This image shows part of the frozen delta of the Siberian River Lena. Thomas Ernsdorf, a researcher at the Department of Environmental Meteorology, University of Trier in Germany, took this photo during a Russian-German expedition to the Laptev Sea, the largest ice factory of the Arctic Ocean, in April 2008.
“The main goal of the expedition was to investigate the polynia (large open water and thin ice areas surrounded by land or thick ice) dynamics in the Laptev Sea. This scene was captured during a trip on the frozen Lena Delta from Tiksi to the Lena Delta Reserve,” explained Ernsdorf.
The Lena River is one of the longest in the world, flowing north from Lake Baikal in southern Russia for 4,400 kilometres. At the Laptev Sea, the Lena forms a delta with 32,000 square kilometres in area. This is the largest Arctic delta and is a protected wilderness area in Siberia.
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