New Siberia
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New Siberia (Russian: Но́вая Сиби́рь; English transliteration: Novaya Sibir) is one of the New Siberian Islands lying between the Laptev Sea and East Siberian Sea. Although its area of approximately 6,200 km² places it just outside the 100 largest islands in the world. New Siberia Island is low lying, rising to only 76 m and covered with tundra vegetation. The island is a part of the territory of the Sakha (Yakutia) Republic of Russia.
New Siberia Island consists of clastic sediments ranging from Late Cretaceous to Pleistocene in age. The Late Cretaceous sediments consist of extensively folded layers of gray and greenish gray tuffaceous sand, tuffaceous silt, pebbly sand, and rare layers of brown coal exposed in sea cliffs along it southwest coast. The sand and silt often contain either volcanic glass, plant remains, rhyolite pebbles, or some combination of them. Eocene sand, silt, clay, and brown coal overlies an erosional unconformity cut into the Late Cretaceous sediments. Within the northwest part of New Siberia Island, these sediments grade into clays that contain fragments of marine bivalves. Directly overlying the Eocene sediments and another erosional unconformity are sands of Oligocene and Early Miocene age. They contain thin beds of silt, mud, clay, and pebbles. These sands contain fossil plants and lagoonal, swamp, and lacustrine diatoms. These sands are overlain by Pliocene sediments consisting of layers of sand, silt, mud, peat, and pebbles. Pleistocene brackish and near-shore marine clays overlie the Pliocene sediments and blanket most of this island (Fujita and Cook 1990, Kos'ko and Trufanov 2002)
Rush/grass, forb, cryptogam tundra covers the New Siberia 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] History
It was discovered in 1806 by Russian fur traders.
[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.
