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South of the forests are broad open stretches that the Russians call the steppes. In European Russia, the steppes were once a grassland.

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Extending across Russia to the south of the tundra is a broad forested zone called the taiga. The term taiga means "land of little sticks," a reference to the fact that trees do not grow to great size under the harsh conditions.

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Far to the north, in a band that parallels the Arctic shoreline is a zone of tundra. This largely treeless zone is dominated by very small plants and animals that have adapted to the polar conditions of the region.

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The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land.

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Mediterranean Sea | Facts, History, Islands, & Countries | Britannica

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Survey of the Mediterranean Sea, the intercontinental sea that separates Europe from Africa. Called the incubator of Western civilization, it runs west to east from the Strait of Gibraltar between Spain and Morocco to the coast of Turkey and north to south between Croatia’s southern shores and Libya.

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The Black Sea is a body of water and marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean between Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Western Asia.

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The great historic barrier of the Caucasus Mountains rises up across the wide isthmus separating the Black and Caspian seas in the region where Europe and Asia converge

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Virtual trip to The Great Caucasus Mountains With Circassian(Adyghe) Music

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Virtual trip to The Great Caucasus Mountains With Circassian(Adyghe) Music

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In arid regions, rivers such as the Tigris provide a vital but limited source of water.

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Soviet engineers diverted water from the rivers that feed the Aral Sea, a landlocked salt lake, to irrigate farmland in Central Asia.

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Atatürk Dam provides Turkey with water for irrigation and hydroelectric power.

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Ataturk Dam, dam on the Euphrates River in southeastern Turkey, the centrepiece of the Southeastern Anatolia Project. The Ataturk Dam is the largest in a series of 22 dams and 19 hydroelectric stations built on the Euphrates and Tigris rivers in the 1980s and '90s in order to provide irrigation water and hydroelectricity to arid southeastern Turkey. Completed in 1990, the Ataturk Dam is one of the world's largest earth-and-rock fill dams, with an embankment 604 feet (184 metres) high and 5,971 feet (1,820 metres) long. Water impounded by the dam is fed to power-generating units at Şanlıurfa that have a capacity of 2,400 megawatts. From there the water is gravity-fed to vast irrigation networks in the Harran Plain and elsewhere in the vicinity.

Turkey: Ataturk Dam; Euphrates River© tella0303/Fotolia

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Ataturk Dam: Ataturk Dam, dam on the Euphrates River in southeastern Turkey, the centrepiece of the Southeastern Anatolia Project.

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The Caspian Sea, the world's largest inland body of water, supports a rich variety of plant and animal life.

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Much of this region is too dry for trees, but mountains such as the Tien Shan of Kazakhstan get enough rain and snow to support forests.