Geographically, the tundra habitat lies in a zone extending from the northern coast to the south; this gradually transforms into the extensive and dense forests of the
taiga that include a large part of
Siberia and then into the gently sloping
steppe land with trees only on the river banks. Three distinctive zones are the
Caucasus in
southern Russia, the active volcanic region of
Kamchatka in the far northeast; and
Ussuriland in the extreme southeast; in the latter, the indigenous animals and vegetation are akin to
South East Asia rather than Siberia. in the southern part of
Kamchatka. range The tundra region is entirely within the
Arctic Circle and is the most inhospitable terrain with
permafrost extending to a depth of . Taiga is the largest forest in the world covering and accounting for 25% of world's wood reserves. Winter season is the harshest with biting cold conditions. When snow melts here it becomes a "spongy wetland with lakes, pools and puddles". The steppe land lies from
Voronezh and
Senatov to
Kuban area to north of the Caucasus. It extends into south western Siberia. The topography is flat and undulating with dominance of
black soil (). The region is drained by the
Volga River forming a delta before it
debouches into the
Caspian Sea. The steppe "gives way to alpine regions in the Caucasus with 6,000 highly varied plant species".
Kamchatka region has the phenomenon of geothermal bubbling which has resulted in several
volcanoes of which 30 are active. Ussuriland has remarkable monsoon forests. The prominent land form here is the
Sikhote-Alin range that extends for more than , running parallel to the coast. Russian wildlife has been categorized by
World Wide Fund for Nature into 13
bioregions which, as of 2012, have 101 (strictly protected areas) covering more than 33.5 million hectares (82.7 million acres) and
38 national parks (protected areas with implemented zoning). (pronounced:
Zap-o-VED-nik) are strictly protected scientific nature reserves under IUCN category I. The
Zapovednik, Barguzinsky, was the first that was established in 1916 covering the eastern shore areas of
Lake Baikal. The cover the tundra region of the far north, the steppe (prairies) of the south, the Black Sea and the Bering Sea, encompassing a tremendous diversity of territory and play a critical role in nature conservation. The regions and the number of reserves in each of then are: eight in the
Arctic region of Russia, twenty in the
Kola-Karelian & Eastern European Forest, thirteen in the
Eastern European Forest-Steppe,
Steppe & Caspian Semi-Desert, nine in
Ural Mountains, six in the
Caucasus (also
Prielbrusye National Park and
Sochinsky National Park, four in the
Western Siberian Forest, four in
Central Siberia, eight in
Altai-Sayansky, four in
Baikal (and
Zabaykalsky National Park), four in
Zabaikal, fifteen in
Amur-Sakhalin and five in
Kamchatka-Okhotsk Sea. UNESCO listed World Heritage Sites in these regions are:
Virgin Komi Forests of the Urals, the
Lake Baikal, the
Volcanoes of Kamchatka, the
Altai Mountains, the
Western Caucasus, the
Curonian Spit (the
Kurshskaya Kosa National Park), the
Central Sikhote-Alin,
Uvs Lake Basin on the border with Mongolia, and the
Wrangel Island Reserve in the Chukchi Sea in the Russian Far East. ==Legal framework==