Tundra - a natural area

If you make a comparison with neighboring icy tundra zone, there is a little warmer, but the average annual temperature is still below zero. Summer is very short, only 2-3 months, and besides the cold. And winter lasts for 7-8 months. And for its frost-bound earth. It happens that the week does not stop the blizzard. Therefore, the tundra plains devoid of vegetation. Snow falls very little, and he is carried by the wind from place to place. For thousands of years the soil of the tundra have never warmed deeper 10-15 cm And then - a layer of permafrost thickness up to several hundred meters! Therefore, the rains and melting snow can not infiltrate the soil at depth and all the moisture accumulates, forming shallow lakes and swamps. They are very much in the tundra. What can forth in such places? After all, even the very name of the zone - Tunturi - in Finnish means treeless flat top of the tundra vegetation cover are mainly mosses and lichens. There are shrubs and small bushes. All of them are stunted and grow hugging the ground, which heats the sun. So it is warmer. Closer to the tundra - the transition from tundra to forest area - there are thickets of dwarf willows and birches. River valleys and near the forest zone of weaker studenye frosts, the soil becomes drier, and permafrost lies deeper. In such places it is already possible to meet the birch and larch. But the sight of them very poor. Height - not more than 6 m. If the tree is one, while it increases the wind, distorts it beyond recognition. Tundra vegetation, usually perennial and evergreen. This is an adaptive quality to the local climate: do not lose their leaves each year, which simply did not have time, would pass a new period of growth and development. The beauty of the tundra in summer are two bright you are. They bloom for a short time. As if the blue drops sprinkled on the green mosses me-nots, yellow polar poppies. Here, the blue bell flowers. At the high-legged stalks pulled toward the sun arctic daisy. Its height is 25 inches. Flower too large. Diameter of inflorescence - 8 See Bright colors and large size of the flower are adaptive role. They need to attract insect pollinators, which are not so much. By the fall of the tundra ripe red berries knyazheniki. Amber decorated with moss mounds cloudberry. Bright-colored beads scattered blueberries, cranberries, lingonberries. Fauna of the tundra are scarce. Birds in the summer there are about 80 species. But all of them, as in the ice zone live huge flocks. Some swans is so much that they cover the lakes as a white tablecloth. In the spring arrive as sandpipers, geese, ducks and loons. Like a penguin is the most beautiful animals ice zone, so in the tundra in the first place by the grandeur is a reindeer. Broad hooves allow it to move quickly through the snow. And in the winter between his hooves grow long hair. It allows you smaller deer glide on the ice. In summer it feeds on moss (lichen), and in winter gets his hooves out of the snow. During the summer, this beautiful, almost domesticated animals are suffering from the mosquitoes, it is blind, midges and gadflies. But his main enemy - the wolf. Permanent inhabitants of the tundra is not enough. In winter there are lemmings. Sometimes these are called herbivorous rodents lemming. Overwinters as the polar fox - fox. Yes, sometimes grouse. But even these cold-adapted animals such as tundra ptarmigan and snowy owl migrate south in the forest zone.