1.
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
2.
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
3.
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
4.
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
5.
Afghanistan
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Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located within South Asia and Central Asia. It has a population of approximately 32 million, making it the 42nd most populous country in the world. It is bordered by Pakistan in the south and east, Iran in the west, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan in the north and its territory covers 652,000 km2, making it the 41st largest country in the world. The land also served as the source from which the Kushans, Hephthalites, Samanids, Saffarids, Ghaznavids, Ghorids, Khiljis, Mughals, Hotaks, Durranis, the political history of the modern state of Afghanistan began with the Hotak and Durrani dynasties in the 18th century. In the late 19th century, Afghanistan became a state in the Great Game between British India and the Russian Empire. Following the Third Anglo-Afghan War in 1919, King Amanullah unsuccessfully attempted to modernize the country and it remained peaceful during Zahir Shahs forty years of monarchy. A series of coups in the 1970s was followed by a series of wars that devastated much of Afghanistan. The name Afghānistān is believed to be as old as the ethnonym Afghan, the root name Afghan was used historically in reference to a member of the ethnic Pashtuns, and the suffix -stan means place of in Persian. Therefore, Afghanistan translates to land of the Afghans or, more specifically in a historical sense, however, the modern Constitution of Afghanistan states that he word Afghan shall apply to every citizen of Afghanistan. An important site of historical activities, many believe that Afghanistan compares to Egypt in terms of the historical value of its archaeological sites. The country sits at a unique nexus point where numerous civilizations have interacted and it has been home to various peoples through the ages, among them the ancient Iranian peoples who established the dominant role of Indo-Iranian languages in the region. At multiple points, the land has been incorporated within large regional empires, among them the Achaemenid Empire, the Macedonian Empire, the Indian Maurya Empire, and the Islamic Empire. Archaeological exploration done in the 20th century suggests that the area of Afghanistan has been closely connected by culture and trade with its neighbors to the east, west. Artifacts typical of the Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic, Bronze, urban civilization is believed to have begun as early as 3000 BCE, and the early city of Mundigak may have been a colony of the nearby Indus Valley Civilization. More recent findings established that the Indus Valley Civilisation stretched up towards modern-day Afghanistan, making the ancient civilisation today part of Pakistan, Afghanistan, in more detail, it extended from what today is northwest Pakistan to northwest India and northeast Afghanistan. An Indus Valley site has found on the Oxus River at Shortugai in northern Afghanistan. There are several smaller IVC colonies to be found in Afghanistan as well, after 2000 BCE, successive waves of semi-nomadic people from Central Asia began moving south into Afghanistan, among them were many Indo-European-speaking Indo-Iranians. These tribes later migrated further into South Asia, Western Asia, the region at the time was referred to as Ariana
6.
Pamir Mountains
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The Pamir Mountains, or the Pamirs, are a mountain range in Central Asia at the junction of the Himalayas with the Tian Shan, Karakoram, Kunlun, Hindu Kush and Hindu Raj ranges. They are among the world’s highest mountains, the precise extent of the Pamir Mountains is debatable. They lie mostly in Gorno-Badakhshan province of Tajikistan, to the north they join the Tian Shan mountains along the Alay Valley of Kyrgyzstan. To the south border the Hindu Kush mountains along Afghanistans Wakhan Corridor. Since Victorian times, they have known as the Roof of the World. The name Pamir is used commonly in Modern Chinese and loaned as simplified Chinese, 帕米尔, traditional Chinese, 帕米爾, pinyin. The three highest mountains in the Pamirs core are Ismoil Somoni Peak,7,495 m, Ibn Sina Peak,7,134 m, in the Eastern Pamirs, Chinas Kongur Tagh is the highest at 7,649 m. There are many glaciers in the Pamir Mountains, including the 77 km long Fedchenko Glacier, the longest in the former USSR, covered in snow throughout the year, the Pamirs have long and bitterly cold winters, and short, cool summers. Annual precipitation is about 130 mm, which supports grasslands but few trees, the East-Pamir, in the centre of which the massifs of Mustagh Ata and Kongur Tagh are situated, shows from the W-margin of the Tarim Basin an East-West extension of c.200 km. Its North-South extension from King Ata Tagh up to the North-West Kunlun foothills amounts to c.170 km. From this glacier area an outlet glacier has flowed down to the north-east through the Gez valley up to c.1850 m asl and this outlet glacier received inflow from the Kaiayayilak glacier from the Kongur-north-flank. From the north-adjacent Kara Bak Tor -massif the Oytag valley glacier in the same exposition flowed also down up to c.1850 m asl. At glacial times the glacier snowline as altitude limit between glacier nourishing area and ablation zone, was lowered about 820 to 1250 altitude metres against today. Under the condition of comparable proportions of precipitation there results from this a depression of temperature of at least 5 to 7.5 °C. Coal is mined in the west, though sheep herding in upper meadowlands are the source of income for the region. This section is based on the book by R. Middleton, about 138 BC Zhang Qian reached the Fergana Valley northwest of the Pamirs. Ptolemy vaguely describes a route through the area. From about 600 AD, Buddhist pilgrims travelled on both sides of the Pamirs to reach India from China, in 747 a Tang army was on the Wakhan River
7.
Alay Mountains
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The Alay or Alai Mountains constitute a mountain range that extends from the Tien Shan mountain range in Kyrgyzstan west into Tajikistan. It is part of the Pamir-Alai mountain system, the range runs approximately east to west. Its highest summit is Pik Tandykul,5544 m, the southern slopes of the range drain into the Vakhsh River, a tributary of the Amu Darya. The streams that drain the slopes of the range are tributaries of the Syr Darya. Some sources seem to use the term for the southern curve of the Tian Shan corresponding to the southern border of Kyrgyzstan
8.
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
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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
10.
Panj River
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The Panj River, also known as Pyandzh River or Pyanj River, is a tributary of the Amu Darya. The river is 1,125 km long and forms a part of the Afghanistan - Tajikistan border. The river is formed by the confluence of the Pamir River, from there, it flows westwards, forming the border of Afghanistan and Tajikistan. After passing the city of Khorog, capital of the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region of Tajikistan it receives water from one of its main tributaries and it then turns towards the southwest, before joining the river Vakhsh and forming the greatest river of Central Asia, the Amudarya. Panj played an important role during Soviet times, and was a strategic river during the Soviet military operations in Afghanistan in the 1980s. A water treaty between the Soviet Union and Afghanistan, signed in 1946, allows Afghanistan to draw 9 million cubic metres of water a year and it currently draws 2 million cubic metres of water. According to the Pyanj River Basin Project environmental damage could be expected if Afghanistan drew the entire amount of water from the river that the treaty allows, afghanistan-Tajikistan Bridge, A highway bridge was built over the river between Tajikistan and Afghanistan at Nizhnii Panj. The contract was awarded in May 2005 and the construction of the began in Jan 2006 and was completed in August 2007. The bridge replaces a barge with which only 60 cars a day can be transported, RAWA reports that this facilitates the heroin trade, the key to the economic miracle in Afghanistan. Another bridge at was built at the confluence with the Gunt River at Khorog in 2003, a bridge exists at Langar, which may still be closed. The Aga Khan Development Network has been engaged in a project to build a series of three bridges across the Panj River between Tajikistan and Afghanistan
11.
Fergana Valley
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The Fergana Valley is a valley in Central Asia spread across eastern Uzbekistan, southern Kyrgyzstan and northern Tajikistan. Divided into three republics of the former Soviet Union, the valley is ethnically diverse and in the early 21st century was the scene of ethnic conflict, the valleys history stretches back over 2300 years, when its population was conquered by Greco-Bactrian invaders from the west. Chinese chroniclers date its towns to more than 2,100 years ago and it was home to Babur, founder of the Mughal Dynasty, tying the region to modern Afghanistan and South Asia. The Russian Empire conquered the valley at the end of the 19th century and its three Soviet republics gained independence in 1991. The area largely remains Muslim, populated by ethnic Uzbek, Tajik, historically there have also been substantial numbers of Russian, Kashgarians, Kipchaks, Bukharan Jews and Romani minorities. Mass cotton cultivation, introduced by the Soviets, remains central to the economy, along with a range of grains, fruits. There is a history of stock breeding, leatherwork, and a growing mining sector, including deposits of coal, iron, sulfur, gypsum, rock-salt, naphtha. The Fergana Valley is a depression in Central Asia, between the mountain systems of the Tien-Shan in the north and the Gissar-Alai in the south. The valley is approximately 300 kilometres long and up to 70 kilometres wide and its position makes it a separate geographic zone. The valley owes its fertility to two rivers, the Naryn and the Kara Darya, which unite in the valley, near Namangan, numerous other tributaries of these rivers exist in the valley including the Sokh River. This expanse of quicksand, covering an area of 1,900 km2, under the influence of south-west winds, some of the sediments are marine carbonates and clays. The faults are upthrusts and overthrusts, anticlines associated with these faults form traps for petroleum and natural gas, which has been discovered in 52 small fields. The climate of this valley is dry and warm, in March the temperature reaches 20 °C, and then rapidly rises to 35 °C in June, July and August. During the five months following April precipitation is rare, but increases in frequency starting in October, snow and frost, down to -20 °C occurs in December and January. The independent and warlike Sogdiana formed a border region insulating the Achaemenid Persians from the nomadic Scythians to the north and it was later ruled by Seleucids before secession of Bactria. After 250 BC, the city remained in contact with the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom centered on Bactria. Several statuettes and representations of Greek soldiers have been north of the Tien Shan, on the doorstep to China. Of the Greco-Bactrians, the Greek historian Strabo too writes that, they extended their empire even as far as the Seres, after 155 BC, the Yuezhi were pushed into Fergana by neighbors from the north and east
12.
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
13.
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
14.
Zeravshan River
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Zarafshan River is a river in Central Asia. Its name, spreader of gold in Persian, refers to the presence of gold-bearing sands in the reaches of the river. To the ancient Greeks it was known as the Polytimetus and it was also formerly known as Sughd River. Tajikistan aims to construct several hydro-electric power stations on Zerafshan River and has signed the MOU in November 2013 with Zarvon Corporation for the financing, all previous MOUs have been voided. Zarafshan, a city in Uzbekistans Navoiy Province, called the capital of Uzbekistan. Zarafshan Rines, George Edwin, ed. Zerafshan, Бартольд К Истории Орошения в Туркестане1965 V. V
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Dushanbe
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Dushanbe — is the capital and largest city of Tajikistan. Dushanbe means Monday in the Tajik language and it was so named because it grew from a village that originally had a popular market on Mondays. Until 1929, the city was known in Russian as Dyushambe, as of 2014, Dushanbe had a population of 778,500. Situated at the confluence of two rivers, Varzob and Kofarnihon, Dushanbe is the capital of Tajikistan. Although archaeological remnants dating to the 5th century BC have been discovered in the area, the first written mention of the village of Dushanbe occurred in 1676. It was at the crossroads, where a large bazaar occurred on Mondays, hence the name Dushanbe-Bazar from Dushanbe, in the village, there were more than 500 households and a population of about 8,000 people. By 1826, the town was called Dushanbe Qurghan Russified as Dyushambe, the first map showing Dyushambe was drafted in 1875. At that time, the town was a fortress on a bank on the left bank of the Varzob River with 10,000 residents. In 1920, the last Emir of Bukhara briefly took refuge in Dyushambe after being overthrown by the Bolshevik revolution and he fled to Afghanistan after the Red Army conquered the area the next year. A Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic separate from the Uzbek SSR was created in 1929, in the years that followed, the city developed at a rapid pace. The Soviets transformed the area into a centre for cotton and silk production, the population also increased with thousands of Tajiks migrating to Tajikistan following the transfer of Bukhara and Samarkand to the Uzbek SSR as part of national delimitation in Central Asia. On 10 November 1961, Stalinabad was renamed Dushanbe, the name it retains to this day, severe rioting occurred in February 1990, after it was rumored that the Soviet government planned to relocate tens of thousands of Armenian refugees to Tajikistan. In January 2017, Rustam Emomali, current President Emomali Rahmons son, was appointed Mayor of Dushanbe, a key position, Dushanbe features a Mediterranean climate, with strong continental climate influences. The summers are hot and dry and the winters are chilly, the climate is damper than other Central Asian capitals, with an average annual rainfall over 500 millimetres as moist air is funnelled by the surrounding valley during the winter and spring. Winters are not as cold as further north owing to the shielding of the city by mountains from extremely cold air from Siberia, January 2008 was particularly cold, and the temperature dropped to −22 °C. Tajik Air has its office on the grounds of Dushanbe Airport in Dushanbe. Somon Air has its office in Dushanbe. Tajikistans principal railways are in the region and connect Dushanbe with the industrial areas of the Gissar and Vakhsh valleys and with Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan
16.
Khatlon Region
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Khatlon Region, sometimes misspelt Khatlan, one of the three provinces of Tajikistan and is the most populous of the four first level administrative regions. It is situated in the southwest of the country, between the Hisor Range in the north and the Panj River in the south and borders on Afghanistan in the southeast and on Uzbekistan in the west. During Soviet times Khatlon was divided into Kurgan-Tyube Oblast – with the Kofarnihon and Vakhsh river valleys –, both regions were merged in November 1992 into todays Khatlon Province. The capital is the city of Qurghonteppa, formerly known as Kurgan-Tyube, Khatlon has an area of 24,800 square kilometres and consists of 24 districts –14 in Western Khatlon and 10 in Eastern Khatlon. The total population of Khatlon in 2008 was 2,579,300, the population in Khatlon is mainly engaged in Agriculture. During the Soviet era, Khatlon became one of the two main regions in Tajikistan. The other one is in Sughd, the process included violations against peasants, substantial expansion of the irrigation network, and forcible resettlement of mountain peoples and people from Uzbekistan to the lowlands. The results of this policy are to be seen in the composition of Salua oblast as well as in the fact that the Tajik population identifies themselves either as Gharmis or Kulobis. These groups never melted, and fought against each other during the Civil War in Tajikistan, Khatlon oblast suffered the heaviest damage in Tajikistan. Since the conflicts leading to the war were never really resolved. The eastern part – Kulob – is home to the president, during Soviet times, the region cooperated with the then ruling elite from Leninabad, and was responsible for the militia, the army and the security forces. Kulob is regarded as a conservative region. In the capital Qurghonteppa and parts of Kulob, the Islamic opposition has a lot of support among the Garmis, the Kulyab clan is based in Khatlon. In February 1996 Colonel Mahmud Khudoiberdiyev launched a rebellion, insisting that three officials from the Kulyab clan resign before he ended the rebellion, additionally, Prime Minister Dzhamshed Karimov and Abudzhalil Khamidov, the Chairman of the Leninabad Oblast executive committee, resigned. In Qurghonteppa the breakdown is 59% Tajiks, 32% Uzbeks and three percent Russian, principality of Khuttal 2006 Tajikistan earthquake Dangara Massif Important Bird Area
17.
Lenin Peak
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Lenin Peak, or Ibn Sina Peak, rises to 7,134 metres in Gorno-Badakhshan on the border of Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, and is the second-highest point of both countries. Lenin Peak is the highest mountain in the Trans-Alay Range of Central Asia and it was thought to be the highest point in the Pamirs in Tajikistan until 1933, when Ismoil Somoni Peak was climbed and found to be more than 300 metres higher. Two mountains in the Pamirs in China, Kongur Tagh and Muztagh Ata, are higher than the Tajik summits, the peak was discovered in 1871 and originally named Mount Kaufmann after Konstantin Kaufman, the first Governor-General of Turkestan. In 1928, the mountain was renamed Lenin Peak after the Russian revolutionary and first leader of the Soviet Union, in Tajikistan, the peak was renamed again in July 2006, and today it is officially called in Tajik Qullai Abuali ibni Sino after Abu Ali ibn Sina. In Kyrgyzstan, the peak is still officially called Lenin Chokusu, initial exploration of this part of Central Asia occurred in the period 1774–82. Arguably the first recorded travel through the region is the journey of the slave Filipp Efremov. He crossed the Fergana valley, then via Osh, the Chigirik Pass and Terekdavan Pass he reached the Kashgar and he was the first European who crossed the Alai Mountains. Scientific expeditions to the Alai Mountains began in 1871, when Alexei Pavlovich Fedchenko discovered the Trans-Alai Range, the first geographical expedition which came nearest to the base of the future Lenin Peak in the early 20th century was arguably the expedition of Nikolai Leopoldovich Korzhenevskiy. They started climbing upstream of the Saukdara river along the South slope of Trans-Alai Range also Trans-Alay Range, from the river head they continued climbing along the Greater Saukdara Glacier towards a saddle at an elevation of 5820 m. On September 25,1928 they started climbing from the saddle along the NE Ridge, at the time, Kaufman Peak was the highest summit reached by men. The title Lenin Peak was first applied to the highest point of the Trans-Alai Range in the same year, when it was renamed after Lenin it was believed to be the highest point in the USSR. On September 8,1934, at 16,20 Kasian Chernuha, Vitaly Abalakov and Ivan Lukin and their attempt lasted for four days with three camps. The expedition started climbing from the Achik-Tash canyon in the Alai valley, the summit attempt itself was started along the Western ice slope of the Lenin glacier. They continued climbing along the North Face, passing the rocks that were given the name Lipkins Rocks. At the end of the day they reached the crest of the NE ridge at an elevation of about 6500 m. During the following day and a half they climbed along the NE Ridge and, the third ascent was three years later, in 1937, when eight Soviet climbers under the direction of Lev Barkhash reached the summit by the same route. This was at the beginning of political repressions in the Soviet Union and many of the most prominent Soviet climbers. Subsequent attempts to climb Lenin Peak could not begin until 1950, on August 14,1950, twelve climbers under the direction of Vladimir Racek reached the summit for the fourth time
18.
Ismoil Somoni Peak
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Ismoil Somoni Peak is the highest mountain in Tajikistan. It was within the territory of the former Russian Empire and the former Soviet Union before the area became independent as Tajikstan, the mountain is named after Ismail Samani, the greatest ruler of the Samanid dynasty. When the existence of a peak in the Soviet Pamir Mountains higher than Lenin Peak was first established in 1928, in 1962, as part of Krushchevs nationwide de-Stalinization process, the name was changed to Communism Peak, a name by which it is still commonly known. The name Communism Peak was dropped in 1998 in favour of the current name, the first ascent was made 3 September 1933 by the Soviet mountaineer Yevgeniy Abalakov. Lenin Peak Peak Korzhenevskaya Mount Garmo Patkhor Peak The Free Dictionary, Imeni Ismail Samani Peak Pik Kommunizma
19.
Fedchenko Glacier
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The Fedchenko Glacier is a large glacier in the Yazgulem Range, Pamir Mountains, of north-central Gorno-Badakhshan province, Tajikistan. The glacier is long and narrow, currently extending for 77 kilometres and it is the longest glacier in the world outside of the polar regions. The maximum thickness of the glacier is 1,000 metres, the glacier follows a generally northward path to the east of the 6,595 m Garmo Peak. The glacier begins at an elevation of 6,200 metres above sea level and its waters eventually feed down the Muksu, Surkhob, Vakhsh, and Amu Darya rivers into the Aral Sea. To the west is the Academy of Sciences Range, Mount Garmo, Ismoil Somoni Peak, Peak Korzhenevskaya, to the south is Independence Peak and to the east Gorbunov Peak. To the north is Altyn Mazar, the glacier was discovered in 1878 but not fully explored until 1928 by a German-Soviet expedition under Willi Rickmer Rickmers. It is named after Alexei Pavlovich Fedchenko, a Russian explorer, in 1910-1913 the glacier expanded and moved forward by 800–1000 m, blocking up the Balyandlik River the following year. It continued to recede between 1928-1960, stopping its inflows such as the Kosinenko, Ulugbeck, Alert and several others, the First National Communication of the Republic of Tajikistan under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Repeblic of Tajikistan Ministry for Nature Protection, Tajikistan 2002, Vital Maps and Graphics on Climate Change. Published by the Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress, online version retrieved 8 December 2005. Map of glaciation in the Pamir Mountains Google Maps satellite photo of Fedchenco Glacier Current weather and 5-day forecast, from CNN
20.
Khujand
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Khujand, formerly Khodjend or Khodzhent until 1936 and Leninabad until 1991, is the second-largest city of Tajikistan and the capital of the northernmost province of Tajikistan, now called Sughd. Khujand is one of the oldest cities in Central Asia, dating back about 2,500 years and it is situated on the Syr Darya at the mouth of the Fergana Valley and was a major city along the ancient Silk Road. Khujand is the site of Cyropolis which was established when king Cyrus the Great founded the city during his last expedition against the Saka tribe of Massagetae shortly before his death. Alexander the Great later built his furthest Greek settlement near Cyropolis in 329 BC, the city would form a bastion for the Greek settlers against the nomadic Scythian tribes who lived north of the Syr Darya River. According to the Roman writer Curtius, Alexandria Ultima retained its Hellenistic culture as late as 30 BCE, the city became a major staging point on the northern Silk Road. It also became a hub and several famous Persian poets and scientists came from this city. Khujand was captured by the Muslim armies in the early 8th century under Qutayba ibn Muslim, in the late 9th century, however, it reverted to local rule and eventually incorporated into the Samanid Empire. It came under the rule of the Kara-Khanid Khanate in 999 but after the division of Kara Khanids in 1042, it was part of Eastern Kara Khanids. Karakhitans conquered it in 1137, but it passed to Khwarazmshahs in 1211, in the 14th century, the city was part of the Chagatai Khanate until it was incorporated into the Timurid Dynasty in the late 14th century. The Shaybanid dynasty of Bukhara next annexed Khojand, until it was taken over by the Kokand Khanate in 1802, in 1866, as most of Central Asia was occupied by Russian Empire, the city became part of the Russian Governorate of Turkestan. The threat of forced conscription during World War I led to protests in the city in July 1916, in 1929, it was incorporated into the Soviet Republic of Tajikistan after being part of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic between 1924 and 1929. The city was renamed Leninabad on 10 January 1936 and it remained part of the Soviet Union until 1991, with the independence of Tajikistan, Khujand became the second largest city in the nation. It reverted to its original name in 1992 after the breakup of the Soviet Union. In 1996 the city experienced the Ashurov protests during which citizens called for the President, the popular protests were followed by a protest from the citys prisoners, many of whom had been sentenced to long jail terms for minor crimes and who were living in poor conditions. The protest led to the Khujand prison riot in which between 24 and 150 prisoners were killed, in the early 2000s many residents of Khujand had little to no access to water, and what water they did have was unsafe to drink and had to be boiled. Residents pay for their supply, which in turn helps Khujands municipal water company to continue to renovate. The project is in its stage of development, and should be completed by 2017. Khujand Airport has regularly scheduled flights to Dushanbe as well as international destinations. There is also a connection between Khujand and Samarkand in Uzbekistan on the way to Dushanbe
21.
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
22.
Vakhsh River
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The Vakhsh, also known as the Surkhob, in north-central Tajikistan, and the Kyzyl-Suu, in Kyrgyzstan, is a Central Asian river, and one of the main rivers of the nation of Tajikistan. It is a tributary of the Amu Darya river, the river flows through the Pamirs, passing through very mountainous territory that frequently restricts its flow to narrow channels within deep gorges. Some of the largest glaciers in Tajikistan, including the Fedchenko and Abramov glaciers and its largest tributaries are the Muksu and the Obihingou, the Vakhsh River proper begins at the confluence of the Obihingou and Surkhob rivers. After it exits the Pamirs, the Vakhsh passes through the lowlands of southwest Tajikistan. It ends when it flows into the Panj River to form the Amu Darya, the Tigrovaya Balka Nature Reserve, which was the last habitat of the now-extinct Caspian tiger in the former USSR, is located at the confluence of the Vakhsh and the Panj. The catchment area of the Vakhsh is 39,100 km2, the river contributes about 25% of the total flow of the Amu Darya, its parent river. Its average discharge is 538 m3/s, with a discharge of 20.0 km3. However, since the Vakhsh is fed mostly by melting snow and glaciers, measurements at the Nurek Dam indicate that winter flow rates average around 150 m3/s, whereas flow rates during the summer months can exceed 1500 m3/s – a tenfold increase. The Vakhsh has been developed for human use. Electricity, aluminum, and cotton are the mainstays of Tajikistan’s economy, the other four dams, downstream of Nurek, are Baipaza, Sangtuda 1, Sangtuda 2 and Golovnaya Dams. Hydroelectricity powers the aluminum production at the Tajik Aluminum Company in Tursunzoda, as for cotton, Vakhsh water irrigates much of Tajikistan’s crop, about 85% of the water taken from the Vakhsh goes toward irrigation. The leaders of the Soviet Union stressed the importance of developing the countrys under-developed regions and this industrialization would be fueled by exploiting Tajikistan’s enormous hydropower potential. It took until the 1950s, however, for dam construction to begin on the Vakhsh, the Perepadnaya power station, was the first to be commissioned in 1959. It is situated on a canal off the Golovnaya Dam which was commissioned in 1963, the giant Nurek dam was constructed between 1961 and 1980. Baipaza Dam was completed in 1983, the Tajik Aluminum Company plant is a prime example. Other industries established locally were chemical plants, nitrogen fertilizer factories, the dams, particularly the reservoirs behind them, were also built with the purpose of providing water for agriculture. The Soviet Union promoted cotton farming in the Vakhsh Valley, as well as vineyards and orchards, the Vakhsh Valley Canal Project, which expanded farmland along the river’s lower reaches, predated the dams, having been completed in 1933. In the 1960s, after the reservoirs had been constructed, engineers dug tunnels through the mountains to irrigate other valleys
23.
Nurek Dam
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The Nurek Dam is an earth-fill embankment dam on the Vakhsh River in Tajikistan. Its primary purpose is power generation and its power station has an installed capacity of 3,015 MW. Construction of the dam began in 1961 and the stations first generator was commissioned in 1972. The last generator was commissioned in 1979 and the project was completed in 1980 when Tajikistan was still a republic within the Soviet Union. At 300 m, it is currently the second tallest man-made dam in the world, the Rogun Dam, also along the Vakhsh in Tajikistan, may exceed it in size when completed. The Nurek Dam was constructed by the Soviet Union between the years 1961 and 1980 and it is uniquely constructed, with a central core of cement forming an impermeable barrier within a 300 m -high rock and earth fill construction. The volume of the mound is 54 million m3, the dam includes nine hydroelectric generating units, the first commissioned in 1972 and the last in 1979. An estimated 5,000 people were resettled from the flooding area. The dam is located in a gorge along the Vakhsh River in western Tajikistan. A town near the dam, also called Nurek, houses engineers, a total of nine Francis turbine-generators are installed in the Nurek Dams power station. Originally having a capacity of 300 MW each, they were redesigned and retrofitted between 1984 and 1988 so now have a capacity of 335 MW each. As of 1994, this formed most of the nations 4.0 gigawatt hydroelectric generating capacity, the reservoir formed by the Nurek Dam, known simply as Nurek, is the largest reservoir in Tajikistan with a capacity of 10.5 km3. The reservoir is over 70 km in length, and has an area of 98 km2. The reservoir fuels the hydroelectric plant located within the dam, irrigation water is transported 14 kilometers through the Dangara irrigation tunnel and is used to irrigate about 700 km2 of farmland. It is suspected that the reservoir may have caused induced seismicity when being impounded, baipaza Dam – downstream AQUASTAT - FAOs Information System on Water and Agriculture, Tajikistan. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Land and Water Development Division
24.
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
25.
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
26.
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
27.
Zeravshan
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Zarafshan is a city of over 68,000 inhabitants in the center of Uzbekistans Navoiy Region. Located in the Kyzylkum desert, it water from the Amudarya by a 220-km pipeline. Zarafshan is called the capital of Uzbekistan. It is home of the Navoi Mining & Metallurgy Combinats Central Mining Administration, between 1995 and 2006 the Muruntau gold mining and processing operation was run by the Zarafshan-Newmont Joint Venture, a foreign direct investment by Newmont Mining Corporation of Denver, Colorado. Uzbekistan expropriated the assets in 2006 and by 2007 had taken full ownership of the mine. Astrelin Victoria epitomizes the beauty of the city, zarafshan Airport is served by Uzbekistan Airlines with direct daily flights to and from Tashkent
28.
Karakul (Tajikistan)
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Karakul, Qarokul is a 25 km diameter lake within a 52 km impact crater. It is located in the Tajik National Park in the Pamir Mountains in Tajikistan, Karakul lies within a circular depression interpreted as an impact crater with a rim diameter of 52 km. The crater is relatively recent, its age is estimated variously as 25 Ma, less than 23 Ma, the Earth Impact Database lists it as less than 5 Ma, or during the Pliocene. It is larger than the Eltanin impact, which has already suggested as a contributor to the cooling. The Karakul impact structure was first identified through studies of imagery taken from space, the lake was formerly known as Lake Victoria, named after Queen Victoria by the British cartographers/military geographers. It was marked as such by most maps of the area until the 1920s when a Kyrgyz name, Karakul, or the Black Lake, the lake/crater lies at an elevation of 3,960 m above mean sea level. It is endorheic and the water is brackish, there is a small village with the same name on the eastern shore of the lake. Although the lake lies within a park, much of the surroundings are used as pasture. The lakes islands are the places where waterbirds rest and nest. The only fish in the lake is a species of stone loach, higher than Lake Titicaca, Karakul hosted the Roof of the World Regatta for the first time in September 2014. This replaced the Alpine Bank Dillon Open, held on the Dillon Reservoir in Summit County, Colorado, as the highest sailing regatta in the world
29.
Reservoir
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A reservoir is a storage space for fluids. These fluids may be water, hydrocarbons or gas, a reservoir usually means an enlarged natural or artificial lake, storage pond or impoundment created using a dam or lock to store water. Reservoirs can be created by controlling a stream that drains a body of water. They can also be constructed in river valleys using a dam, alternately, a reservoir can be built by excavating flat ground or constructing retaining walls and levees. Tank reservoirs store liquids or gases in storage tanks that may be elevated, at grade level, tank reservoirs for water are also called cisterns. Underground reservoirs are used to store liquids, principally either water or petroleum, a dam constructed in a valley relies on the natural topography to provide most of the basin of the reservoir. Dams are typically located at a part of a valley downstream of a natural basin. The valley sides act as walls, with the dam located at the narrowest practical point to provide strength. In many reservoir construction projects, people have to be moved and re-housed, construction of a reservoir in a valley will usually need the river to be diverted during part of the build, often through a temporary tunnel or by-pass channel. In hilly regions, reservoirs are constructed by enlarging existing lakes. Sometimes in such reservoirs the new top water level exceeds the height on one or more of the feeder streams such as at Llyn Clywedog in Mid Wales. In such cases additional side dams are required to contain the reservoir, where water is pumped or siphoned from a river of variable quality or quantity, bank-side reservoirs may be built to store the water. Such reservoirs are usually formed partly by excavation and partly by building a complete encircling bund or embankment, the water stored in such reservoirs may stay there for several months, during which time normal biological processes may substantially reduce many contaminants and almost eliminate any turbidity. The use of reservoirs also allows water abstraction to be stopped for some time. Service reservoirs store fully treated potable water close to the point of distribution, many service reservoirs are constructed as water towers, often as elevated structures on concrete pillars where the landscape is relatively flat. Other service reservoirs can be almost entirely underground, especially in hilly or mountainous country. In the United Kingdom, Thames Water has many underground reservoirs, sometimes called cisterns, built in the 1800s. A good example is the Honor Oak Reservoir in London, constructed between 1901 and 1909, when it was completed it was said to be the largest brick built underground reservoir in the world and it is still one of the largest in Europe
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Sughd Region
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Sughd Region is one of the four administrative divisions and one of the three provinces that make up Tajikistan. It was founded in 1924 as part of Uzbek SSR and became part of Tajik SSR in 1929 after efforts of Shirinsho Shotemur, the region shares a border with the Jizakh, Namangan, Samarkand and Fergana provinces of Uzbekistan, and the Osh and Batken regions of Kyrgyzstan. The Syr Darya river flows through it and it contains the Akash Massif and Mogoltau Massif Important Bird Areas. Sughd is separated from the rest of Tajikistan by the Gissar Range, the southern part of the province is the east-west valley of the upper Zarafshan River. North, over the Turkestan Range, is the Ferghana Valley, the province has 30% of Tajikistans population and one-third of its arable land. It produces two thirds of the countrys GDP and it was known as Leninabad until 1991, then Leninobod until 2000, then Sogd until 2004. The economy of Sughd has been growing steadily since 2000, at the rate of 13. 2% in 2008 and 13. 3% in 2009. In 2009, farming, trade and industrial production contributed 28. 2%,25. 8% and 14. 0% to the GRP of Sughd, since 2000, the output of industrial production increased two-fold, at an average annual growth rate of 5–8%. A free economic zone has been established in the region called Sughd Free Economic Zone, the capital is Khujand, with a population of 155,900. Other major towns include, Buston Ghafurov Isfara Istaravshan Taboshar Konibodom Panjakent Qalaibaland The region is divided into 14 districts, the Arab Conquests in Central Asia. Reprinted from the 1923 edition, published by the Royal Asiatic Society OCLC474026895, the Lands of the Eastern Caliphate. Reprinted in a 2006 facsimile as ISBN 978-0-543-94233-3 citypopulation. de Official Website of the Free Economic Zone of Sughd
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Iskanderkul
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Iskanderkul is a mountain lake of glacial origin in Tajikistans Sughd Province. It lies at an altitude of 2,195 metres on the slopes of the Gissar Range in the Fann Mountains. Triangular in shape, it has an area of 3.4 square kilometres and is up to 72 metres deep. Claimed to be one of the most beautiful lakes in the former Soviet Union. It was formed by the congestion of the Saratogh river and it is 134 km from Dushanbe and 23 km from the Dushanbe—Khujand road. The lake takes its name from Alexander the Great, Iskander is the Persian pronunciation of Alexander, the outflow of the lake is the Iskander Darya, which joins the Yaghnob River to form the Fan Darya, a major left tributary of the Zeravshan River. A300 square kilometres tract of land including the lake and surrounding mountains has been designated a nature reserve, as well as the lake itself, habitats found in the reserve include rivers, water meadows, broad-leaved and juniper forests, mountain shrubland and sub-alpine meadows. Lake Iskanderkul, Big Soviet Encyclopedia on Yandex Lake Iskanderkul — the heart of the Fann Mountains Photo of Lake Iskanderkul on Panoramio Lake Iskanderkul, photo gallery
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Fann Mountains
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Fann Mountains are part of the western Pamir-Alay mountain system and are primarily located in Tajikistans Sughd Province between the Zarafshan Range to the north and the Gissar Range to the south. In the east-west direction they extend from Fandarya River to Archimaydan River, the Fanns boast about a hundred peaks, with several rising to altitudes of more than 5,000 meters and relative elevations of up to 1,500 meters. The highest point in Fann Mountains is Chimtarga peak, other 5, 000-meter peaks are Bodkhona, Chapdara, Big Hansa, Little Hansa, Zamok, Mirali, and Energia. Lakes There are many lakes in the Fanns, the best known are Alaudin lakes in the Chapdara River valley, Kulikalon Lakes on the northern slope of Chimtarga peak, Allo Lake, and the most outstanding of all, Iskanderkul Lake. Access The best time for visiting is May–October for trekking and July–September for mountaineering, access is generally from Pendjikent, which can be reached either from Dushanbe or Samarkand. Alay Mountains Pamir Mountains Fann Mountains, photo gallery Mountaineering map of the Fanns 1,100,000 topographical tourist map of the Fann Mountains
33.
Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane
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Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane is a colorless, crystalline, tasteless, and almost odorless organochlorine known for its insecticidal properties and environmental impacts. First synthesized in 1874, DDTs insecticidal action was discovered by the Swiss chemist Paul Hermann Müller in 1939 and it was used in the second half of World War II to control malaria and typhus among civilians and troops. After the war, DDT was also used as an insecticide and its production. Müller was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discovery of the efficiency of DDT as a contact poison against several arthropods in 1948. In 1962, Rachel Carsons book Silent Spring was published, the book claimed that DDT and other pesticides had been shown to cause cancer and that their agricultural use was a threat to wildlife, particularly birds. Its publication was an event for the environmental movement and resulted in a large public outcry that eventually led, in 1972. DDT is similar in structure to the insecticide methoxychlor and the acaricide dicofol and it is highly hydrophobic and nearly insoluble in water but has good solubility in most organic solvents, fats and oils. It is produced by the reaction of chloral with chlorobenzene in the presence of an acid catalyst. DDT has been marketed under names including Anofex, Cezarex, Chlorophenothane, Clofenotane, Dicophane, Dinocide, Gesarol, Guesapon, Guesarol, Gyron, Ixodex, Neocid, Neocidol. Commercial DDT is a mixture of several closely–related compounds, the major component is the p, p isomer. The o, p isomer is present in significant amounts. Dichlorodiphenyldichloroethylene and dichlorodiphenyldichloroethane make up the balance, DDE and DDD are the major metabolites and environmental breakdown products. In the United States, it was manufactured by some 15 companies, including Monsanto, Ciba, Montrose Chemical Company, Pennwalt, production peaked in 1963 at 82,000 tonnes per year. More than 600,000 tonnes were applied in the US before the 1972 ban, usage peaked in 1959 at about 36,000 tonnes. In 2009,3,314 tonnes were produced for malaria control, India is the only country still manufacturing DDT and is the largest consumer. In insects it opens sodium ion channels in neurons, causing them to fire spontaneously, insects with certain mutations in their sodium channel gene are resistant to DDT and similar insecticides. Genomic studies in the model genetic organism Drosophila melanogaster revealed that high level DDT resistance is polygenic, DDT was first synthesized in 1874 by Othmar Zeidler under the supervision of Adolf von Baeyer. It was further described in 1929 in a dissertation by W. Bausch, the insecticide properties of multiple chlorinated aliphatic or fat-aromatic alcohols with at least one trichloromethane group were described in a patent in 1934 by Wolfgang von Leuthold
34.
Cotton
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Cotton is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective case, around the seeds of the cotton plants of the genus Gossypium in the family of Malvaceae. The fiber is almost pure cellulose, under natural conditions, the cotton bolls will tend to increase the dispersal of the seeds. The plant is a native to tropical and subtropical regions around the world, including the Americas, Africa. The greatest diversity of wild species is found in Mexico, followed by Australia. Cotton was independently domesticated in the Old and New Worlds, the fiber is most often spun into yarn or thread and used to make a soft, breathable textile. Current estimates for world production are about 25 million tonnes or 110 million bales annually, China is the worlds largest producer of cotton, but most of this is used domestically. The United States has been the largest exporter for many years, in the United States, cotton is usually measured in bales, which measure approximately 0.48 cubic meters and weigh 226.8 kilograms. Cotton cultivation in the region is dated to the Indus Valley Civilization, the Indus cotton industry was well-developed and some methods used in cotton spinning and fabrication continued to be used until the industrialization of India. Between 2000 and 1000 BC cotton became widespread across much of India, for example, it has been found at the site of Hallus in Karnataka dating from around 1000 BC. Cotton fabrics discovered in a cave near Tehuacán, Mexico have been dated to around 5800 BC, the domestication of Gossypium hirsutum in Mexico is dated between 3400 and 2300 BC. Cotton was grown upriver, made into nets, and traded with fishing villages along the coast for supplies of fish. The Spanish who came to Mexico and Peru in the early 16th century found the people growing cotton and this may be a reference to tree cotton, Gossypium arboreum, which is a native of the Indian subcontinent. According to the Columbia Encyclopedia, Cotton has been spun, woven and it clothed the people of ancient India, Egypt, and China. Hundreds of years before the Christian era, cotton textiles were woven in India with matchless skill, in Iran, the history of cotton dates back to the Achaemenid era, however, there are few sources about the planting of cotton in pre-Islamic Iran. The planting of cotton was common in Merv, Ray and Pars of Iran, in Persian poets poems, especially Ferdowsis Shahname, there are references to cotton. Marco Polo refers to the products of Persia, including cotton. John Chardin, a French traveler of the 17th century who visited the Safavid Persia, during the Han dynasty, cotton was grown by Chinese peoples in the southern Chinese province of Yunnan. Mohamed Ali Pasha accepted the proposition and granted himself the monopoly on the sale and export of cotton in Egypt, and later dictated cotton should be grown in preference to other crops
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Soil salinity
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Soil salinity is the salt content in the soil, the process of increasing the salt content is known as salinization. Salts occur naturally within soils and water, salination can be caused by natural processes such as mineral weathering or by the gradual withdrawal of an ocean. It can also come about through artificial processes such as irrigation, salts are a natural component in soils and water. The ions responsible for salination are, Na+, K+, Ca2+, Mg2+, as the Na+ predominates, soils can become sodic. Sodic soils present particular challenges because they tend to have very poor structure which limits or prevents water infiltration and drainage. Over long periods of time, as soil minerals weather and release salts, in addition to mineral weathering, salts are also deposited via dust and precipitation. In dry regions salts may accumulate, leading to naturally saline soils and this is the case, for example, in large parts of Australia. Human practices can increase the salinity of soils by the addition of salts in irrigation water, proper irrigation management can prevent salt accumulation by providing adequate drainage water to leach added salts from the soil. Disrupting drainage patterns that provide leaching can also result in salt accumulations, an example of this occurred in Egypt in 1970 when the Aswan High Dam was built. The change in the level of water before the construction had enabled soil erosion. After the construction, the high level of the water table led to the salination of the arable land. Salinity in drylands can occur when the table is between two and three metres from the surface of the soil. The salts from the groundwater are raised by capillary action to the surface of the soil and this occurs when groundwater is saline, and is favored by land use practices allowing more rainwater to enter the aquifer than it could accommodate. For example, the clearing of trees for agriculture is a reason for dryland salinity in some areas. Salinity from irrigation can occur over time wherever irrigation occurs, since almost all water contains dissolved salts. When the plants use the water, the salts are left behind in the soil, since soil salinity makes it more difficult for plants to absorb soil moisture, these salts must be leached out of the plant root zone by applying additional water. This water in excess of plant needs is called the leaching fraction, salination from irrigation water is also greatly increased by poor drainage and use of saline water for irrigating agricultural crops. Salinity in urban areas often results from the combination of irrigation, irrigation is also now common in cities
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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
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Pollution
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Pollution is the introduction of contaminants into the natural environment that cause adverse change. Pollution can take the form of chemical substances or energy, such as noise, pollutants, the components of pollution, can be either foreign substances/energies or naturally occurring contaminants. Pollution is often classed as point source or nonpoint source pollution, Air pollution has always accompanied civilizations. Pollution started from prehistoric times when man created the first fires, metal forging appears to be a key turning point in the creation of significant air pollution levels outside the home. The burning of coal and wood, and the presence of horses in concentrated areas made the cities the cesspools of pollution. The Industrial Revolution brought an infusion of untreated chemicals and wastes into local streams that served as the water supply, king Edward I of England banned the burning of sea-coal by proclamation in London in 1272, after its smoke became a problem. But the fuel was so common in England that this earliest of names for it was acquired because it could be carted away from some shores by the wheelbarrow and it was the industrial revolution that gave birth to environmental pollution as we know it today. London also recorded one of the extreme cases of water quality problems with the Great Stink on the Thames of 1858. Pollution issues escalated as population growth far exceeded view ability of neighborhoods to handle their waste problem, reformers began to demand sewer systems, and clean water. In 1870, the conditions in Berlin were among the worst in Europe. There were no toilets in the streets or squares. Visitors, especially women, often became desperate when nature called, in the public buildings the sanitary facilities were unbelievably primitive. As a metropolis, Berlin did not emerge from a state of barbarism into civilization until after 1870. Chicago and Cincinnati were the first two American cities to enact laws ensuring cleaner air in 1881, as historian Martin Melosi notes, The generation that first saw automobiles replacing the horses saw cars as miracles of cleanliness. By the 1940s, however, automobile-caused smog was an issue in Los Angeles. Other cities followed around the country early in the 20th century. Extreme smog events were experienced by the cities of Los Angeles and Donora, Pennsylvania in the late 1940s, Air pollution would continue to be a problem in England, especially later during the industrial revolution, and extending into the recent past with the Great Smog of 1952. Awareness of atmospheric pollution spread widely after World War II, with fears triggered by reports of fallout from atomic warfare. Then a non-nuclear event, The Great Smog of 1952 in London and this prompted some of the first major modern environmental legislation, The Clean Air Act of 1956
38.
Tursunzoda
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See also Tursunzoda district Tursunzoda is a city in western Tajikistan, known for its aluminium smelting plant TadAZ. It is located 60 km west of Dushanbe, near the border with Uzbekistan and it is near several rivers, Shirkent and Karatag immediately to the west and east of the city, and Kofarnihon further east. Its population was given as 40,600 in the 1989 census, falling to 39,000 in 2000, the city has two television stations, TV-REGAR and TV-TADAZ, two newspapers, Aluminiy Tojikiston and Regar, and a radio station. Tursunzoda is home to football club Regar-TadAZ Tursunzoda, Tursunzoda was originally the village of Regar, meaning a town on sand. In 1978, the town and with it the district were renamed in honor of the Tajik national poet. Its railroad station is still called Regar, the city developed from a village as a regional centre for an agricultural district in the western part of Gissar Valley. Fruits, especially grapefruit, vegetables, and cotton are grown in the district, thanks to plentiful irrigation from the local rivers, Tursunzoda district is a major rice-growing region, producing 1,400 tons, or 13% of Tajikistans rice harvest in 2006. The Tajik aluminium smelting plant, TadAZ, in Tursunzoda, is the largest aluminium manufacturing plant in Central Asia, and possibly the world, the country has no native aluminium ore, so the raw material for the plant has to be imported. Construction of the plant proper began in 1972, and the first pouring of aluminium took place on March 31,1975 and it consumes 40% of the countrys electrical power, and a 2002 study found it responsible for notable fluorine water pollution in the region and air pollution. Tursunzade School 101 Web site of a Tursunzade school, provided by Relief International - Schools Online, country Analysis, Tajikistan Originally from the Department of Energy site, now hosted by NIGC. org. Biosphere to Clean Up Water in Tajikistan Report by the Virtual Foundation Tursunzade, Encyclopædia Britannica World Gazetteer, Tursunzoda at Archive. is Including census figures
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Rogun Dam
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Rogun Dam is an embankment dam under construction on the Vakhsh River in southern Tajikistan. It is one of the hydroelectric power plants of Vakhsh Cascade. Over three decades only preliminary construction has been carried out on the dam, due to its controversial state, construction was suspended in August 2012 pending World Bank reports, but has since then resumed. The dam has drawn complaints from neighbor Uzbekistan, which fears it will negatively impact its lucrative cotton crops, the dispute over the project has contributed significantly to bitter relations between the two former Soviet republics. The Rogun Dam was first proposed in 1959 and a scheme was developed by 1965. Construction began in 1976, however the project was frozen after the collapse of the Soviet Union, an agreement on finishing the construction was signed between Tajikistan and Russia in 1994, however, as the agreement was not implemented, it was denounced by Tajikistan parliament. In October 2004, an agreement was signed with RUSAL according to which RUSAL agreed to complete the Rogun facility, to build a new aluminum plant, in May 2008, Tajikistan announced that construction on the dam had resumed. By December 2010, one of the diversion tunnels was renovated and rebuilt. Construction on the dam was suspended in August 2012 pending the World Bank assessment, in 2010, Tajikistan launched an IPO to raise US$1. 4billion to finish construction of the dam. By April 26 of that year the Tajik government had raised just US$184 million, on July 1,2016 the state commission in charge of the project has picked the Italian company Salini Impregilo to carry out the construction for $3.9 billion. The project is broken down into four components, with the most expensive one involving the building of a 335-meter-high rockfill dam which will entail costs of around $1.95 billion, on October 29,2016 Tajik president Emomali Rahmon officially launched the construction of the dam. At the ceremony, the flow was ceremonially closed and diverted through the reconstructed diversion tunnels. The construction of the dam is expected to take two years, with the first turbines coming online in late 2018, Rogun was listed as the highest dam in the world —335 metres high — but this is a projected height. In reality the dam was only circa 60.96 metres high until 1993 when it was destroyed in a flood, as of 2014 three projects are under consideration, the original, 335-metre, and two alternatives, 300-metre and 265-metre, all having their advantages and drawbacks. The hydroelectric power plant is expected to have six turbines with capacity of 3. When constructed, it expected to produce 17. 1TWh of electrical power per year, the reports, originally slated to be released in February 2012, were delayed until mid-2014. The ESIA was published on 16 June 2014 and the TEAS in July 2014, overall, the ESIA stated that Most impacts are rather small and easily mitigated, if mitigation is required at all. And that There is no impact of the strong negative, mitigation not possible
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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
41.
Flood
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A flood is an overflow of water that submerges land which is usually dry. The European Union Floods Directive defines a flood as a covering by water of land not normally covered by water, in the sense of flowing water, the word may also be applied to the inflow of the tide. Floods can also occur in rivers when the flow exceeds the capacity of the river channel. Floods often cause damage to homes and businesses if they are in the flood plains of rivers. Some floods develop slowly, while others such as floods, can develop in just a few minutes. Additionally, floods can be local, impacting a neighborhood or community, or very large, the word flood comes from the Old English flod, a word common to Germanic languages. Deluge myths are stories of a great flood sent by a deity or deities to destroy civilization as an act of divine retribution. Floods can happen on flat or low-lying areas when water is supplied by rainfall or snowmelt more rapidly than it can infiltrate or run off. The excess accumulates in place, sometimes to hazardous depths, surface soil can become saturated, which effectively stops infiltration, where the water table is shallow, such as a floodplain, or from intense rain from one or a series of storms. Infiltration also is slow to negligible through frozen ground, rock, concrete, paving, areal flooding begins in flat areas like floodplains and in local depressions not connected to a stream channel, because the velocity of overland flow depends on the surface slope. Endorheic basins may experience flooding during periods when precipitation exceeds evaporation. Floods occur in all types of river and stream channels, from the smallest ephemeral streams in humid zones to normally-dry channels in arid climates to the worlds largest rivers. When overland flow occurs on tilled fields, it can result in a flood where sediments are picked up by run off. Localized flooding may be caused or exacerbated by drainage obstructions such as landslides, ice, debris, slow-rising floods most commonly occur in large rivers with large catchment areas. The increase in flow may be the result of sustained rainfall, rapid snow melt, monsoons, the cause may be localized convective precipitation or sudden release from an upstream impoundment created behind a dam, landslide, or glacier. In one instance, a flood killed eight people enjoying the water on a Sunday afternoon at a popular waterfall in a narrow canyon. Without any observed rainfall, the rate increased from about 50 to 1,500 cubic feet per second in just one minute. Two larger floods occurred at the site within a week
42.
Landslide
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A landslide, also known as a landslip, is a form of mass wasting that includes a wide range of ground movements, such as rockfalls, deep failure of slopes, and shallow debris flows. Landslides can occur underwater, called a submarine landslide, coastal, although the action of gravity is the primary driving force for a landslide to occur, there are other contributing factors affecting the original slope stability. Typically, pre-conditional factors build up specific sub-surface conditions that make the prone to failure. Landslides occur when the changes from a stable to an unstable condition. A change in the stability of a slope can be caused by a number of factors, slope material that becomes saturated with water may develop into a debris flow or mud flow. The resulting slurry of rock and mud may pick up trees, houses and cars, debris flow is often mistaken for flash flood, but they are entirely different processes. Muddy-debris flows in alpine areas cause severe damage to structures and infrastructure, muddy-debris flows can start as a result of slope-related factors and shallow landslides can dam stream beds, resulting in temporary water blockage. As the impoundments fail, an effect may be created, with a remarkable growth in the volume of the flowing mass. The solid–liquid mixture can reach densities of up to 2,000 kg/m3, for a small basin in the Italian Alps affected by a debris flow, estimated a peak discharge of 750 m3/s for a section located in the middle stretch of the main channel. At the same section, the maximum foreseeable water discharge, was 19 m3/s. Earthflows are downslope, viscous flows of saturated, fine-grained materials, typically, they can move at speeds from 0.17 to 20 km/h. Though these are a lot like mudflows, overall they are slow moving and are covered with solid material carried along by flow from within. They are different from fluid flows which are more rapid, clay, fine sand and silt, and fine-grained, pyroclastic material are all susceptible to earthflows. The velocity of the earthflow is all dependent on how much content is in the flow itself, if there is more water content in the flow. This thereby creates a bulging lobe which advances with a slow, as these lobes spread out, drainage of the mass increases and the margins dry out, thereby lowering the overall velocity of the flow. This process causes the flow to thicken, the bulbous variety of earthflows are not that spectacular, but they are much more common than their rapid counterparts. They develop a sag at their heads and are derived from the slumping at the source. Earthflows occur much more during periods of precipitation, which saturates the ground
43.
Pesticide
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Pesticides are substances that are meant to control pests or weeds. The most common of these are herbicides which account for approximately 80% of all pesticide use, most pesticides are intended to serve as plant protection products, which in general, protect plants from weeds, fungi, or insects. In general, a pesticide is a chemical or biological agent that deters, incapacitates, kills, or otherwise discourages pests. Target pests can include insects, plant pathogens, weeds, mollusks, birds, mammals, fish, nematodes, although pesticides have benefits, some also have drawbacks, such as potential toxicity to humans and other species. According to the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants,9 of the 12 most dangerous, the term includes substances intended for use as a plant growth regulator, defoliant, desiccant, or agent for thinning fruit or preventing the premature fall of fruit. Also used as substances applied to either before or after harvest to protect the commodity from deterioration during storage. Pesticides can be classified by target organism, chemical structure, biopesticides include microbial pesticides and biochemical pesticides. Plant-derived pesticides, or botanicals, have been developing quickly and these include the pyrethroids, rotenoids, nicotinoids, and a fourth group that includes strychnine and scilliroside. Many pesticides can be grouped into chemical families, prominent insecticide families include organochlorines, organophosphates, and carbamates. Organochlorine hydrocarbons could be separated into dichlorodiphenylethanes, cyclodiene compounds, and they operate by disrupting the sodium/potassium balance of the nerve fiber, forcing the nerve to transmit continuously. Their toxicities vary greatly, but they have phased out because of their persistence. Organophosphate and carbamates largely replaced organochlorines, both operate through inhibiting the enzyme acetylcholinesterase, allowing acetylcholine to transfer nerve impulses indefinitely and causing a variety of symptoms such as weakness or paralysis. Organophosphates are quite toxic to vertebrates, and have in some cases replaced by less toxic carbamates. Thiocarbamate and dithiocarbamates are subclasses of carbamates, prominent families of herbicides include phenoxy and benzoic acid herbicides, triazines, ureas, and Chloroacetanilides. Phenoxy compounds tend to selectively kill broad-leaf weeds rather than grasses, the phenoxy and benzoic acid herbicides function similar to plant growth hormones, and grow cells without normal cell division, crushing the plants nutrient transport system. Many commonly used pesticides are not included in these families, including glyphosate, Pesticides can be classified based upon their biological mechanism function or application method. Most pesticides work by poisoning pests, a systemic pesticide moves inside a plant following absorption by the plant. With insecticides and most fungicides, this movement is usually upward and outward, increased efficiency may be a result
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Desertification
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Desertification is a type of land degradation in which relatively dry area of land becomes increasingly arid, typically losing its bodies of water as well as vegetation and wildlife. It is caused by a variety of factors, such as climate change. Desertification is a significant global ecological and environmental problem, considerable controversy exists over the proper definition of the term desertification for which Helmut Geist has identified more than 100 formal definitions. Another major contribution to the controversy comes from the sub-grouping of types of desertification, the worlds most noted deserts have been formed by natural processes interacting over long intervals of time. During most of times, deserts have grown and shrunk independent of human activities. Paleodeserts are large sand seas now inactive because they are stabilized by vegetation, some extending beyond the present margins of deserts, such as the Sahara. Drylands occupy approximately 40–41% of Earth’s land area and are home to more than 2 billion people. As of 1998, the then-current degree of expansion of the Sahara was not well known, due to a lack of recent. Causes of desertification in Sahel, The impact of global warming, in this area, the level of desertification is very high compared to other areas in the world. All areas situated in the part of Africa are characterized by a dry climate, hot temperatures. So, droughts are the rule in the Sahel region, development of the desertification process in Sahel, Some studies have shown that Africa has lost approximately 650000 km² of its productive agricultural land over the past 50 years. The propagation of desertification in this area is considerable, Some statistics have shown that since 1900, the Sahara has expanded by 250 km, covering an additional area of 6000 square kilometers. Impacts of desertification in Sahel, The survey, done by the institute for development, had demonstrated that this dryness is spreading fast in the Sahelian countries. Desertification in the Sahel can affect more than one billion of its inhabitants, 70% of the arid area has deteriorated and water resources have disappeared, leading to soil degradation. The loss of topsoil means that plants take root firmly. The United Nations Convention says that six million Sahelian citizens would have to give up the desertified zones of sub-Saharan Africa for North Africa. As the desertification takes place, the landscape may progress through different stages, on gradually sloped terrain, desertification can create increasingly larger empty spaces over a large strip of land, a phenomenon known as Brousse tigrée. A mathematical model of this phenomenon proposed by C, klausmeier attributes this patterning to dynamics in plant-water interaction
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Canyon
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A canyon or gorge is a deep cleft between escarpments or cliffs resulting from the erosive activity of a river over geologic timescales. A canyon may also refer to a rift between two peaks, such as those in ranges including the Rocky Mountains, the Alps. Usually a river or stream and erosion carve out such splits between mountains, examples of mountain-type canyons are Provo Canyon in Utah or Yosemite National Park in Californias Sierra Nevada. Canyons within mountains, or gorges that have an opening on one side are called box canyons. Slot canyons are very narrow canyons, often with smooth walls, steep-sided valleys in the seabed of the continental slope underwater are referred to as submarine canyons. Unlike canyons on land, submarine canyons are thought to be formed by turbidity currents, the word canyon is Spanish in origin, with the same meaning. The word canyon is used in North America while the words gorge and ravine are used in Europe and Oceania, though gorge. In the United States, place names generally use canyon in the southwest and gorge in the northeast, in Canada, a gorge is usually narrow while a ravine is more open and often wooded. The military-derived word defile is occasionally used in the United Kingdom, most canyons were formed by a process of long-time erosion from a plateau or table-land level. The cliffs form because harder rock strata that are resistant to erosion, Canyons are much more common in arid than in wet areas because physical weathering has a more localized effect in arid zones. The wind and water from the combine to erode and cut away less resistant materials such as shales. The freezing and expansion of water also serves to help form canyons, water seeps into cracks between the rocks and freezes, pushing the rocks apart and eventually causing large chunks to break off the canyon walls, in a process known as frost wedging. Canyon walls are formed of resistant sandstones or granite. Sometimes large rivers run through canyons as the result of geological uplift. These are called entrenched rivers, because they are unable to alter their course. In the United States, the Colorado River in the Southwest, Canyons often form in areas of limestone rock. As limestone is soluble to an extent, cave systems form in the rock. When these collapse, a canyon is left, as in the Mendip Hills in Somerset and Yorkshire Dales in Yorkshire, England
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This article incorporates public domain material from the Library of Congress Country Studies website http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/.
This article incorporates