- Yana River
to the east.
It is 872 km in length. The
area of its basin is 238,000 km², whilst its annual discharge totals approximately 25 cubic kilometres (20 million acre-feet). Most of this discharge occurs in May and June as the ice on the river breaks up. The Yana freezes up on the surface in October and stays under the ice until late May - early June. In theVerkhoyansk area, it stays frozen to the bottom for 70 to 110 days, and partly frozen for 220 days of the year.The river begins at the confluence of the rivers
Sartang andDulgalakh . As the Yana flows into theYana Bay of theLaptev Sea , it forms a hugeriver delta (10,200 km²).Yarok is a large flat island located east of the main mouths of the Yana.There are approximately 40,000
lake s in the Yana basin, including both alpine lakes formed fromglaciation in theVerkhoyansk Mountains (lowlands were always too dry for glaciation) and overflow lakes on the marshy plains in the north of the basin. The whole Yana basin is undercontinuous permafrost and most islarch woodland grading totundra north of about 70°N, thoughtree s extend in suitable microhabitats right to the delta.The principal tributaries of the Yana are:
Adycha ,Oldzho ,Abyrabyt ,Bytantay . Most of these tributaries are short rivers flowing from the high Verkhoyansk Mountains.Verkhoyansk,
Batagay ,Ust-Kuyga ,Nizhneyansk are the main ports on the Yana.The Yana basin is the site of the so-called
Pole of Cold of Russia, where the lowest recorded temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere are found. In the winter, temperatures in the centre of the basin average as low as -51 °C or -60 °F and have reached as low as -71 °C or -96 °F — though in the mountains it is believed that temperatures have reached -82 °C or -116 °F.Fact|date=February 2008Yakut folklore says that, at such temperatures, if you shout to a friend and they can't hear you, it's because the words have frozen in the air. However, when spring comes the words "thaw" and one can hear everything that was said months ago.History
The Yana River area is the first known site of human habitation in the
Arctic , with evidence of habitation found in the delta from as early as 30,000 years ago (12,000 years before the height of the last period ofglaciation , or theLast Glacial Maximum ).In 1892-1894
Baron Eduard Von Toll , accompanied by expedition leaderAlexander von Bunge , carried out geological surveys in the basin of the Yana (among other Far-eastern Siberian rivers) on behalf of the Russian Imperial Academy of Sciences. During one year and two days the expedition covered 25,000 km, of which 4,200 km were up rivers, carrying out geodesic surveys en route.References
*William Barr, Baron Eduard Von Toll's Last Expedition. Arctic, Sept 1980.
*Alexander von Bunge & Baron Eduard Von Toll, "The Expedition to the New Siberian Islands and the Jana country, equipped by the Imperial Academy of Sciences." 1887.
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