ABSTRACT
The West Siberian steppes also contain Greater Siberia's lake district, with some lakes that are perennial, such as Lake Chany, and others that expand and shrink like Florida's Everglades, with the rise and fall of the water table. Western Siberia is characterized by three physiographic provinces the West Siberian Lowland, the Altay Mountains, and the Salair-Kuznetsk ranges. As in Western Siberia, the polar climates of the north experience a growing season of no more than 60 days. Instead, the soils of Western Siberia are commonly peat bogs and waterlogged clays. Near the border between Russia and Kazakhstan, the semiarid continental climate yields steppe, or grassland, vegetation, the soils for which are typically black earths called chernozems. They also militate against the normal processes of soil formation, which usually yield highly acidic podzols. They live alongside the widely scattered Evenk people, whose autonomous okrug, Evenkia, dominates the upland.
