MAMMOTH STEPPES AND FUTURE CLIMATE
By Sergei ZIMOV, Chief of the Northeastern Research Station of the Pacific Institute of Geography of the RAS Far Eastern Branch Man's appearance and his settlement across the world are closely bound up with the development of pasture ecosystems. Having ousted forests in the latest ice age, pastures occupied them most of the earth's land surface. Their soils in the form of a thick permafrost sheet even now cover North Siberian plains. It serves as the world's largest stock of organic carbon. What is to become with the world climate if permafrost starts thawing? Can pasture ecosystems stem the process? стр. 105 FROM PLEISTOCENE TO HOLOCENE By advancing and retreating, the giant ice sheets have been plowing the north of Europe and America* in the past million years. However, the situation in North Siberia was relatively calm in geological terms in the Pleistocene** epoch: erosion prevailed in the mountains and silt and dust were accumulated in the vast plains and valleys. Life did not come to a standstill even in the highest latitudes. Mammoths, woolly rhinoceroses, bisons, horses, reindeer***, musk oxen, ancestors of red deer, elks, saigas and yaks then grazed on grassy pastures. Beasts of prey - tiger-lions and wolves - never went hungry. In winter ground cracked at low freezing temperatures, with water collected in deep cracks. As it froze, thin ice veins were formed. The process went on for thousands of years and, as a result, a many-meter-thick sheet of silty loam pierced by crisscrossed ice veins covered northern plains. In fact, it is nothing but permafrost soils of the prehistoric period's largest ecosystem of mammoth tundra steppes. And the thick layer filled with grass roots, live microorganisms and animal bones is a detailed record of the ecosystem's development. At the peak of the ice age it encompassed the territory from what is now France to Canada, from the Arctic Islands to Northern China. But at the start of the ... Read more
____________________

Эта публикация была размещена на Либмонстре в другой стране и показалась интересной редакторам.

Полная версия: http://libmonster.com/m/articles/view/MAMMOTH-STEPPES-AND-FUTURE-CLIMATE
Moldova Online · 2264 days ago 0 210
Professional Authors' Comments:
Order by: 
Per page: 
 
  • There are no comments yet
Library guests comments




Actions
Rate
0 votes
Publisher
Moldova Online
Кишинев, Moldova
26.09.2018 (2264 days ago)
Link
Permanent link to this publication:

https://library.md/blogs/entry/MAMMOTH-STEPPES-AND-FUTURE-CLIMATE


© library.md
 
Libmonster Partners

LIBRARY.MD - Moldovian Digital Library

Create your author's collection of articles, books, author's works, biographies, photographic documents, files. Save forever your author's legacy in digital form. Click here to register as an author.
MAMMOTH STEPPES AND FUTURE CLIMATE
 

Editorial Contacts
Chat for Authors: MD LIVE: We are in social networks:

About · News · For Advertisers

Moldovian Digital Library ® All rights reserved.
2019-2024, LIBRARY.MD is a part of Libmonster, international library network (open map)
Keeping the heritage of Moldova


LIBMONSTER NETWORK ONE WORLD - ONE LIBRARY

US-Great Britain Sweden Serbia
Russia Belarus Ukraine Kazakhstan Moldova Tajikistan Estonia Russia-2 Belarus-2

Create and store your author's collection at Libmonster: articles, books, studies. Libmonster will spread your heritage all over the world (through a network of affiliates, partner libraries, search engines, social networks). You will be able to share a link to your profile with colleagues, students, readers and other interested parties, in order to acquaint them with your copyright heritage. Once you register, you have more than 100 tools at your disposal to build your own author collection. It's free: it was, it is, and it always will be.

Download app for Android