Ямал түбегі: Сібірдің солтүстік шекарасы

Peninsula located in the Yamalo Nenets Autonomous Okrug of Siberia, Russia

The Yamal Peninsula (полуостров Ямал) is located in the Yamalo Nenets Autonomous Okrug of northwest Siberia, Russia. It extends roughly 700 km (435 mi) and is bordered principally by the Kara Sea, Baydaratskaya Bay on the west, and by the Gulf of Ob on the east. At the northern end of this peninsula lie the Malygina Strait and, beyond it, Bely Island. Across the river lies the Gyda Peninsula. In the language of its indigenous inhabitants, the Nenets, "Yamal" means "End of the Land". The Yamal peninsula is inhabited by a multitude of migratory bird species. The well preserved remains of Lyuba, a 37,000 year old mammoth calf, were found by a reindeer herder on the peninsula in the summer of 2007. The animal was female and was determined to be one month old at the time of death.

The peninsula consists mostly of permafrost ground and there are numerous lakes of thermokarst origin, the biggest of which are Neito and Yambuto in the central part. Many hydrocarbon fields have been discovered on the Yamal Peninsula, including large gas fields. The main hydrocarbon resources are concentrated in the permeable Aptian Cenomanian complex.

According to anthropologist Sven Haakanson, the Yamal peninsula is the place within the Russian Federation where traditional large scale nomadic reindeer husbandry is best preserved. Nenets and Khanty reindeer herders hold about half a million domestic reindeer.

The area is largely undeveloped, but work is ongoing with several large infrastructure projects, including a gas pipeline and several bridges. The 572 km Obskaya–Bovanenkovo railway, completed in 2011, is the northernmost railway in the world. Russian gas monopolist Gazprom had planned to develop the Yurkharovskoye gas field by 2011–2012. The peninsula's gas reserves are estimated to be 55 trillion cubic meters (tcm). Russia's largest energy project in history, known as the Yamal project, puts the future of nomadic reindeer herding at considerable risk.

According to researchers at Norway's Centre for Arctic Gas Hydrate (CAGE), through a process called geothermal heat flux, the Siberian permafrost, which extends to the seabed of the Kara Sea, a section of the Arctic Ocean between the Yamal Peninsula and Novaya Zemlya, is thawing. According to a CAGE researcher, Aleksei Portnov: