Nepedia
Back to Discover
Fluent Reader
🗺️

Lake Taymyr

geography Maturity 11-13 Next article →

Lake Taymyr is a huge body of water in Russia. It sits on the Taymyr Peninsula. This area is part of the Krasnoyarsk Krai region. The lake lies just south of the Byrranga Mountains. It has a very strange and irregular shape. Many long arms of water reach out in different directions. These arms cover a very wide region of land.

Water moves in and out of the lake through many paths. The Upper Taymyra river flows into the lake from the west. Other rivers also join the water. These include the Zapadnaya, Severnaya, and Bikada-Nguoma rivers. The Yamu-Tarida and Kalamissamo rivers also flow in. One river, the Lower Taymyra, flows out of the lake. It travels north across the Byrranga mountain region.

The weather here is very cold for much of the year. Lake Taymyr stays covered in thick ice for a long time. The ice forms in late September. It stays there until June arrives. The land south of the lake is a tundra. This area is full of many small lakes and marshes. To the east, you can find Lake Kungusalakh. To the southeast, there is Lake Portnyagino.

Many living things call this cold Arctic water home. The lake is teeming with many kinds of fish. You can find fish called loach, sig, and muksun here. A special type of fish called char also lives in the water. Some of these fish species face a hard job. People catch too many of them in this remote area. This is known as overexploitation.

Scientists have studied the lake and its surroundings. They found small amounts of plutonium in the lake mud. This may have come from the wind. It likely happened after nuclear tests in Novaya Zemlya during the Cold War. The lake is a part of the North Siberian Lowland. It is also part of the Taymyr biosphere reserve. This helps us learn about the natural world.

322 words

Where will your curiosity go next?

Keep exploring at your chosen reading level.

More to explore

🔬 Go deeper

More advanced topics to explore

🪜 Step back

Simpler topics to build understanding

What is Nepedia?

A free, ad-free encyclopedia for children. Every article is written at five reading levels, so the same page works for a five-year-old and a fifteen-year-old — use the level switcher above to see this one change. No account needed to read.