-Korean Shield,Ordes Shield,and Southeast Asia Shield. The fragments have been subject to orogenesis around their margins,giving a complex of plateaux and mountain ranges. One can find outcrops of these rocks in unfolded sections of the Shields. Their presence has been confirmed below Mesozoic and later sediments. [11]
There are three main periods of mountain building in Northern Asia,although it has occurred many times. The outer fold mountains that are on the margins of the Shields and that only affected Asia north of the line of the Himalayas,are attributed to the Caledonian and Hercynian orogenies of the late Palaeozoic Era. The Alpine orogeny caused extensive folding and faulting of Mesozoic and early Tertiary sediments from the Tethys geosyncline. The Tibetan and Mongolian plateaux,and the structural basins of Tarim,Qaidam,and Junggar,are delimited by major east–west lithospheric faults that were probably the results of stresses caused by the impact of the Indian Plate against Laurasia. Erosion of the mountains caused by this orogeny has created a large amount of sediment,which has been transported southwards to produce the alluvial plains of India,China,and Cambodia,and which has also been deposited in large amounts in the Tarim and Dzungarian basins. [11]
Physical map of Northern Asia (with parts of Central and East Asia) |
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Northern Asia was glaciated in the Pleistocene, but this played a less significant part in the geology of the area compared to the part that it played in North America and Europe. The Scandinavian ice sheet extended to the east of the Urals, covering the northern two thirds of the Ob Basin and extending onto the Angara Shield between the Yenisei River and the Lena River. There are legacies of mountain glaciation to be found on the east Siberian mountains, on the mountains of the Kamchatka Peninsula, on the Altai, on Tian Shan, and on other small areas of mountains, ice caps remain on the islands of Severnaya Zemlya and Novaya Zemlya, and several Central Asian mountains still have individual glaciers. North Asia itself has permafrost, ranging in depths from 30 to 600 metres and covering an area of 9.6 million km2. [11]
Several of the mountainous regions are volcanic, with both the Koryak Mountains and the Kamchatka Peninsula having active volcanoes. The Anadyr Plateau is formed from igneous rocks. The Mongolian Plateau has an area of basaltic lavas and volcanic cones. [11]
The Angara Shield also underlies the lowlands of the Ob River, but to the south and east in the Central Asian mountains and in the East Siberian Mountains there are folded and faulted mountains of Lower Palaeozoic rocks. [11]
Most estimates are that there are around 33 million Russian citizens living east of the Ural Mountains, a widely recognized but informal geographical divide between Europe and Asia. Of these Russian citizens of Siberia, most are Slavic-origin Russians and Russified Ukrainians. [12] The Turkic peoples who are native to some parts of Siberia and native Tungusic and Mongolic peoples are now a minority in North Asia due to the Russification process during the last three centuries. Russian census records indicate they make up only an estimated 10% of the region's population, with the largest being the Buryats numbering at 445,175, and the Yakuts at 443,852. According to the 2002 census, there are 500,000 Tatars in Siberia, but 300,000 of them are Volga Tatars who settled in Siberia during periods of colonization. [13] Other ethnic groups that live in the region and make a significant portion include ethnic Germans numbering about 400,000. [14]
In 1875, Chambers reported the population of North Asia to be 8 million. [10] Between 1801 and 1914, an estimated 7 million settlers moved from European Russia to Siberia, 85% during the quarter-century before World War I. [15]
Rank | Region | Pop. | |||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Novosibirsk Yekaterinburg | 1 | Novosibirsk | Siberia | 1,633,595 | Chelyabinsk Krasnoyarsk | ||||
2 | Yekaterinburg | Ural (region) | 1,544,376 | ||||||
3 | Chelyabinsk | Ural (region) | 1,189,525 | ||||||
4 | Krasnoyarsk | Siberia | 1,187,771 | ||||||
5 | Omsk | Siberia | 1,125,695 | ||||||
6 | Tyumen | Ural (region) | 847,488 | ||||||
7 | Barnaul | Siberia | 630,877 | ||||||
8 | Khabarovsk | Russian Far East | 617,441 | ||||||
9 | Irkutsk | Siberia | 617,264 | ||||||
10 | Vladivostok | Russian Far East | 603,519 |
Russia is the largest country in the world, covering over 17,125,191 km2 (6,612,073 sq mi), and encompassing more than one-eighth of Earth's inhabited land area. Russia extends across eleven time zones, and has the most borders of any country in the world, with sixteen sovereign nations.
Siberia is an extensive geographical region comprising all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has formed a part of the sovereign territory of Russia and its predecessor states since the centuries-long conquest of Siberia, which began with the fall of the Khanate of Sibir in the late 16th century and concluded with the annexation of Chukotka in 1778. Siberia is vast and sparsely populated, covering an area of over 13.1 million square kilometres (5,100,000 sq mi), but home to roughly a quarter of Russia's population. Novosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk, and Omsk are the largest cities in the area.
The Ural Mountains, or simply the Urals, are a mountain range in Eurasia that runs north–south mostly through the Russian Federation, from the coast of the Arctic Ocean to the river Ural and northwestern Kazakhstan. The mountain range forms part of the conventional boundary between the continents of Europe and Asia, marking the separation between European Russia and Siberia. Vaygach Island and the islands of Novaya Zemlya form a further continuation of the chain to the north into the Arctic Ocean. The average altitudes of the Urals are around 1,000–1,300 metres (3,300–4,300 ft), the highest point being Mount Narodnaya, which reaches a height of 1,894 metres (6,214 ft).
The early history of Siberia was greatly influenced by the sophisticated nomadic civilizations of the Scythians (Pazyryk) on the west of the Ural Mountains and Xiongnu (Noin-Ula) on the east of the Urals, both flourishing before the common era. The steppes of Siberia were occupied by a succession of nomadic peoples, including the Khitan people, various Turkic peoples, and the Mongol Empire. In the Late Middle Ages, Tibetan Buddhism spread into the areas south of Lake Baikal.
The West Siberian Plain is a large plain that occupies the western portion of Siberia, between the Ural Mountains in the west and the Yenisei River in the east, and the Altai Mountains on the southeast. Much of the plain is poorly drained and consists of some of the world's largest swamps and floodplains. Important cities include Chelyabinsk, Novosibirsk, Omsk, and Tomsk, as well as Surgut and Nizhnevartovsk.
The Central Siberian Plateau is a vast mountainous area in Siberia, one of the Great Russian Regions.
A subregion is a part of a larger geographical region or continent. Cardinal directions are commonly used to define subregions. There are many criteria for creating systems of subregions; this article is focusing on the United Nations geoscheme, which is a changing, constantly updated, UN tool based on specific political geography and demography considerations relevant in UN statistics.
Baltica is a paleocontinent that formed in the Paleoproterozoic and now constitutes northwestern Eurasia, or Europe north of the Trans-European Suture Zone and west of the Ural Mountains. The thick core of Baltica, the East European Craton, is more than three billion years old and formed part of the Rodinia supercontinent at c. 1 Ga.
Siberia, also known as Siberian Craton, Angaraland and Angarida, is an ancient craton in the heart of Siberia. Today forming the Central Siberian Plateau, it formed an independent landmass prior to its fusion into Pangea during the Late Carboniferous-Permian. The Verkhoyansk Sea, a passive continental margin, was fringing the Siberian Craton to the east in what is now the East Siberian Lowland.
Siberian natural resources refers to resources found in Russian Siberia, in the North Asian Mainland. The Siberian region is rich in resources, including coal, oil and metal ores.
The Baikal Mountains or Baikal Range are a mountain range that rises steeply over the northwestern shore of Lake Baikal in southern Siberia, Russia. The highest peak in the range is 2,572 m high Mount Chersky, named after Russian explorer Ivan Chersky.
A forest steppe is a temperate-climate ecotone and habitat type composed of grassland interspersed with areas of woodland or forest.
Siberian River Routes were the main ways of communication in Russian Siberia before the 1730s, when roads began to be built. The rivers were also of primary importance in the process of Russian conquest and exploration of vast Siberian territories eastwards. Since the three great Siberian rivers, the Ob, the Yenisey, and the Lena all flow into the Arctic Ocean, the aim was to find parts or branches of these rivers that flow approximately east-west and find short portages between them. Since Siberia is relatively flat, portages were usually short. Despite resistance from the Siberian tribes, Russian Cossacks were able to expand from the Urals to the Pacific in only 57 years (1582-1639). These river routes were crucial in the first years of the Siberian fur trade as the furs were easier to transport over water than land. The rivers connected the major fur gathering centers and provided for relatively quick transport between them.
This is a list of articles related to plate tectonics and tectonic plates.
The geology of Russia, the world's largest country, which extends over much of northern Eurasia, consists of several stable cratons and sedimentary platforms bounded by orogenic (mountain) belts.
The Main Uralian Fault (MUF) runs north–south through the middle of the Ural Mountains for over 2,000 km. It separates both Europe from Asia and the three, or four, western megazones of the Urals from the three eastern megazones: namely the Pre-Uralian Foredeep, West Uralian, and the Central Uralian to the west, and the Tagil-Magnitogorskian, East Uralian, and Transuralian to the east. The Russian Plate is often included as the fourth megazone to the west. On the west side of the fault the rocks represent the sediments of the eastern continental margin zone of the European Plate (Baltica). On the east the rocks are accreted oceanic and island arc basalts, ultramafics and volcanics as well as the sediments of the western continental margin zones of the Siberian craton on the north and the Kazakhstan craton on the south.
The Central Yakutian Lowland or the Central Yakutian Lowlands, also known as the Central Yakut Plain or the Vilyuy Lowland, is a low alluvial plain in Siberia, Russia.
The South Siberian Mountains are one of the largest mountain systems of the Russian Federation. The total area of the system of mountain ranges is more than 1.5 million km². The South Siberian Mountains are located in the Siberian and Far Eastern Federal Districts of Russia, as well as partly in Mongolia. The territory of the mountain system is one of the Great Russian Regions.
The Great Russian Regions are eight geomorphological regions of the Russian Federation displaying characteristic forms of relief. Seven of them are parts of Siberia, located east of the Ural Mountains.