Kemerovo Oblast

Kemerovo Oblast — Kuzbass, also known simply as Kemerovo Oblast (Ке́меровская о́бласть) or Kuzbass (Кузба́сс), after the Kuznetsk Basin, is a federal subject of Russia (an oblast). Kemerovo is the administrative center and largest city of the oblast. Kemerovo Oblast is one of Russia's most urbanized regions, with over 70% of the population living in its nine principal cities. Its ethnic composition is predominantly Russian, but Shors, Ukrainians, Tatars, and Chuvash also live in the oblast. The population recorded during the 2010 Census was 2,763,135. Kemerovo Oblast is located in southwestern Siberia, where the West Siberian Plain meets the South Siberian Mountains. The oblast, which covers an area of , shares a border with Tomsk Oblast in the north, Krasnoyarsk Krai and the Republic of Khakassia in the east, the Altai Republic in the south, and with Novosibirsk Oblast and Altai Krai in the west. Verkhny Zub peak, the highest point of the oblast, is located in the eastern border. The climate of the oblast is continental: winters are cold and long, summers are warm, but short. The average January temperature ranges from , the average in July is . Average annual precipitation ranges from on the plains and the foothills of up to or more in mountainous areas. The duration of the frost-free period is 100 days in the north area, and up to 120 days in the south of the Kuznetsk Basin. The environmental conditions in Kuznetsk Basin are heavily influenced by the regional industrial activities, especially, by coal mining. The report about the environmental conditions in Kemerovo region from 2014 indicated that there are more than 20 thousand of enterprises, emitting more than 250 types of atmospheric pollutants, where most urban areas with the worst air quality are located in the Kuznetsk Basin: Novokuznetsk, Mezhdurechensk, Myski, Kaltan, Polysaevo, Belovo and Leninsk-Kuznetskiy. Atmospheric pollution is apparent over Kuznetsk Basin as major regional long-term tropospheric NO2 anomaly was identified over the region in 2006-2020 years.