Sibiryakov Island

The Sibiryakov Island (Russian Остров Сибирякова ) or Kuskin Island (Russian Кузькин остров ) is a 846.7 km ² large Russian island at the junction of Jenisseigolfs in which belongs to the Arctic Ocean (southern ) Kara Sea. Administratively, it belongs to the Krasnoyarsk Territory. She was named the 1878 Russian Gold Industrialists Alexander Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld Sibiryakov from Sweden after his patron and is uninhabited.

Geographical location

The Sibiryakov Island is approximately 30 km north of the coast of Gydan Peninsula and about 30 km northeast of Oleniinsel (both belonging to the autonomous district of the Yamal- Nenets ), from which it is separated by the Owzyna Strait, and about 35 km west the Taimyr peninsula, from which it is separated by a ( too) Jenisseigolf called strait. To the southeast leads to the actual Jenisseigolf about in these opening out Yenisei. To the north of the island lies about 16 km away in the Kara Sea, the small island Nosok to which the elongated sandbank Severnaya Sibirjakowskaja Otmel leads over.

The island is not more than 38 km long, up to 27 km wide, and its coastline is 129.7 km long.

The island and the surrounding waters are part of the Bolshoi Arktitscheski Sapowednik, ( Большой Арктический государственный природный заповедник ), the largest nature reserve of Russia.

Landscape, fauna and climate

The coast of the Sibiryakov Island is mostly flat and hardly broken, but crossed by small creeks. South-east and west of their small elongated islands and sandbanks are upstream. The topographical shape of the island is hilly, a maximum of 33 m in height and is reached by small streams that flow into the Jenisseigolf or in the Kara Sea, traversed. It also indicates the sources of some rivers lakes and swampy areas.

As the island is in the vegetation zone tundra, the vegetation is limited to mosses, lichens and grasses. The winters are long and extremely cold, the summers are short and cold. The prevailing permafrost thaw the increasingly more in the summers. On the island of about 10,000 breeding pairs of different ern seabirds. It is reported by BirdLife International as an Important Bird Area ( RU002 ).

Residents and Fisheries

On the island there are no permanent residents, but in summer, when the sea around the island is less or no longer covered with ice, some live in simple huts fishermen.