Largest peatland complex

The western Siberian lowland region covers around 2.75 million square kilometres (1.06 million square miles), about which 787,000 square kilometres (304,000 square miles) is peatlands, much of it underlain by permafrost. The region also includes about 800,000 lakes. It encompasses 16% of Russia, roughly equivalent to seven times the size Germany, and spans arctic and subarctic zones and includes tundra, taiga, steppe and forest habitats.

These wetlands have been estimated to accumulate 22.8 teragrams per year (1 Tg = 1 billion kg), or 24–35% of global accumulation of all northern peatlands. However, scientists expect that Arctic warming will increasingly mobilize currently frozen carbon from the region as the permafrost thaws over the next century.