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:
“For as the eyes of bats are to the blaze of day, so is the reason in our soul to the things which are by nature most evident of all.”
—Aristotle (384–322 B.C.)
“The moral virtues, then, are produced in us neither by nature nor against nature. Nature, indeed, prepares in us the ground for their reception, but their complete formation is the product of habit.”
—Aristotle (384–322 B.C.)
“When Nature was shaping him, clay was not granted
For making so full-sized a man as she wanted,
So, to fill out her model, a little she spared
From some finer-grained stuff for a woman prepared,
And she could not have hit a more excellent plan
For making him fully and perfectly man.”
—James Russell Lowell (1819–1891)