Nature
The climate is moderate continental, with snowy winters and a short but rather hot summer. Formerly almost all territory was covered with thick conifer forest (fir, pine), but now a large portion of it has been replaced with birch-and-aspen secondary forests and crop fields. Swamps also take considerable areas.
Large animals have been much reduced in numbers, but there are still some bears, wolves, foxes, moose, and wild boars.
A great number of wild birds live and nest in the oblast.
In cities, most common birds are pigeons, jackdaws, hooded crows, rooks, house sparrows, and great tits.
The Volga River flows through Yaroslavl Oblast, with two major dams constructed at Uglich and Rybinsk. The Rybinsk Reservoir, filled between 1941 and 1947, is one of the largest in Europe; its filling flooded the town of Mologa and several hundreds of villages, necessitating the relocation of some 150,000 in Yaroslavl, Vologda, and Kalinin (now Tver) Oblasts.
Mineral resources are limited to construction materials (such as sand, gravel, clay) and peat. There are also mineral water springs and wells.
Read more about this topic: Yaroslavl Oblast
Famous quotes containing the word nature:
“Nature knows nothing but solid bodies; your science deals only with combinations of surfaces. And so nature constantly gives the lie to all your laws; can you name one to which no fact makes an exception?”
—Honoré De Balzac (1799–1850)
“We all end up living secret lives. We create what we are willing to admire and admiring what we shouldn’t confess to the secret of our own sin, our own insufficiency, our own sadness. We all end up taking our secrets into the world and handing them over to strangers, only to realize it’s often too late to claim them back. The very nature of time passing is sad beyond words. Memories mean they’re gone.”
—Alexander Theroux (b. 1940)
“This queen will live. Nature awakes,
A warmth breathes out of her. She hath not been
Entranced above five hours. See how she ‘gins
To blow into life’s flower again.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)