Ecological problems of the West Siberian Plain. Problems of nature and man in Western Siberia

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:54

Today, in almost all countries of the world, the issue of environmental safety is particularly acute. There is nothing surprising in this: the rash and greedy use of natural resources has led to the fact that at the moment there is a danger of extinction not only of most of the animals, but also of the human race itself. There is a huge number of environmental and environmental programs that could theoretically help to cope with all problems. But, as it usually happens, everything is fine only on paper.

This is especially true for our country. Unfortunately, the issue of the ecological state of the area always remains at the very end of our priorities. Once upon a time, this did not cause much problems, but times are changing, and the intensity of pollution of our own land is increasing at an alarming rate. Of course, modern civilization cannot exist without all the benefits thatgives it a developed industry. Unfortunately, manufacturers often deliberately evade basic environmental regulations, resulting in a more and more deplorable pollution situation.

Never forget that without nature there is no man. The well-being of our own children in the future depends on how well we protect the environment, so this issue is definitely not to be taken lightly.

The industrial development of the country, which has accelerated in recent years, has a positive effect on the economy, but the environmental problems of the West Siberian Plain are growing every year because of this.

It should be remembered that the weakest link in all environmental protection is economic benefit. Even the installation of the simplest treatment facilities is extremely expensive, and therefore the management of enterprises often “forgets” about them, preferring to pay less significant fines.

It goes without saying that without real support from the state, which would allocate funds for the purchase of such equipment, without subsidizing the deployment of integrated environmental activities, one should not even dream of improving the environmental situation in our country.

This is especially true for Western Siberia. This region is so peculiar that an entire article should be devoted to it.

Introduction

By the way, where is the West Siberian Plain? It is located throughout the territory from the Ural Mountains to the Central Siberian Plateau, occupying a gigantic area.

Western Siberia is a unique area. It looks like a giant bowl in which a rather severe climate reigns. The age of the West Siberian Plain is at least 25 million years. In addition, it is unique in its geological development: for thousands of years, this area has been consistently rising and falling, which is why a truly unusual and complex relief has formed here. However, the average heights of the West Siberian Plain are not high: throughout its entire length they rarely exceed 50-150 meters above sea level.

The main elements of the relief are plains and riverbeds. In some places, the plain acquires pronounced features of a hilly folded area. In the southern part of Western Siberia, such a terrain structure is most common. Many river plains, formed in the conditions of a large number of large slow-flowing rivers, complete the picture. That's where the West Siberian Plain is.

Key features of the terrain

As we already said, the climate here is very specific. Thus, the southern territories are characterized by a pronounced continental climate. Due to the fact that the relief form of the West Siberian Plain is a kind of bowl (see above), there are no significant movements of air masses within its boundaries. Therefore, there are no sharp changes in the temperature regime throughout the winter. And this is all the more surprising because the length of the West Siberian Plain is nearly 2,500 thousand kilometers!

Yes, evenin Barnaul, the temperature often drops to -45 degrees Celsius, but the same temperature is observed in the northern part of the plain, although it is more than two thousand kilometers away. Spring is rather long and relatively dry. April in the full sense of the word is not a spring month.

In May, the temperature rises sharply, but due to the movement of air masses from the ocean, cold often returns, and in some cases snow is possible. In July, the average air temperature can reach +22 degrees Celsius (but not more than 5 degrees in the northern part). Since the average heights of the West Siberian Plain are small, strong piercing winds often occur.

Main causes of the difficult environmental situation in the region

Firstly, the current situation is due to the fact that in recent years the intensity of extraction of natural resources has been growing like an avalanche. In Western Siberia, there are several industries at once that cause the most pronounced damage to nature: pulp and paper, food, oil and forestry. Don't forget about the explosive growth in the number of personal vehicles, which also contributes to the process of environmental pollution.

Unfortunately, this phenomenon is forced even by agriculture: in recent years, quite a lot of mineral fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides have been used in Western Siberia. In addition, local authorities are not at all interested in at least some action regarding landfills.

Many of them have been closed for a long time, but continue to burn regularly every summer, oftenbringing residents of nearby settlements to resuscitation. Due to the fact that the shape of the relief of the West Siberian Plain is similar to a bowl, the smog stands over the cities for several months. The simplest statistics of hospitals show that at this time the situation with respiratory diseases is catastrophically complicated.

Finally, we are extremely irrationally using the irreplaceable resources of the West Siberian Plain. The reasons should be sought even in tsarist times. Then, as in the Soviet period, at first they began to exploit the most easily accessible and richest deposits, along the way, destroying all nearby forests. If you are familiar with a brief description of the West Siberian Plain, then you probably know that there are not so many forests on its territory. Once their crowns were noisy almost throughout the region, but due to the rapid industrialization of the country, almost all of them were completely destroyed.

And only then did they start developing distant deposits, which, due to the imperfection of the technological base, were very quickly depleted.

Besides, most of the raw materials in these deposits remained there. The reason is the same backward technology. Now it is possible to get to these reserves, but you will have to pay for this by high labor intensity of work and a huge number of dumps. Today, this is being done more and more often. The results are deplorable: an incredible amount of slag simply clogs the earth, and its mass leads to the lowering of the earth's surface. As a result, underground rivers become shallow and completely stop,karst faults, near which any industrial activity is extremely dangerous.

Since the age of the West Siberian Plain is about 25-30 million years, there is a lot of we alth in its bowels. But do not assume that their supply is limitless.

Another reason is inertia of thinking and adherence to technocratic dogmas. Many people still believe in a kind of "superpower" of man, which allows him to disregard nature. They forget that the biosphere is not only an extremely complex, but also a very fragile mechanism, inept and mismanaged intervention in which is fraught with major troubles for all mankind.

However, we have already managed to make sure of this: constant climatic "frills", when no one is surprised by the lack of snow in January or snowfalls in June, the sharply frequent appearance of tsunamis and tornadoes, the death of a huge number of fish as a result of emissions of toxic substances into the rivers. Against this background, the characterization of the West Siberian Plain as an “extremely polluted” place no longer looks so depressing, although all these phenomena are links in the same chain.

Influence of anthropogenic factors

A number of cities in this area are actually in the zone of a permanent ecological crisis. The main reason for this situation is the apparent discrepancy between the volumes of nature management and measures to protect the environment. Simply put, the same oil production is constantly growing, but there are practically no measures to clean up the environment from spilled oil.

In addition, there are many nuclear facilities in the region, the state of which in many cases is very far from ideal. Since the height of the West Siberian Plain is low (less likely to spread infection quickly), it was this region that was chosen by the Soviet leadership for testing nuclear weapons. The consequences of this are felt by the inhabitants of the area to this day.

It was not by chance that we talked so much about the natural and climatic features of this area at the very beginning of the article (such as the height of the West Siberian Plain): the same permafrost, which is everywhere in the northern part of the plain, is a factor contributing to the growth environmental tension. In addition, the absence of significant air movements in winter leads to an accelerated accumulation of smog masses over large industrial cities, of which there are many in this area.

Research clearly shows that the most significant environmental problems of the West Siberian Plain are characteristic of the Altai Territory, the Tomsk Region, as well as the Omsk Region and Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug. In these areas, the risk to human he alth is exceeded by 80-85%! In general, such problem areas occupy about 15% of the entire territory of Western Siberia.

Characterization of hazardous emissions

In Kemerovo, Novokuznetsk, Prokopievsk, as well as Tomsk, Omsk, Barnaul and Tyumen (to a lesser extent), the situation is becoming more deplorable every year. There is a sharply increased content of formaldehyde, benzapyrene and phenol in the air. All these substances are the most terrible carcinogens. Add to that a hugethe amount of soot and divalent carbon monoxide emitted. And one should not be surprised at the constantly growing number of respiratory diseases among people living in these cities. Let's not forget about nitrogen dioxide emissions, which is a strong poison.

Oil refining industry

Each year, oil production burns about seven billion cubic meters of associated gas, which is at least 75-80% of its total volume. And this despite the fact that its technological losses cannot exceed 5%. Gas flares in Western Siberia are perfectly visible even from space. It should be added that the degree of purification of emissions in the oil refining industry of the region does not exceed 0.015%. Thus, the environmental problems of the West Siberian Plain are largely caused precisely by the unfair attitude on the part of large oil companies.

Radiation contamination of the area

This is not often talked about, but most of the territory of Western Siberia is located in a zone of fairly significant radiation contamination of the area. The main "merit" in this belongs to the enterprise "Khimkontsentrat" and "Siberian Chemical Plant". In Tomsk, where the last plant is located, an area within a radius of at least 100 kilometers around the city is infected.

Do not forget that radiation pollution has spread far from the territory of Totsky, Novaya Zemlya and Semipalatinsk test sites for nuclear explosions. It captures the Tomsk, Kemerovo and Novosibirsk regions. In addition, under attackthe long-suffering Altai Territory, which is already constantly infected with heptyl falling on its land from falling rocket stages from Baikonur, also turned out to be partially. During the period from 1953 to 1961, many explosions were carried out at these test sites, the consequences of which are still felt.

But that's not all. It is not customary to talk about this, but the West Siberian Plain is located in a zone of rather strong radiation contamination, since many underground nuclear explosions were carried out within its boundaries, the consequences of which are felt in the same Nefteyugansk. In Omsk, the central parts of the city are quite heavily contaminated with radiation, while its peripheral areas have remained practically clean.

Water pollution

Practically the entire territory of the West Siberian Plain is to some extent polluted with ammonium and iron s alts, phenols and nitrates. Unfortunately, even this is not the most significant problem: the entire hydrographic network of the region has big problems in connection with oil production in the region. However, in the southern part of the West Siberian Plain, the situation is relatively favorable in this respect.

Alas, but in other areas, MPC (maximum permissible concentration) of oil products in water is exceeded by five or even 50 (!) Times. This is especially true for the Novosibirsk, Tomsk and Omsk regions. It is important to understand that the entire (!!!) northern part of the long-suffering Western Siberia is so infected that MPC norms exceeded by 50-100 times do not surprise anyone. And now - the worst. Experts believe that about40% of the entire territory of the region is in a state of permanent ecological disaster, as the norms for the content of oil products in water are exceeded by 100 times or more.

These are the environmental problems of the West Siberian Plain. Briefly summing up, we can say that not everything is so bad everywhere. These horrific figures are more typical for areas near large cities, which provides the “average temperature in the hospital”. Everything could be much better, but the management of many enterprises is not at all interested in updating treatment facilities (or even in installing them). But water is one of those assets that the West Siberian Plain is especially rich in! Photos of its majestic rivers are in the article, so you can see for yourself.

Scientists-hydrologists say that the most threatening situation has developed on the Biysk-Novosibirsk section, where the Ob is most polluted. Just below the city of Kolpashev, the degree of contamination of the river is also high, but at the confluence the picture becomes much better. Practically on all smaller rivers of the region the situation is absolutely identical. However, it is the same everywhere: the qualitative and quantitative pollution of the aquatic environment sharply decreases in the direction from north to south (the most minerals are mined in the north).

Forest resources

Oddly enough, but the use (according to official data, of course) of the forest resources of Siberia is quite modest. The average volume of logging in the clearings does not exceed 8%, while the average for the countrythis figure is 18%, and in some cases even more. The lack of planned thinning leads to the fact that the forest begins to age and die.

Thus, overripe arrays today account for at least 70% of the region. All this gradually leads to the fact that real “forest epidemics” constantly flare up on the territory of Western Siberia, caused by invasions of woodworms and other pests. In addition, due to the pollution of the water surface mentioned above, there are frequent cases of drying up of entire forests.

Another problem is the fires that the Russian and West Siberian plains have been "famous for" in recent years. Approximately 65% of unplanned wood losses just fall on them. Do not forget that approximately 25% of the taiga is located in the zone of active oil production, which again dramatically increases the likelihood of large areas catching fire. It should be noted that the number of fires largely depends on the organization of local authorities. So, in the Kemerovo region there are a lot of forests that are seriously affected by pests, but the losses from fire are negligible (no more than 0.2%). This is how the West Siberian Plain is characterized in the "forest" respect. Photos of the most beautiful taiga are available in our article.

Inherent sustainability of biotopes

Of course, the ecological state of the biotopes of Western Siberia, like any other area, largely depends on their own sustainability. The most important factors that in one way or another affect the degree of pollution are: swampiness,permafrost, hydrographic network density. Thus, tundra and forest-tundra are the least stable, but the desert area is able to resist environmental problems for a long time. It can be concluded that the geological structure of the West Siberian Plain contributes to an unfavorable ecological situation.

The most difficult situation is currently observed in the Kemerovo region and Altai. In the first case, this is due to the intensive production of gas and oil, and in the second, to the work of Baikonur, since it is on Altai that the spent first stages of launch vehicles fall. Ecologists warn that these areas should pay close attention to environmental protection measures.

As you can see, the environmental problems of the West Siberian Plain are diverse and very serious. If no action is taken right now, many of them will not be able to be fixed.