Little Lyakhovsky Island

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Map showing the location of Lyakhovsky Islands

Little Lyakhovsky Island (Russian: Малый Ляховский: Maly Lyakhovsky) is the second largest of the Lyakhovsky Islands belonging to the New Siberian Islands archipelago in Laptev Sea in northern Russia. It has an area of 1,325 km².

Little Lyakhovsky Island consists of Upper Jurassic to lower Cretaceous turbidites, also known as "flysch", covered by a thin veneer of Pliocene to Pleistocene sediments. These Mesozoic rocks consist of sandstones, argillites, and shales deformed into east-northeast striking folds about 7 to 20 km wide. The Mesozoic rocks are covered by a relatively thin layer of Pliocene to Pleistocene sandy and clayey sediments of colluvial and alluvial origin. Near the coast, the alluvial sediments grade into nearshore marine sediments containing fossil marine mollusks and lignitized wood. Thick permafrost characterized by massive ice wedges has developed in these sediments (Fujita and Cook 1990, Kos’ko and Trufanov 2002, Kos'ko et al. 1990).

Rush/grass, forb, cryptogam tundra covers Little Lyakhovsky Island. It is tundra consisting mostly of very low-growing grasses, rushes, forbs, mosses, lichens, and liverworts. These plants either mostly or completely cover the surface of the ground. The soils are typically moist, fine-grained, and often hummocky (CAVM Team 2003).

[edit] References

CAVM Team, 2003, [Circumpolar Arctic Vegetation Map]. Scale 1:7,500,000. Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna (CAFF) Map No. 1. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Anchorage, Alaska
Fujita, K., and D.B. Cook, 1990, The Arctic continental margin of eastern Siberia, in A. Grantz, L. Johnson, and J. F. Sweeney, eds., pp. 289-304, The Arctic Ocean Region. Geology of North America, vol L, Geological Society of America, Boulder, Colorado.
Kos’ko, M.K., and G.V. Trufanov, 2002, Middle Cretaceous to Eopleistocene Sequences on the New Siberian Islands: an approach to interpret offshore seismic. Marine and Petroleum Geology. vol. 19, no. 7, pp. 901–919.
Kos’ko, M.K., B.G. Lopatin, and V.G. Ganelin, 1990, Major geological features of the islands of the East Siberian and Chukchi Seas and the Northern Coast of Chukotka. Marine Geology. vol. 93, pp. 349–367.