The Lena-Angara Plateau ( rus, Лено-Ангарское плато),BRE - ЛЕ́НО-АНГА́РСКОЕ ПЛАТО́
/ref> is a

plateau In geology and physical geography, a plateau (; ; ), also called a high plain or a tableland, is an area of a highland consisting of flat terrain that is raised sharply above the surrounding area on at least one side. Often one or more sides ...

Siberia Siberia ( ; rus, Сибирь, r=Sibir', p=sʲɪˈbʲirʲ, a=Ru-Сибирь.ogg) is an extensive geographical region, constituting all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has been a part o ...

. Administratively it is in the

Irkutsk Oblast Irkutsk Oblast (russian: Ирку́тская о́бласть, Irkutskaya oblast; bua, Эрхүү можо, Erkhüü mojo) is a federal subject of Russia (an oblast), located in southeastern Siberia in the basins of the Angara, Lena, and ...

Russian Federation Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia North Asia or Northern Asia, also referred to as Siberia, is the northern region of Asia, which is defined in geographic ...

. The plateau is named after the

Lena Lena or LENA may refer to: Places * Léna Department, a department of Houet Province in Burkina Faso * Lena, Manitoba, an unincorporated community located in Killarney-Turtle Mountain municipality in Manitoba, Canada * Lena, Norway, a village in ...

and

Angara The Angara ( Buryat and mn, Ангар, ''Angar'', "Cleft"; russian: Ангара́, ''Angará'') is a major river in Siberia, which traces a course through Russia's Irkutsk Oblast and Krasnoyarsk Krai. It drains out of Lake Baikal and is ...

rivers, of which it forms the

watershed Watershed is a hydrological term, which has been adopted in other fields in a more or less figurative sense. It may refer to: Hydrology * Drainage divide, the line that separates neighbouring drainage basins * Drainage basin, called a "watershe ...

. Rivers on the plateau flow mostly in a south–north direction. Google Earth The plateau has rich mining areas where iron and copper ores are extracted, as well as rock-salt, talc and mica. The Lena-Angara Plateau is mostly sparsely populated. The biggest settlements are Ust-Kut, Kirensk, Zheleznogorsk-Ilimsky, as well as the villages of Zhigalovo and Kachug. The Bratsk Reservoir is located in the plateau area.

Geography

The Lena-Angara Plateau rises in the middle part of Irkutsk Oblast, between the Angara River to the west and the Kirenga River, a tributary of the Lena, to the east. To the northwest it is bound by the Angara Range, to the south by the

valley, to the southeast by the Primorsky Range, and to the east by the Baikal Range, beyond which lies

Lake Baikal Lake Baikal (, russian: Oзеро Байкал, Ozero Baykal ); mn, Байгал нуур, Baigal nuur) is a rift lake in Russia. It is situated in southern Siberia, between the Federal subjects of Russia, federal subjects of Irkutsk Oblast, I ...

. To the north the Lena-Angara Plateau merges with the

Central Siberian Plateau The Central Siberian Plateau (russian: Среднесибирское плоскогорье, Srednesibirskoye ploskogorye; sah, Орто Сибиир хаптал хайалаах сирэ) is a vast mountainous area in Siberia, one of the Grea ...

. It extends roughly for over with a maximum width of . The average height of the plateau surface is in the south, decreasing to an average of in the north. Mountaintops are flat and elevations moderate; the highest point is the Namai, a high summit. This same mountain, however, is marked as a peak in the E-8 sheet of the

Defense Mapping Agency The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) is a combat support agency within the United States Department of Defense whose primary mission is collecting, analyzing, and distributing geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) in support of national ...

Navigation charts.URSS 1,000,000 scale Operational Navigation Chart; Sheet E-8
/ref> The same peak is shown as a summit in the N-48 sheet of the Soviet Topographic Map.

Hydrography

The plateau is dissected by deep river valleys with average depths ranging between and . The upper course of river Lena crosses the plateau roughly from south to north. Its tributaries Kirenga, Ilga, Tutura,

Tayura The Tayura (russian: Таюра) is a river in Irkutsk Oblast, Russia. It is a tributary of the Lena with a length of and a drainage basin area of . The river is crossed by the Baikal-Amur Mainline and the interregional highway 25K-258 Ust-Kut ...

and Kuta join it in the plateau area.Лено-Ангарское плато
—

Great Soviet Encyclopedia The ''Great Soviet Encyclopedia'' (GSE; ) is one of the largest Russian-language encyclopedias, published in the Soviet Union from 1926 to 1990. After 2002, the encyclopedia's data was partially included into the later ''Bolshaya rossiyskaya e ...

in 30 vols. / Ch. ed.

A.M. Prokhorov Alexander Mikhailovich Prokhorov (born Alexander Michael Prochoroff, russian: Алекса́ндр Миха́йлович Про́хоров; 11 July 1916 – 8 January 2002) was an Australian-born Soviet-Russian physicist known ...

- 3rd ed. - M, 1969-1978. The plateau also includes highly developed karst forms such as the Botovskaya Cave.Kolesnikova E. ''Exploration of the longest limestone cave in Russia''. Svet, 1993, no. 4 (10). pp. 23-25

Flora

There are

taiga Taiga (; rus, тайга́, p=tɐjˈɡa; relates to Mongolic and Turkic languages), generally referred to in North America as a boreal forest or snow forest, is a biome characterized by coniferous forests consisting mostly of pines, spruces ...

forests made up mostly of

larch Larches are deciduous conifers in the genus ''Larix'', of the family Pinaceae (subfamily Laricoideae). Growing from tall, they are native to much of the cooler temperate northern hemisphere, on lowlands in the north and high on mountains furt ...

spruce A spruce is a tree of the genus ''Picea'' (), a genus of about 35 species of coniferous evergreen trees in the family Pinaceae, found in the northern temperate and boreal ( taiga) regions of the Earth. ''Picea'' is the sole genus in the sub ...

and Siberian pine in the higher areas and larch in the river valleys.

References

{{Reflist

External links

Physiogeography of the Russian Far East
Central Siberian Plateau Landforms of Irkutsk Oblast ru:Лено-Ангарское плато

Geography

Hydrography

Flora

See also

References

External links