Siberia is an extensive geographical region, constituting all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has been a part of Russia since the latter half of the 16th century, after the Russians conquered lands east of the Ural Mountains. Siberia is vast and sparsely populated, covering an area of over 13.1 million square kilometres (5,100,000 sq mi), but home to merely one-fifth of Russia's population. Novosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk and Omsk are the largest cities in the region.
A seed bank stores seeds to preserve genetic diversity; hence it is a type of gene bank. There are many reasons to store seeds. One is to preserve the genes that plant breeders need to increase yield, disease resistance, drought tolerance, nutritional quality, taste, etc. of crops. Another is to forestall loss of genetic diversity in rare or imperiled plant species in an effort to conserve biodiversity ex situ. Many plants that were used centuries ago by humans are used less frequently now; seed banks offer a way to preserve that historical and cultural value. Collections of seeds stored at constant low temperature and low moisture are guarded against loss of genetic resources that are otherwise maintained in situ or in field collections. These alternative "living" collections can be damaged by natural disasters, outbreaks of disease, or war. Seed banks are considered seed libraries, containing valuable information about evolved strategies to combat plant stress, and can be used to create genetically modified versions of existing seeds. The work of seed banks often span decades and even centuries. Most seed banks are publicly funded and seeds are usually available for research that benefits the public.
Permafrost is ground that continuously remains below 0 °C (32 °F) for two or more years, located on land or under the ocean. Most common in the Northern Hemisphere, around 15% of the Northern Hemisphere or 11% of the global surface is underlain by permafrost, with the total area of around 18 million km2. This includes substantial areas of Alaska, Greenland, Canada and Siberia. It can also be located on mountaintops in the Southern Hemisphere and beneath ice-free areas in the Antarctic.
The Kolyma is a river in northeastern Siberia, whose basin covers parts of the Sakha Republic, Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, and Magadan Oblast of Russia.
The woolly rhinoceros is an extinct species of rhinoceros that was common throughout Europe and Asia during the Pleistocene epoch and survived until the end of the last glacial period. The woolly rhinoceros was a member of the Pleistocene megafauna.
The New Siberian Islands are an archipelago in the Extreme North of Russia, to the north of the East Siberian coast between the Laptev Sea and the East Siberian Sea north of the Sakha (Yakutia) Republic.
Bolshoy Lyakhovsky Island, or Great Lyakhovsky, is the largest of the Lyakhovsky Islands belonging to the New Siberian Islands archipelago between the Laptev Sea and the East Siberian Sea in northern Russia. It has an area of 5,156.6 km2 (1,991.0 sq mi), and a maximum altitude of 311 m (1,020 ft).
Panthera spelaea, also known as the Eurasian cave lion, European cave lion or steppe lion, is an extinct Panthera species that most likely evolved in Europe after the third Cromerian interglacial stage, less than 600,000 years ago. Phylogenetic analysis of fossil bone samples revealed that it was highly distinct and genetically isolated from the modern lion occurring in Africa and Asia. Analysis of morphological differences and mitochondrial data support the taxonomic recognition of Panthera spelaea as a distinct species that genetically diverged from the lion about 1.9 million years ago. Nuclear genomic evidence shows a more recent split approximately 500,000 years ago, with no subsequent interbreeding with the ancestors of the modern lion. The oldest known bone fragments were excavated in Yakutia and radiocarbon dated at least 62,400 years old. It became extinct about 13,000 years ago.
During the Last Glacial Maximum, the mammoth steppe, also known as steppe-tundra, was the Earth's most extensive biome. It spanned from Spain eastward across Eurasia to Canada and from the arctic islands southward to China. The mammoth steppe was cold and dry. The vegetation was dominated by palatable high-productivity grasses, herbs and willow shrubs. The animal biomass was dominated by reindeer, bison, horses, and woolly mammoth. This ecosystem covered wide areas of the northern part of the globe, thrived for approximately 100,000 years without major changes, but then diminished to small regions around 12,000 years ago.
Yedoma is an organic-rich Pleistocene-age permafrost with ice content of 50–90% by volume. Yedoma are abundant in the cold regions of eastern Siberia, such as northern Yakutia, as well as in Alaska and the Yukon.
There have been several seeds known at different times as the oldest viable seed.
Siberia, including the Russian Far East, is a vast region spanning the northern part of the Asian continent, and forming the Asiatic portion of Russia. As a result of the Russian conquest of Siberia and of the subsequent population movements during the Soviet era (1917-1991), the modern-day demographics of Siberia is dominated by ethnic Russians (Siberiaks) and other Slavs. However, there remains a slowly increasing number of indigenous groups, between them, accounting for about 10% of the total Siberian population, some of which are closely genetically related to indigenous peoples of the Americas.
Sergey Aphanasievich Zimov is a Russian geophysicist who specialises in arctic and subarctic ecology. He is the Director of Northeast Scientific Station, a senior research fellow of the Pacific Institute for Geography, and one of the founders of Pleistocene Park. He is best known for his work in advocating the theory that human overhunting of large herbivores during the Pleistocene caused Siberia's grassland-steppe ecosystem to disappear and for raising awareness as to the important roles permafrost and thermokarst lakes play in the global carbon cycle.
The Jarkov Mammoth, is a woolly mammoth specimen discovered on the Taymyr Peninsula of Siberia by a nine-year-old boy in 1997. This particular mammoth is estimated to have lived about 20,000 years ago. It is likely to be male and probably died at age 47.
Pleistocene Park is a nature reserve on the Kolyma River south of Chersky in the Sakha Republic, Russia, in northeastern Siberia, where an attempt is being made to re-create the northern subarctic steppe grassland ecosystem that flourished in the area during the last glacial period.
Yuka is the best-preserved woolly mammoth carcass ever found. It was discovered by local Siberian tusk hunters in August 2010. They turned it over to local scientists, who made an initial assessment of the carcass in 2012. It is displayed in Moscow.
Pithovirus, first described in a 2014 paper, is a genus of giant virus known from two species, Pithovirus sibericum, which infects amoebas and Pithovirus massiliensis. It is a double-stranded DNA virus, and is a member of the nucleocytoplasmic large DNA viruses clade. The 2014 discovery was made when a viable specimen was found in a 30,000-year-old ice core harvested from permafrost in Siberia, Russia.
The Northeast Siberian coastal tundra ecoregion is an ecoregion that covers the coastal plain of the central north region of Siberia in Russia. This coastal region borders the Laptev Sea and the East Siberian Sea, both marginal seas of the Arctic Ocean, from the Lena River delta in the west to the Kolyma River delta in the east. There are several large river deltas in the area that support breeding grounds for 60 to 80 species of migratory birds. The region is in the Palearctic realm, and the tundra biome. It has an area of 846,149 square kilometres (326,700 sq mi).
The Yana Rhinoceros Horn Site is an Upper Palaeolithic archaeological site located near the lower Yana river in northeastern Siberia, Russia, north of the Arctic Circle in the far west of Beringia. It was discovered in 2001, after thawing and erosion exposed animal bones and artifacts. The site features a well-preserved cultural layer due to the cold conditions, and includes hundreds of animal bones and ivory pieces and numerous artifacts, which are indicative of sustained settlement and a relatively high level of technological development. With an estimated age of around 32,000 calibrated years before present, the site provides the earliest archaeological evidence for human settlement in this region, or anywhere north of the Arctic Circle, where people survived extreme conditions and hunted a wide range of fauna before the onset of the Last Glacial Maximum. The Yana site is perhaps the earliest unambiguous evidence of mammoth hunting by humans.
Retrogressive thaw slumps (RTS), are a type of landslide that occur in the terrestrial Arctic's permafrost region of the circumpolar Northern Hemisphere when an ice-rich section thaws. RTSs develop quickly and can extend across several hectares modifying Arctic coastlines and permafrost terrain. They are the most active and dynamic feature of thermokarst—the collapse of the land surface as ground ice melts. They are thermokarst slope failures due to abrupt thawing of ice-rich permafrost or glaciated terrains. These horseshoe-shaped landslides contribute to the thawing of hectares of permafrost annually and are considered to be one of the most active and dynamic features of thermokarst—the "processes and landforms that involve collapse of the land surface as a result of the melting of ground ice." They are found in permafrost or glaciated regions of the Northern Hemisphere—the Tibetan Plateau, Siberia, from the Himalayas to northern Greenland, and in northern Canada's Northwest Territories (NWT), the Yukon Territories, Nunavut, and Nunavik and in the American state of Alaska. The largest RTS in the world is in Siberia—the Batagaika Crater, also called a "megaslump", is one-kilometre-long and 100 metres (330 ft) deep and it grows a 100 feet (30 m) annually. The land began to sink, and the Batagaika Crater began to form in the 1960s, following clear-cutting of a section of forested area.
