Yana River

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Yana
Yana river.png
Basin of the Yana.
Native name ??????/Daangy
Country Russia
Physical characteristics
Main source Confluence of Sartang and Dulgalakh
River mouth Laptev Sea
0 m (0 ft)
Length 872 km (542 mi)
Discharge
Average rate:
25 m3/s (880 cu ft/s)
Basin features
Basin size 238,000 km2 (92,000 sq mi)

Map showing the two Yana Rivers in the Russian Far East. The river of this article
is the northern one which It flows into the Laptev Sea.
The Yana River (Russian: ???; IPA: ['jan?]; Yakut: ??????, C?i), is a river in
Sakha in Russia, located between the Lena to the west and the Indigirka to the
east.

Contents [hide]
1 Course
2 History
3 References
4 General References
Course[edit]
It is 872 kilometres (542 mi) long, while the upper Yana is 1,320 kilometres (820
mi) long. Its drainage basin covers 238,000 square kilometres (92,000 sq mi), and
its annual discharge totals approximately 25 cubic kilometres (20,000,000 acreft).
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 or early June. In the Verkhoyansk 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 and Dulgalakh. As the Yana
flows into the Yana Bay of the Laptev Sea, it forms a huge river delta covering
10,200 square kilometres (3,900 sq mi). Yarok is a large flat island located east
of the main mouths of the Yana.

There are approximately 40,000 lakes in the Yana basin, including both alpine lakes
formed from glaciation in the Verkhoyansk 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 under continuous permafrost and most is larch woodland
grading to tundra north of about 70N, though trees 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 (-60 F) and have
reached as low as -71 C (-96 F) though in the mountains it is believed that
temperatures have reached -82 C (-116 F).[citation needed] Yakut folklore says
that, at such temperatures, if you shout to a friend and they cannot hear you, it
is 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.[citation needed]

History[edit]
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 of glaciation, or the Last Glacial
Maximum).

In 163338 Ilya Perfilyev and Ivan Rebrov sailed down the Lena and east along the
Arctic coast to the mouth of the Yana and reached the Indigirka River estuary. In
163642 Elisei Buza followed essentially the same route. In 163840, Poznik Ivanov
ascended a tributary of the lower Lena, crossed the Verkhoyansk Range to the upper
Yana and then crossed the Chersky Range to the Indigirka.[1]

In 18921894 Baron Eduard Von Toll, accompanied by expedition leader Alexander 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 kilometres (16,000 mi),
of which 4,200 kilometres (2,600 mi) were up rivers, carrying out geodesic surveys
en route.