Largest Tundra Regions in the World, From Taymyr to the Canadian Arctic

Russia’s Arctic coast, from the Kola Peninsula to Chukotka, is the largest tundra region in the world. The Russian tundra ecoregions mapped by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) together cover more than 3 million km². The Canadian Arctic comes second with about 2.4 million km², followed by Alaska and the ice-free coasts of Greenland, each with close to half a million km², and the mountain tundra of Norway and Sweden. Measured by single ecoregion, the biggest is Canada’s Middle Arctic tundra at 1,034,340 km². It is followed by Russia’s Taimyr–Central Siberian tundra (954,670 km²) and Canada’s Low Arctic tundra (798,399 km²). Outside the polar regions, some of the most extensive tundra-like alpine land is on the Tibetan Plateau, and the Antarctic has only small patches near the coast.

Measuring the Tundra With WWF Ecoregions

Nobody has drawn one agreed boundary around the tundra, so ranking its regions needs a fixed map to work from. Tundra is the biome where low temperatures and short growing seasons stop trees from growing. Its plants are dwarf shrubs, sedges, grasses, mosses and lichens, and in the Arctic it usually sits on permafrost. Its southern edge is the tree line, which is a gradual transition, not a sharp line.

The most consistent way to measure it is with the WWF’s map of terrestrial ecoregions. This map divides the world into named ecoregions and assigns each one to a biome. This article uses the areas given for the WWF tundra-biome ecoregions on Wikipedia. Areas are rounded to the nearest km² as published. One ecoregion, the Northeast Siberian coastal tundra, is left out of the rankings because its Wikipedia article gives two different areas (222,480 km² and 846,149 km²).

Russia’s Arctic Rim, From the Kanin Peninsula to Chukotka

Six of the ten largest ecoregions are in Russia, and together with the small Kola Peninsula tundra (58,793 km²) they cover just over 3 million km². From west to east, the Northwest Russian–Novaya Zemlya tundra (284,122 km²) runs from the Kanin Peninsula on the White Sea along the Barents Sea coast to the Yamal Peninsula, and includes the southern half of Novaya Zemlya. Next is the Yamal–Gydan tundra (412,067 km²), two flat, wet peninsulas on either side of the Gulf of Ob in the zone of continuous permafrost. In the language of the Nenets people, Yamal means “end of the land”. Nenets and Khanty herders keep about half a million domestic reindeer there, and the peninsula also holds large gas fields. In 2007 a Nenets herder found the frozen remains of Lyuba, a mammoth calf that died about 42,000 years ago.

East of the Yenisei is the Taimyr–Central Siberian tundra (954,670 km²), the largest tundra ecoregion in Eurasia. It stretches from the Yenisei delta across the Taymyr Peninsula and the Khatanga Gulf to the Lena delta, around the Byrranga Mountains and Lake Taymyr, which is 165 km long. Cape Chelyuskin, at its northern tip, is the northernmost point of mainland Eurasia. January averages −33.5 °C at the centre of the ecoregion and July 13.2 °C, and annual precipitation is only about 257 mm.

Further east the tundra climbs into the mountains. The Cherskii–Kolyma mountain tundra (556,589 km²) covers the high ground of the Chersky Range and the Kolyma Mountains. The Bering tundra (474,227 km²) lies between the Kolyma Mountains and the Bering Sea, and the Chukchi Peninsula tundra (298,367 km²) covers the coast of the East Siberian Sea. To compare this coast with the Alaskan side of the strait, see Siberia vs Alaska.

Canada’s Three Arctic Tundras and the Torngat Mountains

Canada has the single largest tundra ecoregion, and its five Arctic and eastern tundra ecoregions alone cover about 2.4 million km², before the alpine tundra of the Yukon and the western mountains is added. The Middle Arctic tundra (1,034,340 km²) covers the southern islands of the Arctic Archipelago, the northern mainland of Nunavut and part of northern Quebec. It is Canada’s coldest and driest ecoregion, often described as a polar desert, and it holds about 80% of the world’s muskoxen. Moss and lichen make up 56% of its ground cover. To the south, the Low Arctic tundra (798,399 km²) is a rolling shrub tundra along the Northwest Territories–Nunavut border. It supports large caribou herds and big nesting colonies of snow geese, and about 95% of it is still intact.

North of both lies the High Arctic tundra (464,788 km²), which covers most of the northern Arctic Archipelago from Baffin, Somerset and Prince of Wales islands to Ellesmere Island. Much of it is under ice, and parts get as little as 50 mm of precipitation a year. Two mountain ecoregions complete the Canadian total. The Davis Highlands tundra (88,084 km²) runs along the glaciated northeast coast of Baffin and Bylot islands, rising to 2,147 m at Mount Odin. The Torngat Mountain tundra (32,363 km²) is on the Labrador Peninsula between Ungava Bay and the Atlantic. For the climate and wildlife of these lands, see our Arctic tundra geography guide.

Alaska’s North Slope and the Bering Lowlands

Alaska’s four lowland and foothill tundra ecoregions add up to about 470,000 km², although one of them continues into Canada, and the mountain tundra of the Brooks Range and the Alaska and St. Elias ranges adds more. On the north coast, the Arctic coastal tundra (98,200 km²) is a flat, boggy plain covered in thaw lakes, ice wedges and pingos. It continues east into Canada along the Tuktoyaktuk coast and Banks Island. It provides calving grounds for the Western Arctic, Teshekpuk, Central Arctic and Porcupine caribou herds, and it also contains the Prudhoe Bay and Kuparuk oil fields and part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge’s coastal plain. Inland, the Arctic foothills tundra (123,512 km²) rises toward the Brooks Range, from the Chukchi Sea to the Yukon border. Its main plants are cottongrass and sedges.

On the Bering Sea coast, the Beringia lowland tundra (150,900 km²) runs from Bristol Bay north to Kotzebue Sound, and lakes and ponds cover almost a quarter of it. The Beringia upland tundra (97,300 km²) takes in the Seward Peninsula, the Ahklun Mountains and western St Lawrence Island, with peaks up to about 1,500 m. Tundra burns too: in 2007, 1,039 km² burned on the north slope of the Brooks Range.

Greenland’s Ice-Free Coast and the Scandinavian Fells

Greenland covers about 2.17 million km², but its ice sheet covers roughly 1.71 to 1.76 million km² depending on the source, or around 80% of the island. The tundra is limited to the coastal strip between the ice and the sea. The Kalaallit Nunaat high arctic tundra (304,321 km²) covers the northern half of the west coast and the northern third of the east coast, and most of it lies within Northeast Greenland National Park, the largest national park in the world. About a third of it is covered by moss and lichen, and another 3% by herbs and shrubs. The low arctic ecoregion on the southern and western coasts, which reaches up to 100 km inland, supports birch, alder and Greenland mountain ash in sheltered fjord heads. Our Greenland ice sheet guide explains why so little land is ice-free.

In Scandinavia, the main tundra ecoregion is the Scandinavian montane birch forest and grasslands, which the WWF classes as tundra even though birch woodland grows on its lower slopes. It follows the Scandinavian Mountains for about 1,600 km. Its area is given as 236,788 km² in one place and about 243,000 km² in another. About two-thirds of it is in Norway, a third in Sweden, and a small part in northwestern Finland. Across the border, the Kola Peninsula tundra (58,793 km²) has a milder climate than its latitude would suggest, because of the White Sea. These fells are the reindeer country of the Sámi. The word “tundra” was first used in English in 1824, taken from Russian, and the Russian word may in turn come from a Sámi word meaning “fell” or “elevated wasteland”.

Antarctic Tundra and the Tibetan Plateau’s Alpine Meadows

The Antarctic has very little tundra. Most of the continent is ice or cold desert. The few ice-free patches are on rocky soil near the coast, especially on the Antarctic Peninsula, and on subantarctic islands such as South Georgia and Kerguelen. On the continent, these patches support 300 to 400 species of lichen, about 100 mosses and just two flowering plants, Antarctic hair grass and Antarctic pearlwort. Unlike the Arctic, there are no large land mammals. The WWF groups the island tundra into small ecoregions such as the Scotia Sea Islands tundra, the Southern Indian Ocean Islands tundra and the Antipodes Subantarctic Islands tundra, which takes in the Auckland, Campbell and Macquarie islands.

Alpine tundra grows above the tree line on mountains, and some of its most extensive areas are on the Tibetan Plateau. The Tibetan Plateau alpine shrublands and meadows (272,208 km²) and the drier Central Tibetan Plateau alpine steppe (629,626 km²) have a tundra-like cover of cold-tolerant grasses and dwarf shrubs. However, the WWF places them in its montane grasslands biome, so they are not in the table above. Siberia has true mountain tundra in the Trans-Baikal Bald Mountain tundra (217,559 km²), a chain of treeless summits above about 975 m that stretches about 1,800 km from Lake Baikal to the Sea of Okhotsk. For how all of these fit into the wider biome, read our complete guide to the tundra biome.