The Great Lena River

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The first information about the Lena River came to the Elysey jail in winter 1619 from the captive Tunguska prince Iltik: “that the great river” and “big vessels” float there, “and the water in that great river is salt”.

The first the Lena River discovery was made in 1623 by the Mangaseian manufacturer Panteleymon Pyanda detachment. It is unknown, if the Pyanda's detachment met with the yakut people, but, as the academician A.P. Okladnikov confirmed, the Pyanda trip laid the foundation of the settlement in Lensky region by russians.

The Lena is one of the biggest rivers in the world . It starts on the western flank of the Pribaykalsky mountains930m aloft, in 21 km from the Baikal coast and pours in the Laptev Sea . The Lena River length to the Island Stolb is 4294 km , the basin area is 2490 thousand square km. Behind the island there are a lot of islands, the Lena River delta is the biggest in Eurasia, the 2 nd after the Mississippi-river delta in the world. Its area is about 30 thousand square km (it is included in the Ust-Lena national reserve). The delta looks like the Greek letter and in size it is “the biggest letter in the world”.

The Lena-river delta is the biggest ecological trough , through which the bird migration and the southern kinds of plants and animals penetration take place. There are such original sea animals live as the narwhale, the dolphin-white whale, the bearded-seal, the walrus, the ringed seal, and in the Lena sources basin in the lake Oron- the Baikal seal-endemic. There is also the big amount of amberat.

Only in the Lena River basin there are 4 kinds of fish that are not existed in other Yakutia water reservoirs. The Lena River can be regarded as the general natural refugium if the fish genofond in Yakutia.

The Lena is the only one large river, on which coasts there are no powerful industrial manufactures , thus its water is considered to be one of the purest.

All the Yakut rivers are more than 100km long. The rivers Yana, Kolyma, Indigirka and the main Lena affluents – Vilyui, Olyokma and Aldan, on the main characteristics leave behind nearly all the rivers in the European part of Russia . The total annual flow in Yakutia in the driest years is over 539 cu.m.

The biggest Lena affluent, Vilyui , 2650km long, is longer than the Ural, Amudarya and Dnepr.

The biggest cargo traffic volume in Yakutia (70%) is making on the Lena River .

The biggest damage by the Lena spring flood was impaired in May 2001 in Lensk. 20m 12sm – it was an all-time high level in the river . The town was flooded nearly at all. 2692 dwelling-houses, 3025 cottages, more than 70 boiler-houses, about 400km power line were damaged, on the wholesale worehouses, provided the whole republic, about 2000tons of provision were flooded. To the crude data the damage accounted R3bil (3 billion rubles).

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