Formed after the last ice age rough­ly 10 000 years ago, the mire spans over 53 000 km² in West­ern Siberia and com­pris­es three prin­ci­pal land­scape units — raised bogs, tran­si­tion­al mires, and forest­ed mires. Mil­len­nia of peat accu­mu­la­tion have built lay­ers up to 10 m deep, dot­ted with hun­dreds of thou­sands of glis­ten­ing lakes and sparse shrub islands, while a den­drit­ic net­work of water­cours­es feeds the major trib­u­taries of the Ob and Irtysh rivers. With vir­tu­al­ly no roads or infra­struc­ture, the swamp remains one of the most inac­ces­si­ble cor­ners of the plan­et, ide­al for study­ing nat­ur­al car­bon and water cycles and observ­ing rare bird and mam­mal species.