Climate and Soils
Monthly temperatures are above 10 °C (50 °F) for at least one and at most three months of the year. Precipitation tends to be low due to the low moisture content of the cold air. Precipitation is typically greater in warmer months, with a summer maximum ranging from moderate in North America to extreme in the Russian Far East. Except in the wettest areas glaciers are not large because of the lack of winter precipitation; in the wettest areas, however, glaciers tend to be very abundant and Pleistocene glaciation covered even the lowest elevations. Soils of the subarctic are generally very acidic largely because of the influence of the vegetation both in the taiga and in peaty bogs, which tends to acidify the soil, as well as the extreme ease with which leaching of nutrients takes place even in the most heavily glaciated regions. The dominant soil orders are podsols and further north gelisols.
Subarctic regions are often characterized by taiga forest vegetation, though where winters are relatively mild, as in northern Norway, broadleaf forest may occur—though in some cases soils remain too saturated almost throughout the year to sustain any tree growth and the dominant vegetation is a peaty herbland dominated by grasses and sedges. Typically, there are only a few species of large terrestrial mammals in the subarctic regions, the most important being moose (Alces alces), bears, reindeer Rangifer tarandus, and the wolf (Canis lupus). Agriculture is mainly limited to animal husbandry, though in some areas barley can be grown. Canada and Siberia are very rich in minerals, notably nickel, molybdenum, cobalt, lead, zinc and (since the 1940s) uranium, whilst the Grand Banks and Sea of Okhotsk are two of the richest fisheries in the world and provide support for many small towns.
Except for those areas adjacent to warm ocean currents, there is almost always continuous permafrost due to the very cold winters. This means that building in most subarctic regions is very difficult and expensive: cities are very few (Murmansk being the largest) and generally small, whilst roads are few. Subarctic rail transport only exists in Europe (lines to Narvik and Murmansk) and the Norilsk–Dudinka line in northern Siberia. An important consequence is that transportation tends to be restricted to "bush" planes, helicopters and, in summer, riverboats.
Read more about this topic: Subarctic
Famous quotes containing the words climate and/or soils:
“Culture is the name for what people are interested in, their thoughts, their models, the books they read and the speeches they hear, their table-talk, gossip, controversies, historical sense and scientific training, the values they appreciate, the quality of life they admire. All communities have a culture. It is the climate of their civilization.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)
“He bends to the order of the seasons, the weather, the soils and crops, as the sails of a ship bend to the wind. He represents continuous hard labor, year in, year out, and small gains. He is a slow person, timed to Nature, and not to city watches. He takes the pace of seasons, plants and chemistry. Nature never hurries: atom by atom, little by little, she achieves her work.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)