The Western World Daily Readings on Geography Chapter 88 Russian Domain Urban Geography I

CHAPTER 88 Russian Domain Urban Geography I A Resource City Northwest Russia . Cartography by Steve . northern location , which at its extreme includes the northernmost continental location , possesses a bitterly cold and harsh climate , essentially nine months of winter , that significantly inhibited settlement of the region . At its worst , the polar winter includes 45 consecutive days when the sun does not rise above the horizon . Not surprisingly even by the early , the population of the region was dominated by small numbers of native peoples , specifically reindeer herders . 425 Settled with dual roles as a penal colony in the Soviet gulag and as the ultimate mineral extraction and processing site , was an ideal location for both roles . Though some very modest settlement occurred in the , grew rapidly in the late with an influx of convicts and extraction of mineral deposits . The city now is the world northernmost city of at least people ( 177 thousand as of 2012 ) The adjacent Peninsula had long been known to hold valuable natural resources . A massive and protracted prehistoric eruption of basaltic lava covered the region with minerals , especially in the nickel , copper , and palladium categories . The severe at . Photo by on .

426 JOEL QUAM AND SCOTT CAMPBELL Under Stalin , the brought a massive surge in the numbers of convicts in the Soviet Union , from political prisoners to petty criminals . Given the historic push for industrial advancement in the USSR , the need for raw materials , including heavy metals , soared . In a sort of perverse logic of supply and demand , the vast supply of prison labor was tapped to fill the demand for the construction of and its industry and for the extraction of its minerals . isolation , hundreds of miles from Moscow , also was ideal for a prison camp . If the prisoners escaped , where would they go ?

In fact , every other place seems so distant that residents often refer to other places in Russia as the mainland . Twelve hundred prisoners arrived in October 1935 , but much larger numbers were to follow , such as another in 1938 . The camp population reached its maximum in 1951 with inmates . Given the harsh and sometimes sadistic living conditions in the Soviet gulag and the forbidding climates of prison camps locations , it is ironic that here in prisoners received better than average treatment . The vital economic and strategic importance of the development of resources created a need for great efforts on the parts of the convicts and the need to keep these forced laborers working . Nevertheless , thousands of prisoners died in the building of the city and in the extracting of minerals from open pit mines however , with the seemingly almost unlimited national pool of prisoners , dead inmates easily were replaced with fresh bodies . Gulag records count convict deaths , but other estimates reach . In all , perhaps a half million convicts passed through . Consequently , was constructed by convicts , some lived and developed a sense of pride in their accomplishments , choosing to stay in even after their prison sentences were completed . After the gulag was closed in 1956 , industrial expansion of the city continued , but newly by means of laborers who were paid wages two or three times higher than those earned in less challenging locations . became the world largest heavy metal smelting complex . The city is dominated by the corporation ( Nickel up to 2016 ) now the world largest producer of nickel and palladium , as well as a major producer of copper and platinum . area . Cartography by Steve . At present the difficulty of living in is not related to prison labor , but instead is caused by extraordinary levels of pollution . In fact , the Blacksmith Institute ( now ) named to its top ten list of the worst polluted places in the world . Essentially all of the industrial construction and subsequent industrial output was undertaken with little or no pollution controls . Partly this was due to the Nor , photo by , frequent pattern of Soviet disregard for individuals in pursuit of advancement of society as a whole . Partly this was due to the also frequent pattern of Soviet industry discounting investment that did lead to additional output .

DOMAIN URBAN GEOGRAPHY 427 While open pit mining leads to degradation of the land , the contamination most affecting the local population is air pollution . The expulsion of gasses , especially sulfur dioxide ( from smelting centers , where the raw ore is separated by type and away from useless waste material ( slag ) causes to be the most polluted city , when measured by tons of air pollutants per capita . Strikingly , plumes of are visible by satellite . At nearly double the output of any other anthropogenic sources , has acted more like volcanoes . From 2005 to 2017 , only the ' volcano in released more than did . A combination of acid rain created from these emissions and liquid and solid waste dumping outside the city has formed a dead zone of a roughly radius around the city where nothing grows . Snowfall may be black from soot or even yellow from sulfur dioxide . Though Russia has numerous locations that have air pollution problems , alone produces 20 of Russia air pollution . The low volatility ofthe typically cold air often creates temperature in the atmosphere around , leaving the air stable and the pollution stagnant . Numerous health woes are a consequence , especially in terms of respiratory disease . An overall measure is that life expectancy in is ten years below the Russian average . Perhaps things will get better in . Mine operators have set forth a plan to reduce emission by 75 by 2023 . Or maybe not . On May 29 , 2020 , a power plant at accidentally leaked tons of diesel fuel into nearby rivers . Learned of this a belated two days later , Russian President Vladimir Putin was enraged by the accident and by local authorities reluctance to report the spill . The diesel fuel colored the affected waterways an hue . It is possible that the oil will reach the Arctic Ocean . On June , 2020 , Nickel acknowledged that over several hours workers had pumped six thousand cubic meters of waste water into the tundra . For a video report on the of , go to this website . A 14 Sulfur dioxide emissions detected by satellite . image from NASA Earth Observatory 2017 . Did You Know ?

Red too ! On the of September 2016 , from an industrial dike in turned the nearby River blood red . NASA imagery notes that this sort of red stain happened other times as well . Check Your Understanding 428 QUAM AND SCOTT CAMPBELL An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text . You can view it online here ?

CITED AND ADDITIONAL BIBLIOGRAPHY A Manmade Volcano over . 2018 . 2020 . Russian Mining Giant Admits Pumping Wastewater into Arctic Tundra . The Guardian , June 28 , 2020 , sec . World news . Emily . 2017 . The Toxic City of , Russia My Deadly Beautiful City The . November , Anna . 2013 . Two Russian Cities on Top 10 Most Polluted Places The Moscow Times . November , 2017 . Generic ( 2016 . Russian River Turned Red by Metallurgical . September 13 , Eric . 2004 . The City Which Should Not Exist . Russian Life 47 ( Kramer , 2017 . For One Business , Polluted Clouds Have Silvery Lining . New York , July . 2007 . Toxic Truth of Secretive Siberian City , April , 2016 . Attribution Generic ( BY ) Nickel Smelter . 2007 . YouTube Video . YouTube . watch ?

Northeast Siberia . 2006 . April . Olga , and Paul . 2007 . The City Built on Ice and Bones . Russian 50 ( Siberian River Has Turned Red Before , Satellites 2016 . September 15 , Steve . Area . College of . College of GIS class . Northwest Russia . College of . College of GIS class . June ,