Kara Crater by Remote Sensing

Introduction: The Kara River basin, located between the Pai-Khoi ridge and the Baydarata Gulf of the Kara Sea 200 km to the north of Vorkuta, Russia, was found to be an impact structure in 1970’s [1,2]. The 40Ar-39Ar impactite ages vary from 70 to 75 Ma [3,4]. Actually, two craters were suggested [1]: The Kara crater, 60-65 km in diameter, was defined on the Kara River estuary while the 25 km Ust’-Kara crater was suppposed to be mostly in the sea. The impactite outcrops on the Baydarata Gulf shore just to the northeast of the Kara crater were proposed to belong to the Ust’-Kara crater. The competing idea does not find any solid proofs for the Ust’-Kara crater. This would make the deeply-eroded large Kara crater up to 120 km in size [5,6]. The sparsely inhabited area is important for reindeer herders. Its vegetation is mostly intact with only few signs of old prospecting activities. Only a few fishermen, nenets, and geologists occupy the vast tundra in summertime. The Vorkuta mining area, locating on the lower middle part of the mosaic below, has a population of almost one hundred thousand people while the Ust’-Kara village in the mouth of Kara has only a few hundred inhabitants.