Word: tundras
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...times, Siberia was a vast ocean, and its topography still resembles that of a shallow sea bottom, raised at the edges by a saucer-rim of mountains, with few barriers against wind or sun. The flat landscape is banded by four distinct regions-the icy northern shelf of the tundra, where nothing grows except moss, lichen and dwarf shrub; the dense forest zone, or the taiga, where arctic birches sprout beside palm trees; the steppe, a black earth meadowland which, when properly farmed, is among the most productive soils in the world; and farthest south, the deserts. In this overwhelming...
...three weeks, prowling the spongy tundra between the Sadlerochit and Shubelik mountains, the prospectors found nothing but Eskimo and pre-Eskimo artifacts, 2,000 to 5,000 years old. Then, just two days before a plane was due to take them home, Solecki and Colleague Bert Salwen decided to prospect a knoll that looked like just the kind of place a caribou hunter might stand, with a sweeping view of the mountain valley. They were right. Half-hidden in a litter of rocks, they found 25 "choppers"-crudely edged stones with which the first visitors from Asia skinned their catch...
Covering nearly half the surface of South America, and with half the continent's 140 million population, Brazil was the world's fourth largest nation (after Russia, China, Canada) until the U.S. added Alaska. With no deserts, tundra or rugged mountains, the nation is 80% rolling plateau, has the third greatest expanse of arable land on earth, more than all of Europe. But Brazil's potential is not yet scratched...
...North Carolina's Uwharrie National Forest, 50 men broke camp in the swamps and headed stealthily out to intercept and disrupt regular U.S. Army troops on maneuver. In Alaska, a similar force worked with Eskimo scouts in the tundra. Another outfit was learning to handle explosives at the U.S. Navy's underwater demolition school in the Virgin Islands. In the Philippines, another detachment on maneuvers against the 2nd Airborne Battle Group of the 503rd Infantry, slipped through the jungle lines, dropped imitation poison in the drinking water, captured trucks, and otherwise raised sufficient havoc to delay the "advance...
...various Alaskan missions, including three years north of the Arctic Circle. But his most arduous work began in 1950 when he was assigned to Alakanuk, on a Yukon delta island. Here he found 3,000 Eskimos and fewer than 100 whites-a parish of 4,000 square miles of tundra, which freezes solid in the winter's 17-hour, 35-below-zero nights...