Russia: scale, climate zones and resources
Geography · Key Stage 3 · The School
A huge country
Russia is the biggest country on Earth. It spans eleven time zones. It stretches from Europe in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. The Ural Mountains split it in two. European Russia lies to the west of the Urals. Siberia lies to the east. Siberia alone is bigger than the whole of Canada.
Climate zones, north to south
In the far north lies TUNDRA. It has no trees. It is frozen for most of the year. The ground stays frozen even in summer. This frozen ground is called PERMAFROST. South of the tundra lies TAIGA. Taiga is the biggest forest on Earth. It is made mostly of pine and fir trees. Further south still lies STEPPE. Steppe is open grassland. South of that lies farmland, where the climate is finally warm enough to grow crops.
Why most people live in the west
Most Russians live in European Russia, west of the Urals. The climate there is milder. The farmland there is better. Siberia is huge, but few people live there. Building on permafrost is hard and costly. The growing season in Siberia is short. In many parts, nothing grows at all.
Siberia holds huge amounts of oil, gas, coal, timber and minerals. Few places on Earth have more. But reaching these resources is hard. Permafrost makes roads and pipelines expensive to build. Siberia is remote. Moving resources to market can cost more than digging them up in the first place. Russia is rich in resources and finds them hard to use. Both facts come from the same difficult geography.