Ural Mountains

The Ural Mountains are in Russia.

They are a very long line of mountains. They are very old. Over a long time, rain and wind wore them down. People say Europe is on one side and Asia is on the other.

The Ural Mountains are like a long, rugged spine running down the middle of Russia. Britannica measures them at about 2,500 kilometers, from the Ural River in the south to the Pay-Khoy Ridge near the Arctic Ocean in the north. They are narrow for their length: only about 32 to 145 kilometers wide.

For a long time, people have used the Urals to mark where Europe ends and Asia begins, and they make up most of that traditional boundary. The highest peak, Mount Narodnaya, reaches 1,895 meters. That is far lower than the Alps or the Himalayas. Britannica explains that the high mountains that rose here about 280 million years ago were worn down almost flat and later lifted up again.

Britannica describes the Urals as a rugged spine in west-central Russia, extending some 2,500 km from the bend of the Ural River to the eroded Pay-Khoy Ridge, a 400 km extension at the northern tip. They are the major part of the Uralian orogenic belt, which runs 3,500 km from the Aral Sea to the tip of Novaya Zemlya, with the Mughalzhar Hills of northwestern Kazakhstan as a southern extension. The range is only 32 to 145 km wide yet crosses the great latitudinal zones of Eurasia, from Arctic waste to semidesert.

Britannica divides it into five sections: the Polar Urals (Mount Payer, 1,472 m), the Nether-Polar Urals, which hold the highest summits, Narodnaya (1,895 m) and Karpinsk (1,878 m), the Northern Urals (Telpos-Iz, 1,617 m), the low Central Urals (Sredny Baseg, 994 m), and the Southern Urals (Yamantau, 1,640 m). The two northern sections are Alpine in character, with glaciers and permafrost; farther south, many summits are flattened remnants of ancient erosion surfaces.

In the far north of the Urals it is cold, with moss and little plants.

Farther south grow huge forests. Brown bears, lynx and elk live in the forests. Arctic foxes and a few reindeer live in the cold north.

Because the Urals are so long, they cross many kinds of land. In the far north is tundra, where mosses and lichens grow and Arctic foxes, lemmings and snowy owls live. Farther south comes the taiga, huge forests of spruce, fir, pine and larch. The Southern Urals have mixed forests with oak, linden and elm, and dry grassland called steppe.

Britannica says the richest animal life is in the forests: brown bears, lynx, wolverines and elk, plus sables, martens and squirrels. Rivers in the north are full of fish such as grayling and salmon. The western slope gets more rain and snow than the eastern slope. Winters are long: rivers stay frozen for five months in the south and seven months in the north.

Britannica describes a continental climate with extremes that grow from north to south and west to east. Westerly winds bring Atlantic moisture: up to 1,000 mm a year on the western slope of the Nether-Polar and Northern Urals, against about 300 mm on the drier eastern slope. Average January temperatures are about −21 °C in the north and −15 °C in the south; July averages range from 10 °C to 22 °C.

Vegetation follows both latitude and slope. Mixed forests of oak, small-leaf linden and elm with Siberian fir and spruce clothe the humid western foothills of the Southern Urals up to about 640 m; taiga of spruce, fir, pine and larch covers the Central and Northern Urals, where forest climbs to about 850 m; in the Nether-Polar and Polar Urals mountain tundra begins as low as 400 m. Britannica notes there are no specifically mountain animals, because the range is low and accessible; the fauna resembles that of eastern Europe and western Siberia. The forests hold brown bear, lynx, wolverine, elk, sable and marten; the tundra holds Arctic fox, Ob lemmings, snowy owls and a few reindeer. Since 1995, the Virgin Komi Forests in the north, 3.28 million ha of tundra, mountain tundra and boreal forest, have been a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The Urals are full of useful rocks and metals.

People dig for iron, copper and gold. Shiny gems are found here too. Big cities stand near the mountains.

Britannica calls the Urals extremely rich in minerals. It lists iron, copper, nickel, gold and platinum, and gems such as amethyst, topaz and emerald. In the early 1700s, Russian scholar Vasily Tatishchev surveyed the mountains for Peter the Great, and large-scale mining of iron and copper began. The Urals soon became one of Russia's biggest industrial regions.

Today most people in the region live in cities in the Central and Southern Urals, such as Yekaterinburg, Chelyabinsk, Perm and Ufa. Farther south, farmers grow wheat, potatoes and other crops on the steppe. Scientists have studied the Urals for centuries; in 1841 the English geologist Roderick Murchison made the first geologic map of the range.

Britannica's history: the Urals are first mentioned in Arabic sources of the 10th century; Russians reached the northernmost Urals at the end of the 11th century but completed their discovery only in the early 17th, when the mineral wealth came to light. Vasily Tatishchev made the first geographic survey for Peter I in the early 18th century, when systematic iron and copper mining began. The first serious scientific study came in 1770–71; later scholars included Karpinsky, Krylov, Sabaneev, Alexander von Humboldt and Sir Roderick Murchison, whose 1841 geologic map was the first of the range.

Magnetite ores dominate the eastern slope; there are copper at Gay and Sibay, nickel at Ufaley, bauxite, chromite, gold, platinum, asbestos and gems, and on the west potash, oil and gas; coal is mined on both slopes, the largest field at Pechora. Industry grew quickly in World War II, when plants were moved east. Britannica also records a cost: a Soviet plutonium plant near Ozersk, operating from 1949 to 1990, released radioactive waste into the Techa River and Lake Karachay, and a 1957 tank explosion contaminated about 23,000 km² of land, harming the health of people in the region.