This region is characterized by a unique combination of severe climatic conditions, natural resources, an extremely vulnerable environment, and a multi-ethnic population. Geographically, Western Siberia is defined as the territory east of the Ural Mountains but west of the Yenisei River.
West Siberian Plain is located west of Ural Mountains. It covers an area of more than 975,000 sq.mi. It has been described as the world's largest unbroken lowland—more than 50 percent is less than 330 feet (101 m) above sea level—and covers an area of about 2.6–2.7 million km² which is about one third of Siberia, extending from north to south for 2,400 km, from the Arctic Ocean to the foothills of the Altay Mountains, and from west to east for 1,900 km from the Yenisei River to the Ural Mountains.
The plain has eight distinct vegetation regions: tundra, forest-tundra, northern taiga, middle taiga, southern taiga, sub-taiga forest, forest-steppe, and steppe. The number of animal species in the West Siberian Plain ranges from at least 107 in the tundra to 278 or more in the forest-steppe region. The long Yenisey river flows broadly south to north, a distance of 2,195 mi., where it completes its journey, discharging more than 5 million gallons of water per second. Together with it's tributary Angara, the two rivers flow 3,435 mi. The valley it has formed acts as a rough dividing line between the West Siberian Plain and the Central Siberian Plateau. Glacial deposits extend as far south as the Ob-Irtysh confluence, forming occasional low hills and ridges, but otherwise the plain is exeedingly flat and featureless.
Winters on the West Siberian Plain are harsh and long. The climate of most of the plains is either subarctic or continental. Two of the larger cities on the plain are Surgut and Nizhnevartovsk.
Russian researchers warn that Western Siberia has begun to thaw as a result of global warming. The frozen peat bogs in this region may hold billions of tons of methane gas, which may be released into the atmosphere. Methane is a greenhouse gas 22 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. In 2008, a research expedition for the American Geophysical Union detected levels of methane up to 100 times above normal in the Siberian Arctic, likely being released by methane clathrates being released by holes in a frozen 'lid' of seabed permafrost, around the outfall of the Lena River and the area between the Laptev Sea and East Siberian Sea.
The Yamal Peninsula, located in Yamal-Nenets autonomous district of northwest Siberia, Russia, extends roughly 700 km (435 mi) and is bordered principally by the Kara Sea, Baydaratskaya Bay on the west, and by the Gulf of Ob on the east. In the language of its indigenous inhabitants, the Nenets, "Yamal" means "End of the World".
The peninsula consists mostly of permafrost ground and is geologically a very young place —some areas are less than ten thousand years old.
In the Russian Federation, the Yamal peninsula is the place where traditional large-scale nomadic reindeer husbandry is best preserved. On the peninsula, several thousand Nenets and Khanty reindeer herders hold about half a million domestic reindeer. At the same time, Yamal is inhabited by a multitude of migratory bird species.
Yamal holds Russia's biggest natural gas reserves. The Bovanenkovskoye deposit is planned to be developed by the Russian gas monopolist Gazprom by 2011-2012, a fact which put the future of nomadic reindeer herding at considerable risk.
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