Severnaya Zemlya broader Shokalsky Strait Bolshevik Island from October Revolution Island. Both straits connect the Kara Sea in the west with the Laptev Sea in the east. This archipelago encloses the northern limits of the Kara Sea on its western shores, together with Novaya Zemlya, located roughly to the southwest. The big rivers Ob and Yenisei, among others, flow from the south into this marginal sea area of the Arctic Ocean, with their abundant waters contributing to a climate with relatively high precipitation despite the prevalent extreme cold temperatures of the high latitude. The Laptev Sea, where the mighty Lena River steadily
Severnaya Zemlya as Arctic lemming, which is present on all of the large islands and, in some places has been recorded to reach a density of 500 per km (1,300 per sq mi). The Arctic fox ("Alopex lagopus") has been known to den on the islands, with several hundred observed in the 1980s. Other mammals occasionally observed include the wolf ("Canis lupus"), the polar bear ("Ursus maritimus"), ermine ("Mustela erminea"), Arctic hare ("Lepus timidus"), and reindeer ("Rangifer tarandus"). The discovery of Severnaya Zemlya is the subject of Veniamin Kaverin's novel "The Two Captains" as well as its stage adaptation, "Nord-Ost". Severnaya Zemlya