The Yamal Peninsula , located in Yamal-Nenets autonomous district of northwest Siberia

Siberia

Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...

, Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

, extends roughly 700 km (435 mi) and is bordered principally by the Kara Sea

Kara Sea

The Kara Sea is part of the Arctic Ocean north of Siberia. It is separated from the Barents Sea to the west by the Kara Strait and Novaya Zemlya, and the Laptev Sea to the east by the Severnaya Zemlya....

, Baydaratskaya Bay

Baydaratskaya Bay

Baydaratskaya Bay is a gulf in Russia, located in the southern part of the Kara Sea between the coastline of the Northern termination of the Ural Mountains and Yamal Peninsula. The length of the gulf is approx. 180 km, mouth width - 78 km, depth - up to 20 m. Surface water temperature...

 on the west, and by the Gulf of Ob

Gulf of Ob

The Gulf of Ob is a gigantic bay of the Arctic Ocean, located in Northern Russia at the head the mouth of the Ob River....

 on the east. In the language of its indigenous inhabitants, the Nenets

Nenets people

The Nenets are an indigenous people in Russia. According to the latest census in 2002, there are 41,302 Nenets in the Russian Federation, most of them living in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug and Nenets Autonomous Okrug...

, "Yamal" means "End of the World".

The peninsula

Peninsula

A peninsula is a piece of land that is bordered by water on three sides but connected to mainland. In many Germanic and Celtic languages and also in Baltic, Slavic and Hungarian, peninsulas are called "half-islands"....

 consists mostly of permafrost

Permafrost

In geology, permafrost, cryotic soil or permafrost soil is soil at or below the freezing point of water for two or more years. Ice is not always present, as may be in the case of nonporous bedrock, but it frequently occurs and it may be in amounts exceeding the potential hydraulic saturation of...

 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 nomad

Nomad

Nomadic people , commonly known as itinerants in modern-day contexts, are communities of people who move from one place to another, rather than settling permanently in one location. There are an estimated 30-40 million nomads in the world. Many cultures have traditionally been nomadic, but...

ic reindeer

Reindeer

The reindeer , also known as the caribou in North America, is a deer from the Arctic and Subarctic, including both resident and migratory populations. While overall widespread and numerous, some of its subspecies are rare and one has already gone extinct.Reindeer vary considerably in color and size...

 husbandry is best preserved. On the peninsula, several thousand Nenets and Khanty

Khanty people

Khanty / Hanti are an indigenous people calling themselves Khanti, Khande, Kantek , living in Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug, a region historically known as "Yugra" in Russia, together with the Mansi. In the autonomous okrug, the Khanty and Mansi languages are given co-official status with Russian...

 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

Natural gas

Natural gas is a naturally occurring gas mixture consisting primarily of methane, typically with 0–20% higher hydrocarbons . It is found associated with other hydrocarbon fuel, in coal beds, as methane clathrates, and is an important fuel source and a major feedstock for fertilizers.Most natural...

 reserves. The Bovanenkovskoye deposit is planned to be developed by the Russian gas monopolist Gazprom

Gazprom

Open Joint Stock Company Gazprom is the largest extractor of natural gas in the world and the largest Russian company. Its headquarters are in Cheryomushki District, South-Western Administrative Okrug, Moscow...

 by 2011-2012, the Yamal project

Yamal project

Yamal project, also referred to as Yamal megaproject, is a long term plan to exploit and bring to the markets the vast natural gas reserves in the Yamal Peninsula, Russia. The project is developed by Gazprom.-History:...

, a fact which put the future of nomadic reindeer herding at considerable risk. An estimate of the gas reserves here is 55 trillion cubic meters (tcm), the world's biggest gas reserves and Russias largest energy project in history. The area is largely undeveloped, but work is going on with three large infrastructure projects – the new 572km Obskaya–Bovanenkovo railway

Obskaya–Bovanenkovo Line

The Obskaya–Bovanenkovo Line is a 525 km long railway line in northern Russia. It was opened for traffic in 2010, and was built for the gas fields around Bovanenkovo on the Yamal Peninsula, the Yamal project. The railway contains a 3.9 kilometer long bridge, the Yuribey Bridge. At Obskaya, it is...

 due to be completed in 2011, a gas pipeline, and several bridges.

On the peninsula in the Summer of 2007 the well preserved remains of Lyuba

Lyuba

Lyuba is a female woolly mammoth calf who died ca 40,000 years ago at the age of one month. She is by far the best preserved mammoth mummy in the world, surpassing Dima, a male mammoth calf mummy which had previously been the best known specimen.Discovered in May 2007 by reindeer breeder and...

, a 37,000 year old mammoth calf, were found by a reindeer herder. The animal was female and was determined to be one month old at the time of death.

External links

• Ялмал, статья ЭСБЕ
  Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary
  The Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary is, in its scope and style, the Russian counterpart to the Encyclopædia Britannica. It contains 121,240 articles, 7,800 images, and 235 maps...
  
   
• Статья БСЭGreat Soviet Encyclopedia
  Great Soviet Encyclopedia
  The Great Soviet Encyclopedia is one of the largest and most comprehensive encyclopedias in Russian and in the world, issued by the Soviet state from 1926 to 1990, and again since 2002 .-Editions:There were three editions...
  
  
• Yamal Culture