The southern edge
In the Southern Altai Mountains of East Kazakhstan lies the Katon-Karagay National Park, the largest in the country, covering over 643,000 hectares. Within this remote, glacier-carved landscape of steep valleys and high plateaus, a important climatic boundary exists. Here, the vast Eurasian permafrost—ground that remains frozen for at least two consecutive years—reaches its southernmost limits. This is not continuous, deep-frozen ground of the high Arctic, but a more delicate and unstable discontinuous permafrost, highly sensitive to changes in climate.
The permafrost in this region of the Altai is typically found at altitudes between 1,600 and 2,500 meters, where its thickness can reach up to 250 meters. It exists beneath an "active layer," the surface soil that thaws in the summer and refreezes in winter. This seasonal thaw allows for the growth of sub-alpine forests dominated by Siberian pine, larch, and birch, as well as extensive peatlands. These peatlands, saturated with water and composed of partially decayed plant matter, hold enormous quantities of organic carbon, locked away by the cold. The frozen ground acts as a natural freezer, halting the microbial decomposition that would otherwise release this carbon into the atmosphere.