Death Valley in Kamchatka Bashny.Net

Writes nature photographer Igor Shpilenok

In 1975, the most upper reaches of the Hot Spring, under the top of the volcano Kikhpinych, just three hours' walk from the research hospital in the Valley of Geysers, volcanologist Vladimir Leonov and chief forester of the Kronotsky Nature Reserve Vladimir Kaliayev was found a place of mass death of animals. When they flew a group of biologists information on the survey, at the confluence of three streams (now called Wicked, Central, Zheltosopochny) forming Geyser river, they saw four dead bear, fox, Steller's sea eagle, and a variety of small rodents and birds. Most of them are on the side of the stream, on a platform the size 30h100 meters. Venues with fewer dead animals were discovered in the neighboring streams.

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The water in the streams was unnatural chemical tinge, and the banks and hills covered with yellow coating of sulfur. Thus it was discovered Death Valley. Studies have shown that the death of the animals comes from the high concentration of toxic gases, mainly hydrogen sulfide. Some researchers have found in the gas mixture cyanide compound. Poisonous gases stele above the ground, their concentration at a height of 10 - 15 cm in two times higher than at the height of 50 cm. This explains why no known cases of severe poisoning or death at the bottom of Death Valley. Once in a windless hot July day on the bank of the creek Wicked I fussed too long on his knees, macro lens photographing dead small birds, and felt the pain in the back of the head, dizziness, shortness of breath, a bad taste in the mouth. I had to leave hurriedly up the slope, where the wind was pulling, and half an hour later began to feel normal. Dead animals in polluted almost sterile environment of the Valley of death decompose slowly and serve as bait for other predators, which in turn too often die. In 1978, the reserve staff conducted an experiment pushed the accumulated remains of animals in the river Geyser, after which the mortality of predators at sites of death has declined dramatically.
Among the dead animals are found relatively rarely eat plants, like birds or ground squirrels, too, because the plants can not take root on the grounds of death.
In other volcanic areas of our planet are also known places like Kamchatka's Valley of Death. But everywhere the cause of death of animals is considered carbon dioxide concentrated in the surface layers of air. The loss of animals from the hydrogen sulfide in the Kamchatka Valley of Death, unknown anywhere else.

The dead bear.



Passerines - the most frequent victims of Death Valley.



Dead Water Death Valley.



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