Tundra biome

Yamal Peninsula and Northern West Siberia are located in the tundra biome, in the Paleartic ecozone. The tundra is a vast area of stark landscape, that covers a tenth of the Earth. The soil is frozen from 25–90 cm down; this phenomena is known as "permafrost". Instead, bare and sometimes rocky land can only support low growing plants such as moss, heath, and lichen. There are two main seasons, hardly cold winter and mild summer. During the winter it is very cold and dark, with the average temperature around −28 °C, sometimes dipping as low as −50 °C.

In terms of precipitation, the tundra is desert-like, with only about 15–25 cm falling per year. During the summer, the permafrost lets plants grow and reproduce, but because the ground below this is frozen, the water cannot sink any lower, and so the water forms the lakes and marshes found during the summer months. Although precipitation is light, evaporation is also relatively minimal.

The biodiversity of the tundras is low: 1,700 species of vascular plants and only 48 land mammals can be found, although thousands of insects and birds migrate there each year for the marshes. There main vegetation includes: low shrubs, sedges, reindeer mosses, liverworts, and grasses, 400 varieties of flowers crustose and foliose lichen.

 
All of the plants are adapted to sweeping winds and disturbances of the soil. Plants are short and group together to resist the cold temperatures and are protected by the snow during the winter. They can carry out photosynthesis at low temperatures and low light intensities. The growing seasons are short and most plants reproduce by budding and division rather than sexually by flowering.

There are few species with large populations. Notable animals in the Arctic tundra include caribou (reindeer), musk ox, arctic hare, arctic fox, snowy owl, lemmings, and polar bears (only the extreme north).

A severe threat to the tundras, specifically to the permafrost, is global warming. The melting of the permafrost in a given area on human time scales (decades or centuries) could radically change which species can survive there.

Another concern is that about one third of the world's soil-bound carbon is in taiga and tundra areas. When the permafrost melts, it releases carbon in the form of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas.