The plateau quickly heats up; rising streams of hot air drive away the emerging clouds toward the low floodplain lands.

As a result, annual rainfall in the region (an average of 480 mm per year) over the plateau is reduced by a factor of 1.5–2.

Despite rather steep slopes, the plateau has undergone significant anthropogenic changes: in 1860 some of it was blown up using dynamite for laying a railway.

The first written evidence is the records of deacon Ignatius Smolyanin, who accompanied Metropolitan Pimen in 1389: "We sailed to the Tikhaya Sosna and saw pillars [of] white stone, wonderfully and beautifully standing next to [each other], like small, white and very bright stacks, above the Sosna river" («приплыхом к Тихой Сосне и видехом столпы камень белы, дивно ж и красно стоят рядом, яко стози малы, белы и светлы зело, над рекой над Сосною»).

But after cessation of grazing and human presence regulation, the steppe vegetation was restored in its original form.

More than 250 species of xerophytic and petrophytic plants grows on the plateau such as: European feather grass, Salvia nutans, limestone thyme, Securigera varia, Eastern Centaurea, Ephedra distachya, Schiveréckia podólica, Clematis integrifolia, Pulsatilla pratensis, Onosma simplicissima, pygmy iris and Iris aphylla, snowdrop anemone, Adonis vernalis.

[6] The nature reserve museum is accessible for free, there is a wide range of excursion programs for organized tourist groups.