1.
Kazakhstan
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Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country in northern Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Kazakhstan is the worlds largest landlocked country, and the ninth largest in the world, Kazakhstan is the dominant nation of Central Asia economically, generating 60% of the regions GDP, primarily through its oil/gas industry. It also has vast mineral resources, Kazakhstan is officially a democratic, secular, unitary, constitutional republic with a diverse cultural heritage. Kazakhstan shares borders with Russia, China, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan, the terrain of Kazakhstan includes flatlands, steppe, taiga, rock canyons, hills, deltas, snow-capped mountains, and deserts. Kazakhstan has an estimated 18 million people as of 2014, Given its large area, its population density is among the lowest. The capital is Astana, where it was moved in 1997 from Almaty, the territory of Kazakhstan has historically been inhabited by nomadic tribes. This changed in the 13th century, when Genghis Khan occupied the country as part of the Mongolian Empire, following internal struggles among the conquerors, power eventually reverted to the nomads. By the 16th century, the Kazakh emerged as a distinct group, the Russians began advancing into the Kazakh steppe in the 18th century, and by the mid-19th century, they nominally ruled all of Kazakhstan as part of the Russian Empire. Following the 1917 Russian Revolution, and subsequent civil war, the territory of Kazakhstan was reorganised several times, in 1936, it was made the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic, part of the Soviet Union. Kazakhstan was the last of the Soviet republics to declare independence during the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Kazakhstan has worked to develop its economy, especially its dominant hydrocarbon industry. Kazakhstans 131 ethnicities include Kazakhs, Russians, Uzbeks, Ukrainians, Germans, Tatars, the Kazakh language is the state language, and Russian has equal official status for all levels of administrative and institutional purposes. The name Kazakh comes from the ancient Turkic word qaz, to wander, the name Cossack is of the same origin. The Persian suffix -stan means land or place of, so Kazakhstan can be translated as land of the wanderers. Kazakhstan has been inhabited since the Neolithic Age, the regions climate, archaeologists believe that humans first domesticated the horse in the regions vast steppes. Central Asia was originally inhabited by the Scythians, the Cuman entered the steppes of modern-day Kazakhstan around the early 11th century, where they later joined with the Kipchak and established the vast Cuman-Kipchak confederation. Under the Mongol Empire, the largest in history, administrative districts were established. These eventually came under the rule of the emergent Kazakh Khanate, throughout this period, traditional nomadic life and a livestock-based economy continued to dominate the steppe. Nevertheless, the region was the focus of ever-increasing disputes between the native Kazakh emirs and the neighbouring Persian-speaking peoples to the south, at its height the Khanate would rule parts of Central Asia and control Cumania
2.
Central Asia
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Central Asia stretches from the Caspian Sea in the west to China in the east and from Afghanistan in the south to Russia in the north. It is also referred to as the -stans as the five countries generally considered to be within the region all have names ending with the Persian suffix -stan. Central Asias five former Soviet republics are Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Central Asia has historically been closely tied to its nomadic peoples and the Silk Road. It has acted as a crossroads for the movement of people, goods, the Silk Road connected Muslim lands with the people of Europe, India, and China. This crossroads position has intensified the conflict between tribalism and traditionalism and modernization, in pre-Islamic and early Islamic times, Central Asia was predominantly Iranian, peopled by Eastern Iranian-speaking Bactrians, Sogdians and Chorasmians and the semi-nomadic Scythians and Parthians. Central Asia is sometimes referred to as Turkestan, the idea of Central Asia as a distinct region of the world was introduced in 1843 by the geographer Alexander von Humboldt. The borders of Central Asia are subject to multiple definitions, historically built political geography and geoculture are two significant parameters widely used in the scholarly literature about the definitions of the Central Asia. The most limited definition was the one of the Soviet Union. This definition was also used outside the USSR during this period. However, the Russian culture has two terms, Средняя Азия and Центральная Азия. Since then, this has become the most common definition of Central Asia, the UNESCO general history of Central Asia, written just before the collapse of the USSR, defines the region based on climate and uses far larger borders. An alternative method is to define the region based on ethnicity and these areas include Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, the Turkic regions of southern Siberia, the five republics, and Afghan Turkestan. Afghanistan as a whole, the northern and western areas of Pakistan, the Tibetans and Ladakhi are also included. Insofar, most of the peoples are considered the indigenous peoples of the vast region. Central Asia is a large region of varied geography, including high passes and mountains, vast deserts. The vast steppe areas of Central Asia are considered together with the steppes of Eastern Europe as a geographical zone known as the Eurasian Steppe. Much of the land of Central Asia is too dry or too rugged for farming, the Gobi desert extends from the foot of the Pamirs, 77° E, to the Great Khingan Mountains, 116°–118° E. Central Asia has the following geographic extremes, The worlds northernmost desert, at Buurug Deliin Els, Mongolia, the Northern Hemispheres southernmost permafrost, at Erdenetsogt sum, Mongolia, 46°17′ N
3.
Eastern Europe
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Eastern Europe, also known as East Europe, is the eastern part of the European continent. There is no consensus on the area it covers, partly because the term has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, cultural. There are almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region, a related United Nations paper adds that every assessment of spatial identities is essentially a social and cultural construct. One definition describes Eastern Europe as an entity, the region lying in Europe with main characteristics consisting in Byzantine, Orthodox. Another definition was created during the Cold War and used more or less synonymously with the term Eastern Bloc, a similar definition names the formerly communist European states outside the Soviet Union as Eastern Europe. Historians and social scientists generally view such definitions as outdated or relegating, several definitions of Eastern Europe exist today, but they often lack precision or are extremely general. These definitions vary both across cultures and among experts, even scientists, recently becoming more and more imprecise. The Ural Mountains, Ural River, and the Caucasus Mountains are the land border of the eastern edge of Europe. Eurovoc, a multilingual thesaurus maintained by the Publications Office of the European Union, provides entries for 23 EU languages, of these, those in italics are classified as Eastern Europe in this source. Other official web-pages of the European Union classify some of the countries as strictly Central European. The East–West Schism is the break of communion and theology between what are now the Eastern and Western churches which began in the 11th century and lasts until this very day and it divided Christianity in Europe, and consequently the world, into Western Christianity and Eastern Christianity. Since the Great Schism of 1054, Europe has been divided between Roman Catholic and Protestant churches in the West, and the Eastern Orthodox Christian churches in the east, due to this religious cleavage, Eastern Orthodox countries are often associated with Eastern Europe. A cleavage of this sort is, however, often problematic, for example, Greece is overwhelmingly Orthodox, the fall of the Iron Curtain brought the end of the East–West division in Europe, but this geopolitical concept is sometimes still used for quick reference by the media. The Baltic states have seats in the Nordic Council as observer states and they also are members of the Nordic-Baltic Eight whereas Eastern European countries formed their own alliance called the Visegrád Group. Estonia Latvia Lithuania The Caucasus nations may be included in the definitions of Eastern Europe, the extent of their geographic or political affiliation with Europe varies by country and source. All three states are members of the European Unions Eastern Partnership program and the Euronest Parliamentary Assembly, on 12 January 2002, the European Parliament noted that Armenia and Georgia may enter the EU in the future. Georgia — in modern geography, Georgia has been classified as part of Eastern Europe. Under the European Union’s geographic criteria, Georgia is viewed as part of Eastern Europe and is the only Caucasus country to be actively seeking EU membership and it is a member of Council of Europe and Eurocontrol
4.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
5.
Alaska
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Alaska is a U. S. state located in the northwest extremity of North America. To the north are the Chukchi and Beaufort seas–the southern parts of the Arctic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean lies to the south and southwest. Alaska is the largest state in the United States by area, the 3rd least populous, approximately half of Alaskas residents live within the Anchorage metropolitan area. Alaskas economy is dominated by the fishing, natural gas, military bases and tourism are also a significant part of the economy. The United States purchased Alaska from the Russian Empire on March 30,1867, the area went through several administrative changes before becoming organized as a territory on May 11,1912. It was admitted as the 49th state of the U. S. on January 3,1959, the name Alaska was introduced in the Russian colonial period when it was used to refer to the peninsula. It was derived from an Aleut, or Unangam idiom, which refers to the mainland of Alaska. Literally, it means object to which the action of the sea is directed, Alaska is the northernmost and westernmost state in the United States and has the most easterly longitude in the United States because the Aleutian Islands extend into the Eastern Hemisphere. Alaska is the only non-contiguous U. S. state on continental North America and it is technically part of the continental U. S. but is sometimes not included in colloquial use, Alaska is not part of the contiguous U. S. often called the Lower 48. The capital city, Juneau, is situated on the mainland of the North American continent but is not connected by road to the rest of the North American highway system. Alaskas territorial waters touch Russias territorial waters in the Bering Strait, as the Russian Big Diomede Island, Alaska has a longer coastline than all the other U. S. states combined. Alaska is the largest state in the United States by total area at 663,268 square miles, over twice the size of Texas, Alaska is larger than all but 18 sovereign countries. Counting territorial waters, Alaska is larger than the area of the next three largest states, Texas, California, and Montana. It is also larger than the area of the 22 smallest U. S. states. Also referred to as the Panhandle or Inside Passage, this is the region of Alaska closest to the rest of the United States, as such, this was where most of the initial non-indigenous settlement occurred in the years following the Alaska Purchase. The region is dominated by the Alexander Archipelago as well as the Tongass National Forest and it contains the state capital Juneau, the former capital Sitka, and Ketchikan, at one time Alaskas largest city. The Alaska Marine Highway provides a vital transportation link throughout the area. The Interior is the largest region of Alaska, much of it is uninhabited wilderness, Fairbanks is the only large city in the region
6.
Turkmenistan
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Turkmenistan has been at the crossroads of civilizations for centuries. In medieval times, Merv was one of the cities of the Islamic world and an important stop on the Silk Road. Annexed by the Russian Empire in 1881, Turkmenistan later figured prominently in the movement in Central Asia. In 1924, Turkmenistan became a constituent republic of the Soviet Union, Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic, Turkmenistan possesses the worlds fourth largest reserves of natural gas resources. Most of the country is covered by the Karakum Desert, since 1993, citizens have received government-provided electricity, water and natural gas free of charge. Turkmenistan was ruled by President for Life Saparmurat Niyazov until his death in 2006, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow was elected president in 2007. According to Human Rights Watch, Turkmenistan remains one of the world’s most repressive countries, after suspending the death penalty, the use of capital punishment was formally abolished in the 2008 constitution. Historically inhabited by the Indo-Iranians, the history of Turkmenistan begins with its annexation by the Achaemenid Empire of Ancient Iran. In the 8th century AD, Turkic-speaking Oghuz tribes moved from Mongolia into present-day Central Asia, part of a powerful confederation of tribes, these Oghuz formed the ethnic basis of the modern Turkmen population. In the 10th century, the name Turkmen was first applied to Oghuz groups that accepted Islam, There they were under the dominion of the Seljuk Empire, which was composed of Oghuz groups living in present-day Iran and Turkmenistan. Turkmen soldiers in the service of the played a important role in the spreading of Turkic culture when they migrated westward into present-day Azerbaijan. In the 12th century, Turkmen and other tribes overthrew the Seljuk Empire, in the next century, the Mongols took over the more northern lands where the Turkmens had settled, scattering the Turkmens southward and contributing to the formation of new tribal groups. The sixteenth and eighteenth centuries saw a series of splits and confederations among the nomadic Turkmen tribes, by the 16th century, most of those tribes were under the nominal control of two sedentary Uzbek khanates, Khiva and Bukhoro. Turkmen soldiers were an important element of the Uzbek militaries of this period, in the 19th century, raids and rebellions by the Yomud Turkmen group resulted in that groups dispersal by the Uzbek rulers. According to Paul R. Spickard, Prior to the Russian conquest, Russian forces began occupying Turkmen territory late in the 19th century. From their Caspian Sea base at Krasnovodsk, the Russians eventually overcame the Uzbek khanates, in 1916 the Russian Empires participation in World War I resonated in Turkmenistan, as an anticonscription revolt swept most of Russian Central Asia. In 1924 the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic was formed from the tsarist province of Transcaspia, by the late 1930s, Soviet reorganization of agriculture had destroyed what remained of the nomadic lifestyle in Turkmenistan, and Moscow controlled political life. The Ashgabat earthquake of 1948 killed over 110,000 people, during the next half-century, Turkmenistan played its designated economic role within the Soviet Union and remained outside the course of major world events
7.
Uzbekistan
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Uzbekistan, officially the Republic of Uzbekistan, is one of only two doubly landlocked countries in the world. Located in Central Asia, it is a unitary, constitutional, presidential republic, comprising twelve provinces, one autonomous republic and a capital city. Uzbekistan is bordered by five landlocked countries, Kazakhstan to the north, Tajikistan to the southeast, Kyrgyzstan to the northeast, Afghanistan to the south, and Turkmenistan to the southwest. Once part of the Turkic Khaganate and later Timurid Empires, the region that includes the Republic of Uzbekistan was conquered in the early 16th century by Eastern Turkic-speaking nomads. Following the breakup of the Soviet Union, it declared independence as the Republic of Uzbekistan on 31 August 1991, Uzbekistan is officially a democratic, secular, unitary, constitutional republic with a diverse cultural heritage. The countrys official language is Uzbek, a Turkic language written in the Latin alphabet and spoken natively by approximately 85% of the population, however, Uzbeks constitute 81% of the population, followed by Russians, Tajiks, Kazakhs, and others. A majority of Uzbeks are non-denominational Muslims, Uzbekistan is a member of the Commonwealth of Independent States, Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, UN, and the SCO. While officially a republic, non-governmental human rights organizations define Uzbekistan as an authoritarian state with limited civil rights. Uzbekistans economy relies mainly on commodity production, including cotton, gold, uranium, despite the declared objective of transition to a market economy, its government continues to maintain economic controls which imports in favour of domestic import substitution. Uzbekistan has an area of 447,400 square kilometres and it is the 56th largest country in the world by area and the 42nd by population. Among the CIS countries, it is the 4th largest by area, Uzbekistan lies between latitudes 37° and 46° N, and longitudes 56° and 74° E. It stretches 1,425 kilometres from west to east and 930 kilometres from north to south, Uzbekistan also shares a short border with Afghanistan to the south. Uzbekistan is a dry, landlocked country and it is one of two doubly landlocked countries in the world, the other being Liechtenstein. In addition, due to its location within a series of endorheic basins, less than 10% of its territory is intensively cultivated irrigated land in river valleys and oases. The rest is vast desert and mountains, the climate in the Republic of Uzbekistan is continental, with little precipitation expected annually. The average summer high temperature tends to be 40 °C, while the winter low temperature is around −23 °C. Uzbekistan has a rich and diverse natural environment, the Aral Sea used to be the fourth-largest inland sea on Earth, acting as an influencing factor in the air moisture and arid land use. Since the 1960s, the decade when the misuse of the Aral Sea water began, it has shrunk to less than 50% of its former area, reliable, or even approximate data, have not been collected, stored or provided by any organization or official agency
8.
Kyrgyzstan
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Kyrgyzstan, officially the Kyrgyz Republic, is a country in Central Asia. Landlocked and mountainous, Kyrgyzstan is bordered by Kazakhstan to the north, Uzbekistan to the west and southwest, Tajikistan to the southwest and its capital and largest city is Bishkek. Kyrgyzstans recorded history spans over 2,000 years, encompassing a variety of cultures and empires, ethnic Kyrgyz make up the majority of the countrys 5.7 million people, followed by significant minorities of Uzbeks and Russians. Kyrgyz is closely related to other Turkic languages, although Russian remains widely spoken and is the official language, the majority of the population are non-denominational Muslims. In addition to its Turkic origins, Kyrgyz culture bears elements of Persian, Mongolian and Russian influence. Kyrgyz is believed to have derived from the Turkic word for forty, in reference to the forty clans of Manas. Literally, Kyrgyz means We are forty, at the time, in the early 9th century AD, the Uyghurs dominated much of Central Asia, Mongolia, and parts of Russia and China. King, Scythians were early settlers in present-day Kyrgyzstan, the Kyrgyz state reached its greatest expansion after defeating the Uyghur Khaganate in 840 A. D. From the 10th century the Kyrgyz migrated as far as the Tian Shan range, in the twelfth century the Kyrgyz dominion had shrunk to the Altay Range and Sayan Mountains as a result of the Mongol expansion. With the rise of the Mongol Empire in the thirteenth century, the Kyrgyz peacefully became a part of the Mongol Empire in 1207. The descent of the Kyrgyz from the autochthonous Siberian population is confirmed on the hand by the recent genetic studies. Issyk Kul Lake was a stopover on the Silk Road, a route for traders, merchants. Kyrgyz tribes were overrun in the 17th century by the Mongols, in the century by the Manchurian Qing Dynasty. In the late century, the majority part of what is today Kyrgyzstan was ceded to Russia through two treaties between China and Russia. The territory, then known in Russian as Kirghizia, was incorporated into the Russian Empire in 1876. The Russian takeover was met with numerous revolts against Tsarist authority, in addition, the suppression of the 1916 rebellion against Russian rule in Central Asia caused many Kyrgyz later to migrate to China. Soviet power was established in the region in 1919. On 5 December 1936, the Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic was established as a republic of the Soviet Union
9.
Russia
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Russia, also officially the Russian Federation, is a country in Eurasia. The European western part of the country is more populated and urbanised than the eastern. Russias capital Moscow is one of the largest cities in the world, other urban centers include Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod. Extending across the entirety of Northern Asia and much of Eastern Europe, Russia spans eleven time zones and incorporates a range of environments. It shares maritime borders with Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk, the East Slavs emerged as a recognizable group in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries AD. Founded and ruled by a Varangian warrior elite and their descendants, in 988 it adopted Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantine Empire, beginning the synthesis of Byzantine and Slavic cultures that defined Russian culture for the next millennium. Rus ultimately disintegrated into a number of states, most of the Rus lands were overrun by the Mongol invasion. The Soviet Union played a role in the Allied victory in World War II. The Soviet era saw some of the most significant technological achievements of the 20th century, including the worlds first human-made satellite and the launching of the first humans in space. By the end of 1990, the Soviet Union had the second largest economy, largest standing military in the world. It is governed as a federal semi-presidential republic, the Russian economy ranks as the twelfth largest by nominal GDP and sixth largest by purchasing power parity in 2015. Russias extensive mineral and energy resources are the largest such reserves in the world, making it one of the producers of oil. The country is one of the five recognized nuclear weapons states and possesses the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, Russia is a great power as well as a regional power and has been characterised as a potential superpower. The name Russia is derived from Rus, a state populated mostly by the East Slavs. However, this name became more prominent in the later history, and the country typically was called by its inhabitants Русская Земля. In order to distinguish this state from other states derived from it, it is denoted as Kievan Rus by modern historiography, an old Latin version of the name Rus was Ruthenia, mostly applied to the western and southern regions of Rus that were adjacent to Catholic Europe. The current name of the country, Россия, comes from the Byzantine Greek designation of the Kievan Rus, the standard way to refer to citizens of Russia is Russians in English and rossiyane in Russian. There are two Russian words which are translated into English as Russians
10.
Caspian Sea
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The Caspian Sea is the largest enclosed inland body of water on Earth by area, variously classed as the worlds largest lake or a full-fledged sea. It is in a basin located between Europe and Asia. It is bounded by Kazakhstan to the northeast, Russia to the northwest, Azerbaijan to the west, Iran to the south, the Caspian Sea lies to the east of the Caucasus Mountains and to the west of the vast steppe of Central Asia. In its northern part, the Caspian Depression lies 28 to 130 m below sea level, the sea bed in the southern part reaches as low as 1023 m below sea level, which is the second lowest natural depression on earth after Lake Baikal. The ancient inhabitants of its coast perceived the Caspian Sea as an ocean, probably because of its saltiness, the sea has a surface area of 371,000 km2 and a volume of 78,200 km3. It has a salinity of approximately 1. 2%, about a third of the salinity of most seawater, the word Caspian is derived from the name of the Caspi, an ancient people who lived to the southwest of the sea in Transcaucasia. Strabo wrote that to the country of the Albanians belongs also the territory called Caspiane, which was named after the Caspian tribe, as was also the sea, but the tribe has now disappeared. Moreover, the Caspian Gates, which is the name of a region in Irans Tehran province, the Iranian city of Qazvin shares the root of its name with that of the sea. In fact, the traditional Arabic name for the sea itself is Bahr al-Qazwin, in classical antiquity among Greeks and Persians it was called the Hyrcanian Ocean. In Persian antiquity, as well as in modern Iran, it is known as the دریای خزر, Daryā-e Khazar, ancient Arabic sources refer to it as Baḥr Gīlān meaning the Gilan Sea. Turkic languages refer to the lake as Khazar Sea, in Turkmen, the name is Hazar deňizi, in Azeri, it is Xəzər dənizi, and in modern Turkish, it is Hazar denizi. An exception is Kazakh, where it is called Каспий теңізі, old Russian sources call it the Khvalyn or Khvalis Sea after the name of Khwarezmia. In modern Russian, it is called Каспи́йское мо́ре, Kaspiyskoye more, the Caspian Sea, like the Black Sea, Namak Lake, and Lake Urmia, is a remnant of the ancient Paratethys Sea. It became landlocked about 5.5 million years ago due to tectonic uplift and a fall in sea level. Due to the current inflow of water, the Caspian Sea is a freshwater lake in its northern portions, and is most saline on the Iranian shore. Currently, the salinity of the Caspian is one third that of Earths oceans. The Caspian Sea is the largest inland body of water in the world, the coastlines of the Caspian are shared by Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Turkmenistan. The Caspian is divided into three distinct regions, the Northern, Middle, and Southern Caspian
11.
Xinjiang
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Xinjiang, officially the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, is a provincial-level autonomous region of China in the northwest of the country. It is the largest Chinese administrative division and the 8th largest country subdivision in the world and it contains the disputed territory of Aksai Chin, which is administered by China. Xinjiang borders the countries of Mongolia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the rugged Karakoram, Kunlun, and Tian Shan mountain ranges occupy much of Xinjiangs borders, as well as its western and southern regions. Xinjiang also borders Tibet Autonomous Region and the provinces of Gansu, the most well-known route of the historical Silk Road ran through the territory from the east to its northwestern border. In recent decades, abundant oil and mineral reserves have been found in Xinjiang and it is home to a number of ethnic groups, including the Han, Kazakhs, Tajiks, Hui, Uyghur, Kyrgyz, Mongols, and Russians. More than a dozen autonomous prefectures and counties for minorities are in Xinjiang, older English-language reference works often refer to the area as Chinese Turkestan. Xinjiang is divided into the Dzungarian Basin in the north and the Tarim Basin in the south by a mountain range, only about 4. 3% of Xinjiangs land area is fit for human habitation. With a documented history of at least 2,500 years, the territory came under the rule of the Qing dynasty in the 18th century, which was later replaced by the Republic of China government. Since 1949, it has been part of the Peoples Republic of China following the Chinese Civil War, in 1954, Xinjiang Bingtuan was set up to strengthen the border defense against the Soviet Union, and also promote the local economy. In 1955, Xinjiang was turned into a region from a province. In the last decades, there have been tensions regarding Xinjiangs political status, amnesty International said that activists in Xinjiang have been arrested and tortured. Under the Han dynasty, which drove the Xiongnu empire out of the region in 60 BC, Xinjiang was previously known as Xiyu or Qurighar and this was in an effort to secure the profitable routes of the Silk Road. Dzungaria was known as Zhunbu and the Tarim Basin was known as Huijiang during the Qing dynasty before both regions were merged and became the region of Gansu Xinjiang, later simplified as Xinjiang. The name Xinjiang, which literally means New Frontier or New Borderland, was given during the Qing dynasty, according to the Chinese statesman Zuo Zongtangs report to the Emperor of Qing, Xinjiang means an old land newly returned. For instance, present-day Jinchuan County was known as Jinchuan Xinjiang, in the same manner, present-day Xinjiang was known as Xiyu Xinjiang and Gansu Xinjiang. After 1821, the Qing changed the names of the other regained regions, the name East Turkestan was created by Russian sinologist Hyacinth to replace the term Chinese Turkestan in 1829. East Turkestan was used traditionally to only refer to the Tarim Basin, in 1955, Xinjiang province was renamed Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. The name that was proposed was simply Xinjiang Autonomous Region
12.
Steppe
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In South Africa they are referred to as Veld. The prairie is an example of a steppe, though it is not usually called such and it may be semi-desert, or covered with grass or shrubs or both, depending on the season and latitude. The term is used to denote the climate encountered in regions too dry to support a forest. The soil is typically of chernozem type, steppes are usually characterized by a semi-arid and continental climate. Extremes can be recorded in the summer of up to 45 °C and in winter, besides this huge difference between summer and winter, the differences between day and night are also very great. In the highlands of Mongolia,30 °C can be reached during the day with sub-zero °C readings at night, the mid-latitude steppes can be summarized by hot summers and cold winters, averaging 250–510 mm of precipitation per year. Precipitation level alone is not what defines a steppe climate, potential evapotranspiration must also be taken into account, the Eurasian Grass-Steppe of the temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands had a role in the spread of the horse, the wheel, and the Indo-European languages. The Indo-European expansion and diverse invasions of horse archer civilizations of the steppe eventually led to, the Pannonian Plain is another steppe region in eastern Europe, primarily Hungary. Another large steppe area is located in the central United States, western Canada, the shortgrass prairie steppe is the westernmost part of the Great Plains region. The Channeled Scablands in Southern British Columbia and Washington State is an example of a region in North America outside of the Great Plains. In South America, cold steppe can be found in Patagonia, relatively small steppe areas can be found in the interior of the South Island of New Zealand. In Asia, a subtropical steppe can be found in semi-arid lands that fringe the Thar Desert of the Indian subcontinent, in Australia, subtropical steppe can be found in a belt surrounding the most severe deserts of the continent and around the Musgrave Ranges. Ecology and Conservation of Steppe-land Birds by Manuel B. Morales, Santi Mañosa, Jordi Camprodón, international Symposium on Ecology and Conservation of steppe-land birds
13.
Akmola Region
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Akmola Region is a centrally located region of Kazakhstan. The national capital, Astana, is enclosed by the region, the regions population is 748,300, Kokshetaus is 124,000. The area is 146,200 square kilometers and it and Karaganda Region are Kazakhstans only two regions which dont touch the countrys outer borders. Akmola Region borders North Kazakhstan Region in the north, Pavlodar Region in the east, Karagandy Region in the south, some gold and coal mining occur in the area. Aqmola or Akmola in Kazakh language means the white burial, ethnic Kazakhs account for 43. 5% of the population in the 2009 census, compared to 36. 5% for Russians. The region is divided into seventeen districts and the cities of Kokshetau. * The following ten localities in Akmola Region have town status, Akkol, Atbasar, Derzhavinsk, Ereymentau, Esil, Kokshetau, Makinsk, Shchuchinsk, Stepnogorsk, david Rigert, weightlifter, Olympic champion, 5x world champion,68 world records
14.
Khan Tengri
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Khan Tengri or Hantengri Peak is a mountain of the Tian Shan mountain range. It is located on the China—Kyrgyzstan—Kazakhstan border, east of lake Issyk Kul and its geologic elevation is 6,995 m, but its glacial cap rises to 7,010 m. For this reason, in mountaineering circles, including for the Soviet Snow Leopard award criteria, it is considered a 7, the name Khan Tengri literally means King Heaven in Kazakh and possibly references the deity Tengri. In some other languages, it is known as Khan Tangiri Shyngy, Kan-Too Chokusu, Pik Khan-Tengry. Khan Tengri is the second-highest mountain in the Tian Shan, surpassed only by Jengish Chokusu, Khan Tengri is the highest point in Kazakhstan and the third-highest peak in Kyrgyzstan, after Jengish Chokusu and Pik Lenina. It is also the worlds most northern 7, 000-metre peak, notable peaks of high latitude have a shorter climbing season. Khan Tengri is a marble pyramid, covered in snow. At sunset the marble glows red, giving it the Kazakh/Kyrgyz name Кантау/Кан-Тоо and this perception was probably also due to Khan Tengris visibility across the plains of southern Kazakhstan while Jengish Chokusu remains out of view of civilization. Khan Tengri is the highest peak in the rugged Tengri Tag subrange, also known as the Mustag, anatoli Boukreev considered Khan Tengri perhaps the worlds most beautiful peak because of its geometric ridges and its symmetry. Although it is almost 430 m lower than its neighbor, Khan Tengri was believed to be the highest peak in the range until Jengish Chokusu was surveyed in 1943, peter Semenov was the first European to see the Tengri Tag and its peak, the colossal Khan Tengri. The first ascent of the peak was made in 1931 by Mikhail Pogrebetskys Ukrainian team by a route from the south, M. Kuzmins team made the first ascent from the north in 1964. Khan Tengri is one of five peaks that a Soviet mountaineer needed to scale to earn the prestigious Snow Leopard award, austrian mountaineer and expedition leader Toni Dürnberger died while descending after having climbed Khan Tengri on 17 August 1992. The peak appears on the Kyrgyz 100 som bill, in 2004, more than a dozen mountaineers were killed in a large avalanche on the Pogrebetsky route, the most popular route on the mountain. Khan Tengri on Peakware Khan-Tengri/Kyrgyzstan climbing information Khan-Tengri 2007 Polish Expedition Alex Gavans Khan Tengri 2004 Expedition Khan Tengri route maps
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Tian Shan
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The Tian Shan, meaning the Mountain of Heaven or the Heavenly Mountain, is a large system of mountain ranges located in Central Asia. The highest peak in the Tian Shan is Jengish Chokusu,7,439 metres, the Chinese name for Tian Shan may have been derived from the Xiongnu word Qilian – according to Tang commentator Yan Shigu, Qilian is the Xiongnu word for sky or heaven. The Tannu-Ola mountains in Tuva has the meaning in its name. Tian Shan is sacred in Tengrism, and its second-highest peak is known as Khan Tengri which may be translated as Lord of the Spirits. Tian Shan is north and west of the Taklamakan Desert and directly north of the Tarim Basin in the region of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan. In the south it links up with the Pamir Mountains and to north, Chinese cartography from the Han Dynasty to the present agrees, with the Tian Shan including the Bogda Shan and Barkol ranges. The Tian Shan are a part of the Himalayan orogenic belt and they are one of the longest mountain ranges in Central Asia and stretch some 2,800 kilometres eastward from Tashkent in Uzbekistan. The highest peak in the Tian Shan is the Victory Peak which, the Tian Shans second highest peak, Khan Tengri, straddles the Kazakhstan-Kyrgyzstan border and at 7,010 metres is the highest point of Kazakhstan. Mountaineers class these as the two most northerly peaks over 7,000 metres in the world, the Torugart Pass, at 3,752 metres, is located at the border between Kyrgyzstan and Chinas Xinjiang province. The forested Alatau ranges, which are at an altitude in the northern part of the Tian Shan, are inhabited by pastoral tribes that speak Turkic languages. The Tian Shan are separated from the Tibetan Plateau by the Taklimakan Desert, the major rivers rising in the Tian Shan are the Syr Darya, the Ili River and the Tarim River. The Aksu Canyon is a feature in the northwestern Tian Shan. Continuous permafrost is found in the Tian Shan starting at the elevation of about 3. One of the first Europeans to visit and the first to describe the Tian Shan in detail was the Russian explorer Peter Semenov, who did so in the 1850s. Glaciers in the Tian Shan Mountains have been shrinking and have lost 27%, or 5.4 billion tons annually. It is estimated that by 2050 half of the glaciers will have melted. The Tian Shan have a number of named ranges which are mentioned separately. In China the Tian Shan starts north of Kumul City with the U-shaped Barkol Mountains, then the Bogda Shan run from 350 to 40 kilometres east of Ürümqi
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Karagiye
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Karagiye is a 40 kilometres long karst trench close to the Caspian Sea. At approximately 132 metres below sea level it is the lowest point both in Kazakhstan and the former USSR and it is also known as the Karagiye Depression and Karagiye Mountain Trench. The trench was formed as soluble limestone, dolomite and gypsum dissolved forming potholes, funnels, today the trench features many scarps and offsets and generates long rain clouds caused by the air rising above it. There is a lake in the south-west of the trench. The trench is inhabited by mouflon, corsac, snakes, hares and vultures and it is the only place within the Mangyshlak plateau that mushrooms grow and these are collected by locals. Karakiya District Caspian Depression List of countries by lowest point List of places on land with elevations below sea level
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Mangystau Region
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Mangystau Region is a region of Kazakhstan. Its capital is Aktau, which has a population of 154,500, the region is located in the southwest of the country, and includes Mangyshlak Peninsula. It has much of Kazakhstans Caspian Shore and it also borders neighboring countries Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. Mangystau also borders two other Kazakh regions, Aktobe Region and Atyrau Region, the area of the region is 165,600 square kilometers. Engineers discovered petroleum in the area in the days of the Soviet Union, drilling commenced, the territory of Mangystau includes lots of different landscapes and desert lands, Caspian lowland, plateaus, mountains, cavities, desert, mountains and mountain ridges. That kind of forms a original multigraded labyrinth, painted with green, yellow, pink. The highest point is Otpan mountain at 556 metres, the lowest point is the bottom of Karagie cavity,132 metres below sea level. Due to its vast territory, the region has a variety of climate conditions. The climate of north Mangystau is cold in winter due to its settlement in Ustyurt Plateau, on the whole, the climate is continental with cold winters and mild summers. The average temperature −3 °C in January and +26 °C in July, the average annual rainfall is 150 millimetres. The first written sources on Mangystau Region date back to the 9th century AD, according to Arabic geographers, it was uninhabited until the tenth century when groups opposing the Turkmen Oghuz settled and found sources of water and grassland. The mountain called Binkishlah would have marked the border between Khwarezm and the Khanate of the Khazars and these Turkmen were vassals of the Khazars, at the beginning of the thirteenth century when Yaqut al-Hamawi and Ibn al-Athir mention the name of Mankashlagh. Ibn al-Athir tells of a Turkish principality with a medina with the name as the territory that existed from the late eleventh century. In 1097 a struggle between Kutb al-Din Muhammad, Khwarezm governor of Seljuks and Tugrul Tehghin occurred, in 1127, Atsiz occupied the whole peninsula. During Khwarezmshah rule, it was part of firstly Gorgan province, in 1221, the Mongols occupied it. It was later passed to successively Golden Horde, Nogai Horde, Uzbek Khanate and Kazakh Khanate, some Salur and Ersari Turkmens left the region and migrated to Russia. In 1670, Anusha Khan who was khan of Khiva asked the Russian government to build a fortress to protect the peninsula for securing trade between Russia and Khwarezm, puntsuk Monchak and Ayuka deported most of Cawdor and Igdir groups of Turkmen to the Volga basin. For protecting trade, Anusha Khan annexed it to his territories in 1676, the Russians under Peter the Great sent an expedition led by the unfortunate Bekovich-Cherkassky, who established three forts on the coast of the Caspian Sea, but they were abandoned after one year
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China
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China, officially the Peoples Republic of China, is a unitary sovereign state in East Asia and the worlds most populous country, with a population of over 1.381 billion. The state is governed by the Communist Party of China and its capital is Beijing, the countrys major urban areas include Shanghai, Guangzhou, Beijing, Chongqing, Shenzhen, Tianjin and Hong Kong. China is a power and a major regional power within Asia. Chinas landscape is vast and diverse, ranging from forest steppes, the Himalaya, Karakoram, Pamir and Tian Shan mountain ranges separate China from much of South and Central Asia. The Yangtze and Yellow Rivers, the third and sixth longest in the world, respectively, Chinas coastline along the Pacific Ocean is 14,500 kilometers long and is bounded by the Bohai, Yellow, East China and South China seas. China emerged as one of the worlds earliest civilizations in the basin of the Yellow River in the North China Plain. For millennia, Chinas political system was based on hereditary monarchies known as dynasties, in 1912, the Republic of China replaced the last dynasty and ruled the Chinese mainland until 1949, when it was defeated by the communist Peoples Liberation Army in the Chinese Civil War. The Communist Party established the Peoples Republic of China in Beijing on 1 October 1949, both the ROC and PRC continue to claim to be the legitimate government of all China, though the latter has more recognition in the world and controls more territory. China had the largest economy in the world for much of the last two years, during which it has seen cycles of prosperity and decline. Since the introduction of reforms in 1978, China has become one of the worlds fastest-growing major economies. As of 2016, it is the worlds second-largest economy by nominal GDP, China is also the worlds largest exporter and second-largest importer of goods. China is a nuclear weapons state and has the worlds largest standing army. The PRC is a member of the United Nations, as it replaced the ROC as a permanent member of the U. N. Security Council in 1971. China is also a member of numerous formal and informal multilateral organizations, including the WTO, APEC, BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the BCIM, the English name China is first attested in Richard Edens 1555 translation of the 1516 journal of the Portuguese explorer Duarte Barbosa. The demonym, that is, the name for the people, Portuguese China is thought to derive from Persian Chīn, and perhaps ultimately from Sanskrit Cīna. Cīna was first used in early Hindu scripture, including the Mahābhārata, there are, however, other suggestions for the derivation of China. The official name of the state is the Peoples Republic of China. The shorter form is China Zhōngguó, from zhōng and guó and it was then applied to the area around Luoyi during the Eastern Zhou and then to Chinas Central Plain before being used as an occasional synonym for the state under the Qing
19.
Altai Mountains
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The Altai Mountains are a mountain range in Central and East Asia, where Russia, China, Mongolia, and Kazakhstan come together, and are where the rivers Irtysh and Ob have their headwaters. The name Altai means Gold Mountain in Mongolian, alt and tai and also in its Chinese name, in Turkic languages altin means gold and dag means mountain. The proposed Altaic language family takes its name from this mountain range and their mean elevation is 1,500 to 1,750 m. The snow-line runs at 2,000 m on the side and at 2,400 m on the southern. Mountain passes across the range are few and difficult, the chief being the Ulan-daban at 2,827 m, and this region is studded with large lakes, e. g. The north western and northern slopes of the Sailughem Mountains are extremely steep, on this side lies the highest summit of the range, the double-headed Belukha, whose summits reach 4,506 and 4,440 m respectively, and give origin to several glaciers. Altaians call it Kadyn Bazhy, but is also called Uch-Sumer, the second highest peak of the range is in Mongolian part named Khüiten Peak. This massive peak reaches 4374 m, numerous spurs, striking in all directions from the Sailughem mountains, fill up the space between that range and the lowlands of Tomsk. The Katun and the Biya together form the Ob, the next valley is that of the Charysh, which has the Korgon and Tigeretsk Alps on one side and the Talitsk and Bashalatsk Alps on the other. The Altai, seen from this valley, presents the most romantic scenes, including the small but deep Kolyvan lake, farther west the valleys of the Uba, the Ulba and the Bukhtarma open south-westwards towards the Irtysh. The lower part of the first, like the valley of the Charysh, is thickly populated, in the valley of the Ulba is the Riddersk mine, at the foot of the Ivanovsk Peak. Its upper parts abound in glaciers, the best known of which is the Berel, on the northern side of the range which separates the upper Bukhtarma from the upper Katun is the Katun glacier, which after two ice-falls widens out to 700 to 900 metres. From a grotto in this glacier bursts tumultuously the Katun river, the high valleys farther north, on the same western face of the Sailughem range, are but little known, their only visitors being Kyrgyz shepherds. Those of Bashkaus, Chulyshman, and Chulcha, all three leading to the lake of Teletskoye, are inhabited by Telengit people. The shores of the lake rise almost sheer to over 1,800 m, from this lake issues the Biya, which joins the Katun at Biysk, and then meanders through the prairies of the north-west of the Altai. Farther north the Altai highlands are continued in the Kuznetsk district, which has a different geological aspect. But the Abakan River, which rises on the shoulder of the Sayan mountains. East of 94° E the range is continued by a series of mountain chains
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Tobol River
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Tobol is a river which is the main tributary of the Irtysh. Its length is 1660 km, and the area of its basin is 395,000 km². The Tobol River was one of the four important rivers of the Khanate of Sibir, in 1428 the khan was killed in a battle with the forces of Abul-Khayr Khan at the Battle of Tobol. In the 16th century, the Tobol was the terminus of the portage route leading westward to the Vishera
21.
Irtysh River
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The Irtysh River is a river in Russia, China, and Kazakhstan. It is the tributary of the Ob River. The rivers source lies in the Mongolian Altai in Dzungaria close to the border with Mongolia, the Irtyshs main tributaries include the Tobol River and the Ishim River. The Ob-Irtysh system forms a drainage basin in Asia, encompassing most of Western Siberia. The name Black Irtysh is applied by some authors, especially in Russia and Kazakhstan, to the course of the river. The term White Irtysh, in opposition to the Black Irtysh, was used in the past to refer to the Irtysh below lake Zaysan. In Kazakhstan and Russia, tankers, passenger and freight boats navigate the river during the ice-free season, Omsk, home to the headquarters of the state-owned Irtysh River Shipping Company, functions as the largest river port in Western Siberia. On the Kazakhstan section of the river there are three major hydroelectric plants, namely at Bakhtarma, Ust-Kamenogorsk and Shulbinsk. The worlds deepest lock, with a drop of 42 metres, plans exist for the construction of several more dams. Three dams have been constructed on the Chinese section of the Irtysh as well, the Keketuohai Dam, the Kalasuke Dam, in 2002, pipelines were constructed to supply water from the canal to the Ishim River and Kazakhstans capital, Astana. In the last years of the 20th century and the early 2000s, a more major project. Increased water use in China has caused significant concerns among Kazakh, opened in 1896, this is the oldest bridge on the river. Tobolsk, on the Tyumen-Surgut line As the Kuytun–Beitun Railway in Chinas Xinjiang is being extended toward Altay City, numerous highway bridges over the Irtysh exist in China, Kazakhstan, and Russia. There are no bridges of any kind on the Irtysh downstream of Tobolsk, a number of Mongol and Turkic peoples occupied the river banks for many centuries. In 657, Tang Dynasty general Su Dingfang defeated Ashina Helu, qaghan of the Western Turkic Khaganate, at the Battle of Irtysh River, helus defeat ended the Khaganate, strengthened Tang control of Xinjiang, and led to Tang suzerainty over the western Turks. The Khanate of Sibir was conquered by the Russians in the 1580s, farther east, Tara was founded in 1594, roughly at the border of the taiga belt and the steppe to the south. In the 17th century the Dzungar Khanate, formed by the Mongol Oirat people, became Russias southern neighbor, the Chinese Qing Empire conquered Dzungaria in the 1750s. Concerns were raised in Russia about the possibility of a Chinese fleet sailing from Lake Zaysan down the Irtysh, a Russian expedition visited Lake Zaysan in 1764, and concluded that such a riverine invasion would not be likely
22.
Lake Balkhash
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Lake Balkhash is one of the largest lakes in Asia and 15th largest in the world. It is located in Central Asia in southeastern Kazakhstan and belongs to an endorheic basin shared by Kazakhstan and China, the Ili is fed by precipitation, largely vernal snowmelt, from the mountains of Chinas Xinjiang region. The lake currently covers an area of about 16,400 km2, however, like the Aral Sea, it is shrinking as a result of the diversion of water from rivers that feed it. The lake is divided by a strait into two distinct parts, the western part is fresh water, while the eastern half is saline. The eastern part is on average 1.7 times deeper than the western section, the largest city near the lake is also named Balkhash and has about 66,000 inhabitants. Major industrial activities in the area include mining, ore processing and fishing, while the size of the lake is temporarily growing, there is concern about the lakes shallowing due to desertification and industrial activity. The present name of the lake originates from the word balkas of Tatar, Kazakh, from as early as 103 BC up until the 8th century, the Balkhash polity was known to the Chinese as 布谷/布库/布苏 Pu-Ku/Bu-Ku. From the 8th century on, the land to the south of the lake and it was a land where the nomadic Turks and Mongols of the steppe mingled cultures with the settled peoples of Central Asia. During Chinas Qing dynasty, the formed the northwestern-most boundary of the Empire. In 1864, the lake and its area were ceded to Imperial Russia under the Protocol of Chuguchak. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the became part of Kazakhstan. Rapid erosion of the Tian Shan has meant the depression filled with sand river sediments in what is geologically a very short time span. The basin is a part of Dzungarian Alatau, which also contains lakes Sasykkol, Alakol and these lakes are remnants of an ancient sea which once covered the entire Balkhash-Alakol depression, but was not connected with the Aral–Caspian Depression. The lake has an area of about 16,400 km2 and it is elevated about 340 m above sea level and has a sickle shape. Its length is about 600 km and the width varies from 9–19 km in the part to 74 km in the western part. Saryesik Peninsula, located near the middle of the lake, hydrographically divides it into two different parts. The western part, which comprises 58% of the lake area and 46% of its volume, is relatively shallow, quiet and is filled with freshwater. These parts are connected by the Strait Uzynaral which is 3.5 km wide, the lake includes several small basins
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Almaty
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Almaty /ˈælməti/, formerly known as Alma-Ata /ˌælmə. əˈtɑː/ and Verny, is the largest city in Kazakhstan, with a population of 1,703,481 people, containing 9% of the countrys total population. Almaty is considered a World City with a Beta - classification according to GaWC and it served as capital of the Kazakh state in its various forms from 1929 to 1997, under the influence of the then Soviet Union and its appointees. Alma-Ata was the host city for a 1978 international conference on Primary Health Care where the Alma Ata Declaration was adopted, in 1997, the government relocated the capital to Astana in the north of the country. Almaty continues as the commercial and cultural centre of Kazakhstan. From 1929 to 1936, Almaty was the capital of Kazakh ASSR, from 1936 to 1991 it was the capital of Kazakh SSR. After Kazakhstan became independent in 1991, Almaty continued as the capital until 1997, Almaty remains the largest, most developed, and most ethnically and culturally diverse city in Kazakhstan. The city is in the foothills of Trans-Ili Alatau in the extreme south-east and it has a relatively mild climate with warm summers and quite cold winters. Since the city is in an active area, it has an endemic risk of earthquakes. Although most do not cause any significant damage, Almaty has suffered some large destructive earthquakes, in 1997 the capital was moved to Astana in the north-central part of the country. Since then Almaty has been referred to as the capital of Kazakhstan. The name Almaty has its roots in the medieval settlement Almatu, a disputed theory holds that the name is derived from the Kazakh word for apple, and is often translated as full of apples. Originally it was Almatau which means Apple Mountain, the Russian version of the name was Alma-Ata, however, since independence Russian has tended to use the Kazakh Almaty. There is great diversity among the wild apples in the region surrounding Almaty. The wild Malus sieversii is considered a candidate for the ancestor of the modern domestic apple. The citys name was written as آلماتی in Turkish and Persian written with the Perso-Arabic script, during 1000–900 BC in the Bronze Age, the first farmers and cattle-breeders established settlements in the territory of Almaty. During the Saka period, these lands were occupied by the Saka and later Wusun tribes, evidence of these times can be found in the numerous burial mounds and ancient settlements, especially the giant burial mounds of the Saka tsars. The most famous archaeological finds have been the The Golden man, also known as The Golden Warrior, from the Issyk Kurgan, the Zhalauly treasure, the Kargaly diadem, during the period of Saka and Wusun governance, Almaty became an early educational centre. During the Middle Ages, a city developed in Almaty
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Aral Sea
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The Aral Sea was an endorheic lake lying between Kazakhstan in the north and Uzbekistan in the south. The name roughly translates as Sea of Islands, referring to over 1,100 islands that once dotted its waters, in the Turkic languages aral means island, the Aral Sea drainage basin encompasses Uzbekistan and parts of Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Satellite images taken by NASA in August 2014 revealed that for the first time in history the eastern basin of the Aral Sea had completely dried up. The eastern basin is now called the Aralkum Desert, in an ongoing effort in Kazakhstan to save and replenish the North Aral Sea, a dam project was completed in 2005, in 2008, the water level in this lake had risen by 12 m compared to 2003. Salinity has dropped, and fish are found in sufficient numbers for some fishing to be viable. The maximum depth of the North Aral Sea is 42 m, the shrinking of the Aral Sea has been called one of the planets worst environmental disasters. The regions once-prosperous fishing industry has been destroyed, bringing unemployment. The Aral Sea region is heavily polluted, with consequential serious public health problems. The historical documents of the development of the Aral Sea have added by UNESCO to its Memory of the World Register as a source to study this environmental tragedy. The Aral Sea formed about 5.5 million years ago due to a fall in sea level, the Syr Darya formed a large lake in the Kyzyl Kum during the Pliocene known as the Mynbulak depression. Most of the area around the Aral Sea was inhabited by nomads who left few written records. However, the Oxus delta to the south has a history under the name of Khwarezm. It used to be the westernmost border of Tang dynasty China, Russian naval presence on the Aral Sea started in 1847, with the founding of Raimsk, which was soon renamed Fort Aralsk, near the mouth of the Syr Darya. Soon, the Imperial Russian Navy started deploying its vessels on the sea, owing to the Aral Sea basin not being connected to other bodies of water, the vessels had to be disassembled in Orenburg on the Ural River, shipped overland to Aralsk, and then reassembled. The first two ships, assembled in 1847, were the two-masted schooners named Nikolai and Mikhail, the former was a warship, the latter was a merchant vessel meant to serve the establishment of the fisheries on the great lake. In 1848, these two surveyed the northern part of the sea. In the same year, a warship, the Constantine, was assembled. Commanded by Lt. Alexey Butakov, the Constantine completed the survey of the entire Aral Sea over the two years
25.
Ural River
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The Ural or Jayıq/Zhayyq, known as Yaik before 1775, is a river flowing through Russia and Kazakhstan in Eurasia. It originates in the southern Ural Mountains and ends at the Caspian Sea, at 2,428 kilometres, it is the third-longest river in Europe after the Volga and the Danube, and the 18th-longest river in Asia. The Ural River is conventionally considered part of the boundary between the continents of Europe and Asia, the river begins at the slopes of the Kruglaya Mountain of the Uraltau mountain ridge in South Ural, on the territory of the Uchalinsky District of Bashkortostan. There it has a width of 60 to 80 metres. It then falls into the Yaik Swamp and after exiting it widens up to 5 kilometres, below Verkhneuralsk, its flow is characteristic of a flatland river, there it enters Chelyabinsk and Orenburg Oblasts. From Magnitogorsk to Orsk its banks are steep and rocky and the bottom has many rifts, after Orsk, the river abruptly turns west and flows through a 45-kilometre long canyon in the Guberlinsk Mountains. After Uralsk, it flows north to south, through the territory of West Kazakhstan Province. There, the river widens and has lakes and ducts. Near the mouth, it splits into the Yaik and Zolotoy distributaries, the Yaik distributary is shallow, with almost no trees on the shores, and is rich in fish, whereas Zolotoy is deeper and is navigable. Ural River has a spectacular tree-like shape of the delta and this type of delta forms naturally in the slow rivers which deliver a great deal of sediments and flow into a quiet sea. In the delta,13.5 kilometres from the mouth of the Zolotoy distributary lies Shalyga Island, which is 2.5 kilometres long, with heights of 1 to 2 metres and maximum widths of 0.3 kilometres. The tributaries, in order going upstream, are Kushum, Derkul, Chagan, Irtek, Utva, Ilek, Bolshaya Chobda, Kindel, Sakmara, Salmys, Or, the entire length of the Ural River is considered the Europe-Asia boundary by most authoritative sources. Rarely, the smaller, shorter Emba River is claimed as the continental boundary, the Ural River bridge in Orenburg is even labeled with permanent monuments carved with the word Europe on one side, Asia on the other. During the floods, the river widens to above 10 kilometres near Uralsk, water level is highest in later April upstream and in May downstream. Its fluctuation is 3 to 4 metres in the stream,9 to 10 metres in the middle of the river. The average water discharge is 104 cubic metres per second near Orenburg, and 400 cubic metres per second at the Kushum village, the maximum discharge is 14,000 cubic metres per second and the minimum is 1.62 cubic metres per second. Average turbidity is 280 grams per cubic metre at Orenburg and 290 grams per cubic metre near Kushum, the river freezes at the source in early November and in the middle and lower reaches in late November. It opens in the lower reaches in late March and in early April in the upper reaches, the ice drift is relatively short
26.
Kyzylkum Desert
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The Kyzylkum Desert, also spelled Qyzylqum, is the 16th largest desert in the world. Its name means Red Sand in Turkic languages and it is located in Central Asia in the doab between the rivers Amu Darya and Syr Darya, a region historically known as Transoxania or Sogdiana. Today it is divided between Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, the territory consists mainly of an extensive plain at an altitude up to 300 m above sea level, with a number of depressions and highlands. Most of the area is covered with dunes, in the northwest large areas are covered with takirs. There are agricultural settlements along the rivers and in the oases, temperatures can be very high during the summer months, from mid-May to mid-September. Kerki, one inland city located on the banks of the Amu Darya River. Desert fauna include the Russian tortoise and a large lizard known as the Transcaspian or Desert Monitor, the Saiga Antelope also occasionally migrates through the northern part of the desert. There is a Kyzylkum nature reserve in Bukhara Province, founded in 1971, the area of the reserve amounts to 101,000 km2 and it is located on flood-land drained by the Amu-Darya close to the settlement Dargan Ata. Fauna include, the Bukhara Deer, Wild Boar, Common Pheasant, another reserve, Djeyran, is located 40 km to the south of Bukhara. The total area of this reserve is 51,450 km2 and it is a breeding centre for rare animals such as, the Goitered or Persian Gazelle Gazelle, Przewalskis Horse, the Turkmenian Kulan and Houbara Bustard. The reserve was founded in 1977 on the area in 5,131 ha. The Kyzylkum Desert has exposed rock formations that have yielded a number of fossils, tyrannosaurid, therizinosaurid, ostrich-mimic, oviraptorosaurian, troodontid, armored, duckbilled, and horned dinosaurs are also known from this rock unit. Paleontologists that have worked in area include J. David Archibald, Alexander Averianov, Sergei Kurzanov, Lev Nesov, Anatoly Riabinin, Anatoly Rozhdestvensky. The local population uses the large spaces of the Kyzylkum Desert as a pasture for livestock, the desert is well known for its deposits of gold, uranium, copper, aluminium and silver, natural gas and oil. The development of most the famous gold-field at Muruntau began in the early 1970s, the centres for the mining and smelting industry at the region are Navoi, Zarafshan city, Uchkuduk. The major industrial enterprises are, НГМК and the Uzbek U. S. A, the centres of the gas-production industry are Gazli and Mubarek
27.
Great Lakes
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Consisting of Lakes Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario, they form the largest group of freshwater lakes on Earth, containing 21% of the worlds surface fresh water by volume. The total surface is 94,250 square miles, and the volume is 5,439 cubic miles. Due to their sea-like characteristics the five Great Lakes have also long been referred to as inland seas, Lake Superior is the second largest lake in the world by area, and Lake Michigan is the largest lake that is entirely within one country. The southern half of the Great Lakes is bordered by the Great Lakes Megalopolis, the lakes have been a major highway for transportation, migration and trade, and they are home to a large number of aquatic species. Many invasive species have been introduced due to trade, and some threaten the regions biodiversity, though the five lakes reside in separate basins, they form a single, naturally interconnected body of fresh water, within the Great Lakes Basin. The lakes form a chain connecting the interior of North America to the Atlantic Ocean. From the interior to the outlet at the Saint Lawrence River, water flows from Superior to Huron and Michigan, southward to Erie, the lakes drain a large watershed via many rivers, and are studded with approximately 35,000 islands. There are also several smaller lakes, often called inland lakes. The surface area of the five primary lakes combined is roughly equal to the size of the United Kingdom, while the area of the entire basin is about the size of the UK. Lake Michigan is the one of the Great Lakes that is located entirely within the United States. The lakes are divided among the jurisdictions of the Canadian province of Ontario and the U. S. states of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York. Both Ontario and Michigan include in their boundaries portions of four of the lakes, Ontario does not border Lake Michigan, New York and Wisconsins jurisdictions extend into two lakes, and the remaining states into one of the lakes. This designation, however, is not universal and those living on the shore of Lake Superior often refer to all the other lakes as the lower lakes, because they are farther south. This corresponds to thinking of Lakes Erie and Ontario as down south, vessels sailing north on Lake Michigan are considered upbound even though they are sailing toward its effluent current. The Chicago River and Calumet River systems connect the Great Lakes Basin to the Mississippi River System through man-made alterations, the St. Marys River, including the Soo Locks, connects Lake Superior to Lake Huron. The Straits of Mackinac connect Lake Michigan to Lake Huron, the St. Clair River connects Lake Huron to Lake St. Clair. The Detroit River connects Lake St. Clair to Lake Erie, the Niagara River, including Niagara Falls, connects Lake Erie to Lake Ontario. The Welland Canal, bypassing the Falls, connects Lake Erie to Lake Ontario, the Saint Lawrence River connects Lake Ontario to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, which connects to the Atlantic Ocean
28.
North America
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North America is a continent entirely within the Northern Hemisphere and almost all within the Western Hemisphere. It can also be considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the west and south by the Pacific Ocean, and to the southeast by South America and the Caribbean Sea. North America covers an area of about 24,709,000 square kilometers, about 16. 5% of the land area. North America is the third largest continent by area, following Asia and Africa, and the fourth by population after Asia, Africa, and Europe. In 2013, its population was estimated at nearly 565 million people in 23 independent states, or about 7. 5% of the worlds population, North America was reached by its first human populations during the last glacial period, via crossing the Bering land bridge. The so-called Paleo-Indian period is taken to have lasted until about 10,000 years ago, the Classic stage spans roughly the 6th to 13th centuries. The Pre-Columbian era ended with the migrations and the arrival of European settlers during the Age of Discovery. Present-day cultural and ethnic patterns reflect different kind of interactions between European colonists, indigenous peoples, African slaves and their descendants, European influences are strongest in the northern parts of the continent while indigenous and African influences are relatively stronger in the south. Because of the history of colonialism, most North Americans speak English, Spanish or French, the Americas are usually accepted as having been named after the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci by the German cartographers Martin Waldseemüller and Matthias Ringmann. Vespucci, who explored South America between 1497 and 1502, was the first European to suggest that the Americas were not the East Indies, but a different landmass previously unknown by Europeans. In 1507, Waldseemüller produced a map, in which he placed the word America on the continent of South America. He explained the rationale for the name in the accompanying book Cosmographiae Introductio, for Waldseemüller, no one should object to the naming of the land after its discoverer. He used the Latinized version of Vespuccis name, but in its feminine form America, following the examples of Europa, Asia and Africa. Later, other mapmakers extended the name America to the continent, In 1538. Some argue that the convention is to use the surname for naming discoveries except in the case of royalty, a minutely explored belief that has been advanced is that America was named for a Spanish sailor bearing the ancient Visigothic name of Amairick. Another is that the name is rooted in a Native American language, the term North America maintains various definitions in accordance with location and context. In Canadian English, North America may be used to refer to the United States, alternatively, usage sometimes includes Greenland and Mexico, as well as offshore islands
29.
Lake Superior
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Lake Superior is the largest of the Great Lakes of North America. The lake is shared by the Canadian province of Ontario to the north, the US state of Minnesota to the west and it is generally considered the largest freshwater lake in the world by surface area. It is the worlds third-largest freshwater lake by volume and the largest by volume in North America, the Ojibwe call the lake gichi-gami, meaning be a great sea. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote the name as Gitche Gumee in The Song of Hiawatha, as did Gordon Lightfoot in his song, according to other sources the actual Ojibwe name is Ojibwe Gichigami or Anishinaabe Gichigami. The 1878 dictionary by Father Frederic Baraga, the first one written for the Ojibway language, the first French explorers approaching the great inland sea by way of the Ottawa River and Lake Huron during the 17th century referred to their discovery as le lac supérieur. Properly translated, the expression means Upper Lake, that is, the lake was also called Lac Tracy by 17th century Jesuit missionaries. Lake Superior empties into Lake Huron via the St. Marys River, Lake Superior is the largest freshwater lake in the world in area, and the third largest in volume, behind Lake Baikal in Siberia and Lake Tanganyika in East Africa. Lake Superior has an area of 31,700 square miles. It has a length of 350 statute miles and maximum breadth of 160 statute miles. Its average depth is 80.5 fathoms with a depth of 222.17 fathoms. Lake Superior contains 2,900 cubic miles of water, there is enough water in Lake Superior to cover the entire land mass of North and South America to a depth of 30 centimetres. The shoreline of the lake stretches 2,726 miles, while the temperature of the surface of Lake Superior varies seasonally, the temperature below 110 fathoms is an almost constant 39 °F. This variation in temperature makes the lake seasonally stratigraphic, twice per year, however, the water column reaches a uniform temperature of 39 °F from top to bottom, and the lake waters thoroughly mix. This feature makes the lake dimictic, because of its volume, Lake Superior has a retention time of 191 years. Annual storms on Lake Superior regularly feature wave heights of over 20 feet, waves well over 30 feet have been recorded. The lake is fed by over 200 rivers, the largest include the Nipigon River, the St. Louis River, the Pigeon River, the Pic River, the White River, the Michipicoten River, the Bois Brule River and the Kaministiquia River. Lake Superior drains into Lake Huron via the St. Marys River, there are rapids at the rivers upper end where the river bed has a relatively steep gradient. The Soo Locks were built to enable ships to bypass the rapids, the lakes average surface elevation is 600 feet above sea level
30.
Syr Darya
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The Syr Darya /ˌsɪərˈdɑːrjə/ is a river in Central Asia. It is the northern and eastern of the two rivers in the endorrheic basin of the Aral Sea, the other being the Amu Darya. The second part of the name river in Persian. The current name only from the 18th century. The earliest recorded name comes down to us as Jaxartes /ˌdʒæɡˈzɑːrtiːz/ or Iaxartes /ˌaɪ. əɡˈzɑːrtiːz/ in Ancient Greek and this name is recorded by several sources, including those relating to Alexander the Great kage the great. The Greek preserves the Old Persian name Yakhsha Arta, perhaps a reference to the color of its glacially-fed water, more evidence for the Persian etymology comes from its Turkic name up to the time of the Arab conquest, the Yinchu, or Pearl river. Following the Muslim conquest, the river appears in the sources uniformly as the Seyhun, the current local name of the river, Syr, does not appear before the 16th century. In the 17th century, Abu al-Ghazi Bahadur Khan, historian and ruler of Khiva, calls the Aral Sea the Sea of Sïr and its annual flow is a very modest 37 cubic kilometres per year—half that of its sister river, the Amu Darya. Along its course, the Syr Darya irrigates the most productive cotton-growing region in the whole of Central Asia, together with the towns of Kokand, Khujand, Kyzylorda, various local governments throughout history have built and maintained an extensive system of canals. These canals are of importance in this arid region. Many fell into disuse in the 17th and early 18th century, massive expansion of irrigation canals in Middle and Lower Syr Darya during the Soviet period to water cotton and rice fields caused ecological damage to the area. The amount of water taken from the river was such that in some periods of the year, no water at all reaches the Aral Sea, similar to the Amu Darya situation in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. During the era of Alexander the Great, the Syr Darya marked the northernmost limit of Hellenic conquests and also the site of a famous battle, the Battle of Jaxartes. It was on the shores of the Syr Darya that Alexander placed a garrison in the City of Cyrus, for most of its history since at least the Muslim Conquest of Central Asia, the name of this city has been Khujand. In return, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan received Kazakh, Turkmen, and Uzbek coal, gas, after the fall of the Soviet Union this system disintegrated and the Central Asian nations have failed to reinstate it. Inadequate infrastructure, poor management, and outdated irrigation methods all exacerbate the issue. Britannica. com Livius. org, Jaxartes BBC News, Syn Darya in pictures
31.
Amu Darya
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The Amu Darya, also called the Amu River and historically known by its Latin name, Oxus, is a major river in Central Asia. It is formed by the junction of the Vakhsh and Panj rivers, at Qaleh-ye Panjeh in Afghanistan, in ancient times, the river was regarded as the boundary between Greater Iran and Turan. In classical antiquity, the river was known as the Ōxus in Latin and Ὦξος Ôxos in Greek—a clear derivative of Vakhsh, in Vedic Sanskrit, the river is also referred to as Vakṣu. The Avestan texts too refer to the River as Yakhsha/Vakhsha, in Middle Persian sources of the Sassanid period the river is known as Wehrōd. The name Amu is said to have come from the city of Āmul, in modern Turkmenistan. Medieval Arabic and Muslim sources call the river Jayhoun which is derived from Gihon, however, this name is no longer used. Hara and to the river of Gozan (that is to say, the Amu. the Gozan River is the River Balkh, i. e. the Oxus or the Amu Darya. and were brought into Halah, and Habor, and Hara, and to the river Gozan. The rivers total length is 2,400 kilometres and its drainage basin totals 534,739 square kilometres in area, the river is navigable for over 1,450 kilometres. All of the water comes from the mountains in the south where annual precipitation can be over 1,000 mm. An ice cave at the end of the Wakhjir valley, in the Wakhan Corridor, in the Pamir Mountains, a glacier turns into the Wakhan River and joins the Pamir River about 50 kilometres downstream. Therefore, the Chelab stream may be considered the true source or parent stream of the Oxus. The Panj River forms the border of Afghanistan and Tajikistan and it flows west to Ishkashim where it turns north and then north-west through the Pamirs passing the Tajikistan–Afghanistan Friendship Bridge. It subsequently forms the border of Afghanistan and Uzbekistan for about 200 kilometres, passing Termez and it delineates the border of Afghanistan and Turkmenistan for another 100 kilometres before it flows into Turkmenistan at Atamurat. As the Amudarya, it flows across Turkmenistan south to north, passing Türkmenabat, use of water from the Amu Darya for irrigation has been a major contributing factor to the shrinking of the Aral Sea since the late 1950s. Historical records state that in different periods, the river flowed into the Aral Sea, into the Caspian Sea, about 1,385,045 square kilometres of land is drained by the Amu Darya into the Aral Sea endorheic basin. This includes most of Tajikistan, the southwest corner of Kyrgyzstan, the northeast corner of Afghanistan, part of the Amu Daryas drainage divide in Tajikistan forms that countrys border with China and Pakistan. About 61% of the lies within Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. Of the area drained by the Amu Darya, only about 200,000 square kilometres actively contribute water to the river and this is because many of the rivers major tributaries have been diverted, and much of the rivers drainage is dominated by outlying desert and steppe
32.
Tajikistan
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Tajikistan, officially the Republic of Tajikistan, is a mountainous, landlocked country in Central Asia with an estimated 8 million people in 2013, and an area of 143,100 km2. It is bordered by Islamic Republic of Afghanistan to the south, the Republic of Uzbekistan to the west, the Kyrgyz Republic to the north, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan lies to the south, separated by the narrow Wakhan Corridor. Traditional homelands of Tajik people included present-day Tajikistan, Afghanistan and Uzbekistan, a civil war was fought almost immediately after independence, lasting from 1992 to 1997. Since the end of the war, newly established political stability, Tajikistan is a presidential republic consisting of four provinces. Most of Tajikistans 8 million people belong to the Tajik ethnic group, many Tajiks also speak Russian as their second language. Mountains cover more than 90% of the country and it has a transition economy that is highly dependent on remittances, aluminium and cotton production. Tajikistan means the Land of the Tajiks, the suffix -stan is Persian for place of or country and Tajik is, most likely, the name of a pre-Islamic tribe. Tajikistan appeared as Tadjikistan or Tadzhikistan in English prior to 1991 and this is due to a transliteration from the Russian, Таджикистан. In Russian, there is no single letter j to represent the phoneme /ʤ/ and дж, Tadzhikistan is the most common alternate spelling and is widely used in English literature derived from Russian sources. Tadjikistan is the spelling in French and can occasionally be found in English language texts, the way of writing Tajikistan in the Perso-Arabic script is. The earliest recorded history of the dates back to about 500 BCE when much, if not all. After the regions conquest by Alexander the Great it became part of the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom, northern Tajikistan was part of Sogdia, a collection of city-states which was overrun by Scythians and Yuezhi nomadic tribes around 150 BCE. The Silk Road passed through the region and following the expedition of Chinese explorer Zhang Qian during the reign of Wudi commercial relations between Han China and Sogdiana flourished. Sogdians played a role in facilitating trade and also worked in other capacities, as farmers, carpetweavers, glassmakers. Later the Hephthalite Empire, a collection of tribes, moved into the region. Central Asia continued in its role as a crossroads, linking China, the steppes to the north. It was temporarily under the control of the Tibetan empire and Chinese from 650–680, the Samanid Empire,819 to 999, restored Persian control of the region and enlarged the cities of Samarkand and Bukhara which became the cultural centres of Iran and the region was known as Khorasan. The Kara-Khanid Khanate conquered Transoxania and ruled between 999–1211, during Genghis Khans invasion of Khwarezmia in the early 13th century the Mongol Empire took control over nearly all of Central Asia
33.
Dissolution of the Soviet Union
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The Soviet Union was dissolved on December 26,1991. It was a result of the declaration number 142-Н of the Soviet of the Republics of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union and that evening at 7,32, the Soviet flag was lowered from the Kremlin for the last time and replaced with the pre-revolutionary Russian flag. Previously, from August to December, all the individual republics, the week before the unions formal dissolution,11 republics signed the Alma-Ata Protocol formally establishing the CIS and declaring that the Soviet Union had ceased to exist. The Revolutions of 1989 and the dissolution of the USSR also signalled the end of the Cold War, on the other hand, only the Baltic states have joined NATO and the European Union. Mikhail Gorbachev was elected General Secretary by the Politburo on March 11,1985, Gorbachev, aged 54, was the youngest member of the Politburo. His initial goal as general secretary was to revive the Soviet economy, the reforms began with personnel changes of senior Brezhnev-era officials who would impede political and economic change. On April 23,1985, Gorbachev brought two protégés, Yegor Ligachev and Nikolai Ryzhkov, into the Politburo as full members. He kept the power ministries happy by promoting KGB Head Viktor Chebrikov from candidate to full member and this liberalisation, however, fostered nationalist movements and ethnic disputes within the Soviet Union. Under Gorbachevs leadership, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1989 introduced limited competitive elections to a new central legislature, in May 1985, Gorbachev delivered a speech in Leningrad advocating reforms and an anti-alcohol campaign to tackle widespread alcoholism. Prices of vodka, wine, and beer were raised in order to make these drinks more expensive and a disincentive to consumers, unlike most forms of rationing intended to conserve scarce goods, this was done to restrict sales with the overt goal of curtailing drunkenness. Gorbachevs plan also included billboards promoting sobriety, increased penalties for public drunkenness, however, Gorbachev soon faced the same adverse economic reaction to his prohibition as did the last Tsar. The disincentivization of alcohol consumption was a blow to the state budget according to Alexander Yakovlev. Alcohol production migrated to the market, or through moonshining as some made bathtub vodka with homegrown potatoes. The purpose of these reforms, however, was to prop up the centrally planned economy, unlike later reforms. The latter, disparaged as Mr Nyet in the West, had served for 28 years as Minister of Foreign Affairs, gromyko was relegated to the largely ceremonial position of Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, as he was considered an old thinker. In the fall of 1985, Gorbachev continued to bring younger, at the next Central Committee meeting on October 15, Tikhonov retired from the Politburo and Talyzin became a candidate. Finally, on December 23,1985, Gorbachev appointed Yeltsin First Secretary of the Moscow Communist Party replacing Viktor Grishin, Gorbachev continued to press for greater liberalization. The CTAG Helsinki-86 was founded in July 1986 in the Latvian port town of Liepāja by three workers, Linards Grantiņš, Raimonds Bitenieks, and Mārtiņš Bariss and its name refers to the human-rights statements of the Helsinki Accords
34.
International Crisis Group
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It advocates policies directly with governments, multilateral organisations and other political actors as well as the media. The International Crisis Group was founded after a meeting in January 1993 between former US diplomat and then-President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Morton I. Abramowitz and then future World Bank Vice-President Mark Malloch Brown on a flight to Sarajevo, George Soros was involved in discussions early on and provided seed money. Disaster relief specialist Fred Cuny made significant contributions to relief in Bosnia. A January 1995 meeting in London brought many international figures together, in mid-1995 it was formally registered in the US as a tax-exempt non-profit organisation. From 1996 to 1999, Crisis Group had an budget of around $2m and around 20 full-time staff. Following the death of its first president, Nicholas Hinton, in January 1997 and his replacement by Alain Destexhe, Destexhe resigned in October 1999 and was replaced by Gareth Evans, with Martti Ahtisaari becoming Chairman both from the beginning of 2000. Louise Arbour became president in July 2009, succeeded in September 2014 by Jean-Marie Guéhenno, the International Crisis Group gives advice to governments and intergovernmental bodies like the United Nations, European Union and World Bank on the prevention and resolution of deadly conflict. Crisis Group raises funds from mainly western governments, charitable foundations, companies, in 2011/2012, 49% of its funding came from governments, 20% from philanthropic organisations, and 31% from individuals and private foundations. During 2012/2013 unrestricted income for operations was $18.3 million with total expenditure of $21. In the early stages of Crisis Groups history, funding was much less diverse, mainly from co-founder George Soros, Crisis Group has been criticised for serving the interests of its corporate and government funders. Crisis Groups international headquarters have been in Brussels, with offices in Washington DC. Crisis Group has had offices in 30 locations, with teams of analysts dispatched to areas at risk of outbreak, escalation. Based on the information these teams have been gathering, Crisis Group has created analytical reports with recommendations for world leaders, all reports and conflict alerts, are publicly available. The monthly CrisisWatch bulletin is online since 2003, Crisis Groups website also stated that of 116 Crisis Group positions on 1 February 2014,63 were based in the field in 26 locations. Crisis Group Board of Trustees has been co-chaired by Mark Malloch Brown and Ghassan Salamé, Dean of the Paris School of International Affairs, as of September 2014 Crisis Groups President and Chief Executive was Jean-Marie Guéhenno, former UN Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations. He was preceded by Louise Arbour, formerly the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and she was preceded from January 2000 to July 2009 by Gareth Evans, former Foreign Minister of Australia. The Vice Chair of the Board is Ayo Obe, lawyer, columnist, as of January 2014 the Board consisted of the following other trustees, Crisis Groups In Pursuit of Peace Award was established in 2005, and is associated with a gala event in New York City
35.
Himalayas
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The Himalayas, or Himalaya, form a mountain range in Asia separating the plains of the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau. The Himalayan range has the Earths highest peaks, including the highest, the Himalayas include over a hundred mountains exceeding 7,200 metres in elevation. By contrast, the highest peak outside Asia – Aconcagua, in the Andes – is 6,961 metres tall. The Himalayas are spread across five countries, Bhutan, India, Nepal, China, the Himalayan range is bordered on the northwest by the Karakoram and Hindu Kush ranges, on the north by the Tibetan Plateau, and on the south by the Indo-Gangetic Plain. Some of the major rivers, the Indus, the Ganges, and the Tsangpo-Brahmaputra, rise in the Himalayas. The Himalayas have profoundly shaped the cultures of South Asia, many Himalayan peaks are sacred in Hinduism and Buddhism. Lifted by the subduction of the Indian tectonic plate under the Eurasian Plate and its western anchor, Nanga Parbat, lies just south of the northernmost bend of Indus river. Its eastern anchor, Namcha Barwa, is just west of the bend of the Tsangpo river. The range varies in width from 400 kilometres in the west to 150 kilometres in the east, the name of the range derives from the Sanskrit Himā-laya, from himá and ā-laya. They are now known as the Himalaya Mountains, usually shortened to the Himalayas, formerly, they were described in the singular as the Himalaya. This was also previously transcribed Himmaleh, as in Emily Dickinsons poetry and Henry David Thoreaus essays. The mountains are known as the Himālaya in Nepali and Hindi, the Himalaya or The Land of Snow in Tibetan, the Hamaleh Mountain Range in Urdu, the flora and fauna of the Himalayas vary with climate, rainfall, altitude, and soils. The climate ranges from tropical at the base of the mountains to permanent ice, the amount of yearly rainfall increases from west to east along the southern front of the range. This diversity of altitude, rainfall and soil conditions combined with the high snow line supports a variety of distinct plant. The extremes of high altitude combined with extreme cold favor extremophile organisms, the unique floral and faunal wealth of the Himalayas is undergoing structural and compositional changes due to climate change. The increase in temperature is shifting various species to higher elevations, the oak forest is being invaded by pine forests in the Garhwal Himalayan region. There are reports of early flowering and fruiting in some species, especially rhododendron, apple. The highest known tree species in the Himalayas is Juniperus tibetica located at 4,900 metres in Southeastern Tibet, the Himalayan range is one of the youngest mountain ranges on the planet and consists mostly of uplifted sedimentary and metamorphic rock
36.
Pacific Ocean
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The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of the Earths oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south and is bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, the Mariana Trench in the western North Pacific is the deepest point in the world, reaching a depth of 10,911 metres. Both the center of the Water Hemisphere and the Western Hemisphere are in the Pacific Ocean, the oceans current name was coined by Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan during the Spanish circumnavigation of the world in 1521, as he encountered favourable winds on reaching the ocean. He called it Mar Pacífico, which in both Portuguese and Spanish means peaceful sea, important human migrations occurred in the Pacific in prehistoric times. Long-distance trade developed all along the coast from Mozambique to Japan, trade, and therefore knowledge, extended to the Indonesian islands but apparently not Australia. By at least 878 when there was a significant Islamic settlement in Canton much of trade was controlled by Arabs or Muslims. In 219 BC Xu Fu sailed out into the Pacific searching for the elixir of immortality, from 1404 to 1433 Zheng He led expeditions into the Indian Ocean. The east side of the ocean was discovered by Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa in 1513 after his expedition crossed the Isthmus of Panama and he named it Mar del Sur because the ocean was to the south of the coast of the isthmus where he first observed the Pacific. Later, Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan sailed the Pacific East to West on a Castilian expedition of world circumnavigation starting in 1519, Magellan called the ocean Pacífico because, after sailing through the stormy seas off Cape Horn, the expedition found calm waters. The ocean was often called the Sea of Magellan in his honor until the eighteenth century, sailing around and east of the Moluccas, between 1525 and 1527, Portuguese expeditions discovered the Caroline Islands, the Aru Islands, and Papua New Guinea. In 1542–43 the Portuguese also reached Japan, in 1564, five Spanish ships consisting of 379 explorers crossed the ocean from Mexico led by Miguel López de Legazpi and sailed to the Philippines and Mariana Islands. The Manila galleons operated for two and a half centuries linking Manila and Acapulco, in one of the longest trade routes in history, Spanish expeditions also discovered Tuvalu, the Marquesas, the Cook Islands, the Solomon Islands, and the Admiralty Islands in the South Pacific. In the 16th and 17th century Spain considered the Pacific Ocean a Mare clausum—a sea closed to other naval powers, as the only known entrance from the Atlantic the Strait of Magellan was at times patrolled by fleets sent to prevent entrance of non-Spanish ships. On the western end of the Pacific Ocean the Dutch threatened the Spanish Philippines, Spain also sent expeditions to the Pacific Northwest reaching Vancouver Island in southern Canada, and Alaska. The French explored and settled Polynesia, and the British made three voyages with James Cook to the South Pacific and Australia, Hawaii, and the North American Pacific Northwest, one of the earliest voyages of scientific exploration was organized by Spain in the Malaspina Expedition of 1789–1794. It sailed vast areas of the Pacific, from Cape Horn to Alaska, Guam and the Philippines, New Zealand, Australia, and the South Pacific. Growing imperialism during the 19th century resulted in the occupation of much of Oceania by other European powers, and later, Japan, in Oceania, France got a leading position as imperial power after making Tahiti and New Caledonia protectorates in 1842 and 1853 respectively. After navy visits to Easter Island in 1875 and 1887, Chilean navy officer Policarpo Toro managed to negotiate an incorporation of the island into Chile with native Rapanui in 1888, by occupying Easter Island, Chile joined the imperial nations
37.
Atyrau Region
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Atyrau Region is one of the regions of Kazakhstan, situated in the west of the country around the northeast of the Caspian Sea. Its capital is the town of Atyrau, with a population of 142,500 people, kazakhs make up more than 80% of population. The Turan lowlands of Atyrau Region were the homeland for the Malkar Hun dynasties of late antiquity. With an area of 118,600 square kilometers, it is the second-smallest region in Kazakhstan and it borders Russia to the west, as well as the fellow Kazakh region Aktobe to the east, Mangystau to the south, and the West Kazakhstan Region to the north. The Ural River is the border between Asia and Europe and flows from Russia to the Caspian Sea through the region, meaning western Atyrau Region lies in Europe, a large part of the region is situated in the oil-rich Caspian Depression. Many oil wells have been drilled in the Tengiz Field and Kashagan Field areas, an oil pipeline runs from Atyrau to Samara, Russia, where it joins the Russian pipeline system. A separate oil pipeline runs from the Tengiz field to the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiisk, Atyrau is traversed by the northeasterly line of equal latitude and longitude. The region is divided into seven districts and the city of Atyrau, * Two localities in Atyrau Region have town status. National Geographic Atlas of the World, Eighth Edition
38.
Semey
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The first Russian settlement in the area dates from 1718, when Russia built a fort beside the river Irtysh, near a ruined Buddhist monastery. The monasterys seven buildings lent the fort the name Semipalatinsk, the fort suffered frequently from flooding caused by the snowmelt swelling the Irtysh, and in 1778 the fort was relocated 18 kilometres upstream to less flood-prone ground. A small city grew around the fort, largely servicing the trade between the nomadic peoples of Central Asia and the growing Russian Empire. The construction of the Turkestan-Siberia Railway in the early 20th century added to the citys importance, on 19 May 1854 Semipalatinsk became the capital of the Semipalatinsk Oblast within the Russian Empire. Between 1917 and 1920 the city operated as the capital of the largely unrecognized Alash Autonomy, the city was called Alash-qala during the Alash Autonomy years. Red Army forces loyal to Petrograd took control of the area in 1920, in 1949 the Soviet atomic bomb programme selected a site on the steppe 150 km west of the city as the location for its weapons testing. For decades, Kurchatov was home to many of the brightest stars of Soviet weapons science, the Soviet Union operated the Semipalatinsk Test Site from the first explosion in 1949 until 1989,456 nuclear tests, including 340 underground and 116 atmospheric tests, took place there. Modern Semey, a university town, has a population exceeding 300,000. Semipalatinsk Oblast merged with the larger East Kazakhstan Region, whose city is Oskemen. The Semipalatinsk Bridge, a bridge across the Irtish River. It has a span of 750 metres and a total length of 1,086 metres. Construction began in 1998 and the bridge opened to traffic in November 2000, in 2007 the Semipalatinsk City Council voted unanimously in favour of changing the name of the city to Semey. The Chairman explained that name had negative associations with the atomic test-site. Semey has a climate with warm summers and very cold winters. Precipitation is low for the year, except for July which has an average of 50 millimetres compared to less than 30 millimetres in other months. Snow is common, though light, in winter, the lowest temperature on record is −48.6 °C, recorded in November 1938, and the highest temperature is 42.5 °C, recorded in August 2002. Abay Qunanbayuli, father of modern Kazakh poetry, received his Russian schooling at Semey, writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky, whose exile included five years military service as a corporal in the Seventh Line Battalion at the Semipalatinsk garrison, beginning in 1854. Writer Pavel Bazhov was a member of the Party Committee of the province of Semipalatinsk from 1920 to 1923, stanislav Kurilov grew up in Semipalatinsk
39.
Soviet Union
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The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a socialist state in Eurasia that existed from 1922 to 1991. It was nominally a union of national republics, but its government. The Soviet Union had its roots in the October Revolution of 1917 and this established the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and started the Russian Civil War between the revolutionary Reds and the counter-revolutionary Whites. In 1922, the communists were victorious, forming the Soviet Union with the unification of the Russian, Transcaucasian, Ukrainian, following Lenins death in 1924, a collective leadership and a brief power struggle, Joseph Stalin came to power in the mid-1920s. Stalin suppressed all opposition to his rule, committed the state ideology to Marxism–Leninism. As a result, the country underwent a period of rapid industrialization and collectivization which laid the foundation for its victory in World War II and postwar dominance of Eastern Europe. Shortly before World War II, Stalin signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact agreeing to non-aggression with Nazi Germany, in June 1941, the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, opening the largest and bloodiest theater of war in history. Soviet war casualties accounted for the highest proportion of the conflict in the effort of acquiring the upper hand over Axis forces at battles such as Stalingrad. Soviet forces eventually captured Berlin in 1945, the territory overtaken by the Red Army became satellite states of the Eastern Bloc. The Cold War emerged by 1947 as the Soviet bloc confronted the Western states that united in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949. Following Stalins death in 1953, a period of political and economic liberalization, known as de-Stalinization and Khrushchevs Thaw, the country developed rapidly, as millions of peasants were moved into industrialized cities. The USSR took a lead in the Space Race with Sputnik 1, the first ever satellite, and Vostok 1. In the 1970s, there was a brief détente of relations with the United States, the war drained economic resources and was matched by an escalation of American military aid to Mujahideen fighters. In the mid-1980s, the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, sought to reform and liberalize the economy through his policies of glasnost. The goal was to preserve the Communist Party while reversing the economic stagnation, the Cold War ended during his tenure, and in 1989 Soviet satellite countries in Eastern Europe overthrew their respective communist regimes. This led to the rise of strong nationalist and separatist movements inside the USSR as well, in August 1991, a coup détat was attempted by Communist Party hardliners. It failed, with Russian President Boris Yeltsin playing a role in facing down the coup. On 25 December 1991, Gorbachev resigned and the twelve constituent republics emerged from the dissolution of the Soviet Union as independent post-Soviet states
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Olzhas Suleimenov
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Olzhas Omaruli Suleimenov is a Soviet poet, Kazakhstani politician, and Soviet anti-nuclear activist. Suleimenov was born on 18 May 1936 in Alma-Ata and he graduated from Geological Sciences Department of Kazakh State University in 1959. Suleimenov also finished Gorkii Institute of Literature in 1961, between 1962-1971, he worked at Kazakhskaya Pravda. Suleimenov was awarded Komsomol Prize for Kazakhstan in 1966, between 1969 and 1989 he was a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In 1981 he was a member of the jury at the 12th Moscow International Film Festival and he became First Secretary of the Committee of the Kazakhstans Writers Union in 1983. His most influential work, AZ-i-IA, was published in 1975, AZ-i-IA drew widespread criticism from the literary elite in Russia. Suleimenov was charged with national chauvinism and glorifying feudal nomadic culture, Kazakhstan Communist Party first secretary Dinmuhammad Konayev intervened on Suleimenovs behalf, discussing the content of the book with Leonid Brezhnev and saving Suleimenovs career. Nevada Semipalatinsk campaigned to close nuclear sites in Nevada and in the Semipalatinsk Province of Kazakhstan, after independence, Suleimenov established the Peoples Congress Party in 1991 and served as the speaker of Parliament from 1993 until 1994. While at the Parliament, he rose to the position of opposition leader, many opposition leaders urged him to run as a candidate in the next presidential elections. In 1995, to preempt his potential candidacy, Nazarbayev brokered a deal, from 2002 till now he serves as Kazakhstani ambassador at the UNESCO in Paris. Douglas Mackiernan List of nuclear weapons tests Soviet atomic bomb project Nuclear weapons testing Novaya Zemlya Andrei Sakharov
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Mikhail Gorbachev
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Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev is a former Soviet statesman. He was the eighth and final leader of the Soviet Union, having been General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991 and he was the countrys head of state from 1988 until its dissolution in 1991. Gorbachev was born in Stavropol Krai into a peasant Ukrainian–Russian family and he graduated from Moscow State University in 1955 with a degree in law. While he was at the university, he joined the Communist Party, in 1970, he was appointed the First Party Secretary of the Stavropol Regional Committee, First Secretary to the Supreme Soviet in 1974, and appointed a member of the Politburo in 1979. Within three years of the death of Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, following the brief interregna of Andropov and Chernenko, before he reached the post, he had occasionally been mentioned in Western newspapers as a likely next leader and a man of the younger generation at the top level. Gorbachevs policies of glasnost and perestroika and his reorientation of Soviet strategic aims contributed to the end of the Cold War. He was awarded the Otto Hahn Peace Medal in 1989, the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990 and this was Gorbachevs third attempt to establish a political party, having started the Social Democratic Party of Russia in 2001 and the Union of Social Democrats in 2007. Gorbachev was born on 2 March 1931 in Privolnoye, Stavropol Krai, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union, into a mixed Russian-Ukrainian family of migrants from Voronezh, as a child, Gorbachev experienced the Soviet famine of 1932–1933. He recalled in a memoir that In that terrible year nearly half the population of my village, Privolnoye, starved to death. Both of his grandfathers were arrested on charges in the 1930s. His father was a combine harvester operator and World War II veteran and his mother, Maria Panteleyevna Gorbacheva, was a kolkhoz worker. He was brought up mainly by his Ukrainian maternal grandparents, in his teens, he operated combine harvesters on collective farms. He graduated from Moscow State University in 1955 with a degree in law, in 1967 he qualified as an agricultural economist via a correspondence masters degree at the Stavropol Institute of Agriculture. While at the university, he joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and soon very active within the party. Gorbachev met his wife, Raisa Titarenko, daughter of a Ukrainian railway engineer. They married in September 1953 and moved to Stavropol upon graduation and she gave birth to their only child, daughter Irina Mikhailovna Virganskaya, in 1957. Raisa Gorbacheva died of leukemia in 1999, Gorbachev has two granddaughters and one great granddaughter. Gorbachev attended the important twenty-second Party Congress in October 1961, where Nikita Khrushchev announced a plan to surpass the U. S. in per capita production within twenty years, Gorbachev rose in the Communist League hierarchy and worked his way up through territorial leagues of the party
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World Bank
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The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans to countries of the world for capital programs. It comprises two institutions, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and the International Development Association, the World Bank is a component of the World Bank Group, which is part of the United Nations system. The World Banks stated official goal is the reduction of poverty, the president of the World Bank is, traditionally, an American. The World Bank and the IMF are both based in Washington, D. C. and work closely with each other, although many countries were represented at the Bretton Woods Conference, the United States and United Kingdom were the most powerful in attendance and dominated the negotiations. Before 1974 the reconstruction and development loans provided by the World Bank were relatively small, the Banks staff were aware of the need to instill confidence in the bank. Fiscal conservatism ruled, and loan applications had to meet strict criteria, the first country to receive a World Bank loan was France. The Banks president at the time, John McCloy, chose France over two other applicants, Poland and Chile, the loan was for US$250 million, half the amount requested, and it came with strict conditions. France had to agree to produce a budget and give priority of debt repayment to the World Bank over other governments. World Bank staff closely monitored the use of the funds to ensure that the French government met the conditions. In addition, before the loan was approved, the United States State Department told the French government that its members associated with the Communist Party would first have to be removed, the French government complied with this diktat and removed the Communist coalition government - the so-called tripartisme. Within hours, the loan to France was approved, when the Marshall Plan went into effect in 1947, many European countries began receiving aid from other sources. Faced with this competition, the World Bank shifted its focus to non-European countries, in 1960, the International Development Association was formed, providing soft loans to developing countries. From 1974 to 1980 the bank concentrated on meeting the needs of people in the developing world. The size and number of loans to borrowers was greatly increased as loan targets expanded from infrastructure into social services and these changes can be attributed to Robert McNamara, who was appointed to the presidency in 1968 by Lyndon B. Johnson. McNamara implored bank treasurer Eugene Rotberg to seek out new sources of capital outside of the banks that had been the primary sources of funding. Rotberg used the bond market to increase the capital available to the bank. One consequence of the period of poverty alleviation lending was the rise of third world debt. From 1976 to 1980 developing world debt rose at an annual rate of 20%
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International Monetary Fund
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The International Monetary Fund is an international organization headquartered in Washington, D. C. It now plays a role in the management of balance of payments difficulties. Countries contribute funds to a pool through a system from which countries experiencing balance of payments problems can borrow money. As of 2016, the fund had SDR477 billion, the rationale for this is that private international capital markets function imperfectly and many countries have limited access to financial markets. The IMF provides alternate sources of financing and this assistance was meant to prevent the spread of international economic crises. The IMF was also intended to help mend the pieces of the economy after the Great Depression. As well, to provide investments for economic growth and projects such as infrastructure. The IMFs role was altered by the floating exchange rates post-1971. It shifted to examining the economic policies of countries with IMF loan agreements to determine if a shortage of capital was due to economic fluctuations or economic policy, the IMF also researched what types of government policy would ensure economic recovery. Rather than maintaining a position of oversight of only exchange rates and their role became a lot more active because the IMF now manages economic policy rather than just exchange rates. In addition, the IMF negotiates conditions on lending and loans under their policy of conditionality, nonconcessional loans, which include interest rates, are provided mainly through Stand-By Arrangements, the Flexible Credit Line, the Precautionary and Liquidity Line, and the Extended Fund Facility. The IMF provides emergency assistance via the Rapid Financing Instrument to members facing urgent balance-of-payments needs, the IMF is mandated to oversee the international monetary and financial system and monitor the economic and financial policies of its member countries. This activity is known as surveillance and facilitates international cooperation, the responsibilities changed from those of guardian to those of overseer of members’ policies. In 1995 the International Monetary Fund began work on data dissemination standards with the view of guiding IMF member countries to disseminate their economic and financial data to the public. The executive board approved the SDDS and GDDS in 1996 and 1997 respectively, the system is aimed primarily at statisticians and aims to improve many aspects of statistical systems in a country. It is also part of the World Bank Millennium Development Goals, some countries initially used the GDDS, but later upgraded to SDDS. The IMF does require collateral from countries for loans but also requires the government seeking assistance to correct its macroeconomic imbalances in the form of policy reform, if the conditions are not met, the funds are withheld. The concept of conditionality was introduced in a 1952 Executive Board decision, conditionality is associated with economic theory as well as an enforcement mechanism for repayment
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United States Environmental Protection Agency
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The EPA was proposed by President Richard Nixon and began operation on December 2,1970, after Nixon signed an executive order. The order establishing the EPA was ratified by committee hearings in the House, the agency is led by its Administrator, who is appointed by the president and approved by Congress. The current administrator is Scott Pruitt, the EPA is not a Cabinet department, but the administrator is normally given cabinet rank. The EPA has its headquarters in Washington, D. C. regional offices for each of the ten regions. The agency conducts environmental assessment, research, and education and it has the responsibility of maintaining and enforcing national standards under a variety of environmental laws, in consultation with state, tribal, and local governments. It delegates some permitting, monitoring, and enforcement responsibility to U. S. states, EPA enforcement powers include fines, sanctions, and other measures. The agency also works with industries and all levels of government in a variety of voluntary pollution prevention programs. In 2016, the agency had 15,376 full-time employees, more than half of EPAs employees are engineers, scientists, and environmental protection specialists, other employees include legal, public affairs, financial, and information technologists. Beginning in the late 1950s and through the 1960s, Congress reacted to increasing concern about the impact that human activity could have on the environment. Senator James E. Murray introduced a bill, the Resources and Conservation Act of 1959, the 1962 publication of Silent Spring by Rachel Carson alerted the public about the detrimental effects on the environment of the indiscriminate use of pesticides. In the years following, similar bills were introduced and hearings were held to discuss the state of the environment, in the colloquium, some members of Congress expressed a continuing concern over federal agency actions affecting the environment. The National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 was modeled on RCA, President Nixon signed NEPA into law on January 1,1970. The law created the Council on Environmental Quality in the Executive Office of the President, NEPA required that a detailed statement of environmental impacts be prepared for all major federal actions significantly affecting the environment. The detailed statement would ultimately be referred to as an impact statement. On July 9,1970, Nixon proposed a reorganization that consolidated many environmental responsibilities of the federal government under one agency. After conducting hearings during that summer, the House and Senate approved the proposal, the agency’s first administrator, William Ruckelshaus, took the oath of office on December 4,1970. In May 2013, Congress renamed the EPA headquarters as the William Jefferson Clinton Federal Building, the EPA is led by an Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. As of 2017 Scott Pruitt is the 14th administrator, each EPA regional office is responsible within its states for implementing the Agencys programs, except those programs that have been specifically delegated to states
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Earthquake
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An earthquake is the shaking of the surface of the Earth, resulting from the sudden release of energy in the Earths lithosphere that creates seismic waves. Earthquakes can range in size from those that are so weak that they cannot be felt to those violent enough to people around. The seismicity or seismic activity of an area refers to the frequency, type, Earthquakes are measured using measurements from seismometers. The moment magnitude is the most common scale on which earthquakes larger than approximately 5 are reported for the entire globe and these two scales are numerically similar over their range of validity. Magnitude 3 or lower earthquakes are mostly imperceptible or weak and magnitude 7 and over potentially cause damage over larger areas. The largest earthquakes in historic times have been of magnitude slightly over 9, intensity of shaking is measured on the modified Mercalli scale. The shallower an earthquake, the damage to structures it causes. At the Earths surface, earthquakes manifest themselves by shaking and sometimes displacement of the ground, when the epicenter of a large earthquake is located offshore, the seabed may be displaced sufficiently to cause a tsunami. Earthquakes can also trigger landslides, and occasionally volcanic activity, in its most general sense, the word earthquake is used to describe any seismic event — whether natural or caused by humans — that generates seismic waves. Earthquakes are caused mostly by rupture of faults, but also by other events such as volcanic activity, landslides, mine blasts. An earthquakes point of rupture is called its focus or hypocenter. The epicenter is the point at ground level directly above the hypocenter, tectonic earthquakes occur anywhere in the earth where there is sufficient stored elastic strain energy to drive fracture propagation along a fault plane. The sides of a fault move past each other smoothly and aseismically only if there are no irregularities or asperities along the surface that increase the frictional resistance. Most fault surfaces do have such asperities and this leads to a form of stick-slip behavior, once the fault has locked, continued relative motion between the plates leads to increasing stress and therefore, stored strain energy in the volume around the fault surface. This continues until the stress has risen sufficiently to break through the asperity, suddenly allowing sliding over the portion of the fault. This energy is released as a combination of radiated elastic strain seismic waves, frictional heating of the fault surface and this process of gradual build-up of strain and stress punctuated by occasional sudden earthquake failure is referred to as the elastic-rebound theory. It is estimated that only 10 percent or less of a total energy is radiated as seismic energy. Most of the energy is used to power the earthquake fracture growth or is converted into heat generated by friction
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Mudflow
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Mudflows contain a significant proportion of clay, which makes them more fluid than debris flows, thus, they are able to travel farther and across lower slope angles. Both types are generally mixtures of various kinds of materials of different sizes, mudflows are often called mudslides, a term applied indiscriminately by the mass media to a variety of mass wasting events. Mudflows often start as slides, becoming flows as water is entrained along the flow path, other types of mudflows include lahars and jökulhlaups. A statutory definition of flood-related mudslide appears in the United States National Flood Insurance Act of 1968, as amended, codified at 42 USC Sections 4001, heavy rainfall, snowmelt, or high levels of ground water flowing through cracked bedrock may trigger a movement of soil or sediments. Floods and debris flows may also occur when strong rains on hill or mountain slopes cause extensive erosion and/or what is known as channel scour, the 2006 Sidoarjo mud flow may have been caused by rogue drilling. Some broad mudflows are rather viscous and therefore slow, others very quickly. If large enough, they can devastate villages and countrysides and they are composed of at least 50% silt and clay-sized materials and up to 30% water. The point where a material begins to flow depends on its grain size. Fine grainy material or soil has a friction angle than a coarse sediment or a debris flow. On December 14,1999 in Vargas, Venezuela, a known as The Vargas tragedy significantly altered more than 60 kilometers of the coastline. Landslide is a general term than mudflow. It refers to the failure and subsequent movement downslope of any types of surface movement of soil, rock. The term incorporates earth slides, rock falls, debris flows and they do not have to be as fluid as a mudflow. Mudflows can be caused by heavy rains or a sudden thaw. They consist mainly of mud and water plus fragments of rock and other debris and they can move houses off their foundations or bury a place within minutes because of incredibly strong currents. When a mudflow occurs it is given four named areas, the scarp, in bigger mudflows the upper and lower shelves. The main scarp will be the area of incidence, the toe is the last affected area. The upper and lower shelves are located there is a large dip in the mudflows path
This article incorporates public domain material from the Library of Congress Country Studies website http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/.
This article incorporates 