Subarctic

Near the summer solstice for instance, subarctic regions can experience an all-night period of either civil, nautical, or astronomical twilight (or in the northern reaches full daylight), since the sun never dips more than 18 degrees below the horizon.

Canada and Siberia are very rich in minerals, notably nickel, molybdenum, cobalt, lead, zinc and uranium,[2] whilst the Grand Banks and Sea of Okhotsk are two of the richest fisheries in the world and provide support for many small towns.

Even then, the difficulty of transportation ensured that few settlements (most of them are created for mining) lasted long—such as the abandoned, once-thriving cities of the Yukon, Northwest Territories[4] and increasingly Siberia illustrate this.

The Trans-Siberian Railway, which skirts the edge of the region, provided a major boost to Russian settlement in the subarctic, as did the intensive industrialization under Joseph Stalin that relied on the enormous mineral resources of the Central Siberian Plateau.

Tourism in recent years has become a major source of revenue for most countries of the subarctic due to the beautiful, generally glacial landscapes so characteristic of the region.

At the same time, the older industries of the subarctic (fishing, mining, hydroelectric power) are being threatened by both environmental opposition and overfishing leading to depleted stocks of commercially important species living in this region.