Section 1:
Land and Resources
Physiographic Regions
European Plain
Ural Mountains
West Siberian Lowland
| Land and Resources Much of Russia lies north of the 50th parallel and thus compares physically more to Canada than to the United States. The agricultural resource base is limited by climate and, to a lesser degree, soils. The vastness of Russia's territory and its varied geologic formations, however, provide a rich mineral resource base unmatched by any other country in the world. |
| Physiographic Regions Russia contains a great complexity of geologic structures and surface formations that have evolved separately during different geologic epochs. Very simply, the landmass of the republic consists of a vast plain in the western and northern parts of the country fringed by a discontinuous belt of mountains and plateaus on the south and on the east; this is the most extensive plain in the world. The upland and mountain regions include most of Siberia and extend to the margins of the Pacific. |
| European Plain European Russia is primarily a rolling plain with an average elevation of about 180 m (about 590 ft). The terrain has been formed by millions of years of stream, wind, and glacial action on nearly horizontal strata of sedimentary rocks. In some places the softer sedimentary rocks have been eroded away, and the underlying basement complex of hard igneous and metamorphic rocks has been exposed at the surface; the most notable of these areas is the northwest near the border with Finland. The topography is generally rough in these areas of outcropping, particularly in the north, where a maximum elevation of 1191 m (3906 ft) is reached in the Khibiny Mountains of the central Kola Peninsula. Otherwise, the relief of the European Plain, with minor exceptions, is only modest. Other surface features owe their origins to glaciation. Among these are several broad marshy areas, such as the Meshchera Lowland southeast of Moscow along the Oka River. This flat, poorly drained area was a lake when glacial ice blocked the streams that now partly drain it. The most recent glacial stage, which ended about 10,000 to 12,000 years ago, formed a terminal moraine that runs east from the border with Belarus, then north of Moscow to the Arctic coast west of the Pechora River. The region to the north of this boundary is poorly drained and has numerous lakes and swamps. |
| Ural Mountains The European Plain terminates in the east at the Ural Mountains. An old, worn-down series of mountain ranges, the Urals are topographically unimpressive. The average elevation is only about 600 m (about 1970 ft), and the highest elevation is in the north at Narodnaya Gora (People's Mountain), at 1894 m (6214 ft) above sea level. They are, however, important for a wide variety of mineral deposits, ranging from mineral fuels to iron ore to nonferrous metals and nonmetallic minerals. |
| West Siberian Lowland To the east of the Urals the plain region continues in the West Siberian Lowland. This expansive and extremely flat area is poorly drained and is generally marshy or swampy. |