1.
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
2.
Landlocked country
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A landlocked state or landlocked country is a sovereign state entirely enclosed by land, or whose only coastlines lie on closed seas. There are currently 49 such countries, including five partially recognised states, only two, Bolivia and Paraguay in South America, lie outside Afro-Eurasia. As a rule, being landlocked creates political and economic handicaps that access to the high seas avoids, for this reason, states large and small across history have striven to gain access to open waters, even at great expense in wealth, bloodshed, and political capital. The economic disadvantages of being landlocked can be alleviated or aggravated depending on degree of development, language barriers, some historically landlocked countries are quite affluent, such as Switzerland, Luxembourg, and Austria, all of which frequently employ neutrality to their political advantage. The majority, however, are classified as Landlocked Developing Countries,9 of the 12 countries with the lowest Human Development Indices are landlocked. Historically, being landlocked has been disadvantageous to a countrys development and it cuts a nation off from such important sea resources as fishing, and impedes or prevents direct access to seaborne trade, a crucial component of economic and social advance. As such, coastal regions tended to be wealthier and more populated than inland ones. Paul Collier in his book The Bottom Billion argues that being landlocked in a poor geographic neighborhood is one of four major development traps by which a country can be held back. In general, he found that when a neighboring country experiences better growth, for landlocked countries, the effect is particularly strong, as they are limited in their trading activity with the rest of the world. He states, If you are coastal, you serve the world, if you are landlocked, others have argued that being landlocked may actually be a blessing as it creates a natural tariff barrier which protects the country from cheap imports. In some instances, this has led to more robust local food systems, Landlocked developing countries have significantly higher costs of international cargo transportation compared to coastal developing countries. Since Bosnia and Herzegovina is a new country, railways and ports have not been built for its need, there is no freight port along its short coastline at Neum, making it effectively landlocked, although there are plans to change this. Instead the port of Ploče in Croatia is used, after World War I, in the Treaty of Versailles, a part of Germany designated the Polish corridor was given to the new Second Polish Republic, for access to the Baltic Sea. This gave Poland a short coastline, but without a large harbour and this was also the pretext for making Danzig with its harbour the Free City of Danzig, to which Poland was given free access. However, the Germans placed obstacles to free access, especially when it came to military material. In response, the fishing harbour of Gdynia was soon greatly enlarged. Stettin was annexed by Poland after World War II, but Hamburg continued the contract so that part of the port may still be used for sea trade by a successor of Czechoslovakia, the Czech Republic. The Danube is a waterway, and thus landlocked Austria, Hungary, Moldova, Serbia
3.
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
4.
Caspian Sea
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The Caspian Sea is the largest enclosed inland body of water on Earth by area, variously classed as the worlds largest lake or a full-fledged sea. It is in a basin located between Europe and Asia. It is bounded by Kazakhstan to the northeast, Russia to the northwest, Azerbaijan to the west, Iran to the south, the Caspian Sea lies to the east of the Caucasus Mountains and to the west of the vast steppe of Central Asia. In its northern part, the Caspian Depression lies 28 to 130 m below sea level, the sea bed in the southern part reaches as low as 1023 m below sea level, which is the second lowest natural depression on earth after Lake Baikal. The ancient inhabitants of its coast perceived the Caspian Sea as an ocean, probably because of its saltiness, the sea has a surface area of 371,000 km2 and a volume of 78,200 km3. It has a salinity of approximately 1. 2%, about a third of the salinity of most seawater, the word Caspian is derived from the name of the Caspi, an ancient people who lived to the southwest of the sea in Transcaucasia. Strabo wrote that to the country of the Albanians belongs also the territory called Caspiane, which was named after the Caspian tribe, as was also the sea, but the tribe has now disappeared. Moreover, the Caspian Gates, which is the name of a region in Irans Tehran province, the Iranian city of Qazvin shares the root of its name with that of the sea. In fact, the traditional Arabic name for the sea itself is Bahr al-Qazwin, in classical antiquity among Greeks and Persians it was called the Hyrcanian Ocean. In Persian antiquity, as well as in modern Iran, it is known as the دریای خزر, Daryā-e Khazar, ancient Arabic sources refer to it as Baḥr Gīlān meaning the Gilan Sea. Turkic languages refer to the lake as Khazar Sea, in Turkmen, the name is Hazar deňizi, in Azeri, it is Xəzər dənizi, and in modern Turkish, it is Hazar denizi. An exception is Kazakh, where it is called Каспий теңізі, old Russian sources call it the Khvalyn or Khvalis Sea after the name of Khwarezmia. In modern Russian, it is called Каспи́йское мо́ре, Kaspiyskoye more, the Caspian Sea, like the Black Sea, Namak Lake, and Lake Urmia, is a remnant of the ancient Paratethys Sea. It became landlocked about 5.5 million years ago due to tectonic uplift and a fall in sea level. Due to the current inflow of water, the Caspian Sea is a freshwater lake in its northern portions, and is most saline on the Iranian shore. Currently, the salinity of the Caspian is one third that of Earths oceans. The Caspian Sea is the largest inland body of water in the world, the coastlines of the Caspian are shared by Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Turkmenistan. The Caspian is divided into three distinct regions, the Northern, Middle, and Southern Caspian
5.
Iran
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Iran, also known as Persia, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, is a sovereign state in Western Asia. Comprising a land area of 1,648,195 km2, it is the second-largest country in the Middle East, with 82.8 million inhabitants, Iran is the worlds 17th-most-populous country. It is the country with both a Caspian Sea and an Indian Ocean coastline. The countrys central location in Eurasia and Western Asia, and its proximity to the Strait of Hormuz, Tehran is the countrys capital and largest city, as well as its leading economic and cultural center. Iran is the site of to one of the worlds oldest civilizations, the area was first unified by the Iranian Medes in 625 BC, who became the dominant cultural and political power in the region. The empire collapsed in 330 BC following the conquests of Alexander the Great, under the Sassanid Dynasty, Iran again became one of the leading powers in the world for the next four centuries. Beginning in 633 AD, Arabs conquered Iran and largely displaced the indigenous faiths of Manichaeism and Zoroastrianism by Islam, Iran became a major contributor to the Islamic Golden Age that followed, producing many influential scientists, scholars, artists, and thinkers. During the 18th century, Iran reached its greatest territorial extent since the Sassanid Empire, through the late 18th and 19th centuries, a series of conflicts with Russia led to significant territorial losses and the erosion of sovereignty. Popular unrest culminated in the Persian Constitutional Revolution of 1906, which established a monarchy and the countrys first legislative body. Following a coup instigated by the U. K. Growing dissent against foreign influence and political repression led to the 1979 Revolution, Irans rich cultural legacy is reflected in part by its 21 UNESCO World Heritage Sites, the third-largest number in Asia and 11th-largest in the world. Iran is a member of the UN, ECO, NAM, OIC. Its political system is based on the 1979 Constitution which combines elements of a democracy with a theocracy governed by Islamic jurists under the concept of a Supreme Leadership. A multicultural country comprising numerous ethnic and linguistic groups, most inhabitants are Shia Muslims, the largest ethnic groups in Iran are the Persians, Azeris, Kurds and Lurs. Historically, Iran has been referred to as Persia by the West, due mainly to the writings of Greek historians who called Iran Persis, meaning land of the Persians. As the most extensive interactions the Ancient Greeks had with any outsider was with the Persians, however, Persis was originally referred to a region settled by Persians in the west shore of Lake Urmia, in the 9th century BC. The settlement was then shifted to the end of the Zagros Mountains. In 1935, Reza Shah requested the international community to refer to the country by its native name, opposition to the name change led to the reversal of the decision, and Professor Ehsan Yarshater, editor of Encyclopædia Iranica, propagated a move to use Persia and Iran interchangeably
6.
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
7.
Uzbekistan
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Uzbekistan, officially the Republic of Uzbekistan, is one of only two doubly landlocked countries in the world. Located in Central Asia, it is a unitary, constitutional, presidential republic, comprising twelve provinces, one autonomous republic and a capital city. Uzbekistan is bordered by five landlocked countries, Kazakhstan to the north, Tajikistan to the southeast, Kyrgyzstan to the northeast, Afghanistan to the south, and Turkmenistan to the southwest. Once part of the Turkic Khaganate and later Timurid Empires, the region that includes the Republic of Uzbekistan was conquered in the early 16th century by Eastern Turkic-speaking nomads. Following the breakup of the Soviet Union, it declared independence as the Republic of Uzbekistan on 31 August 1991, Uzbekistan is officially a democratic, secular, unitary, constitutional republic with a diverse cultural heritage. The countrys official language is Uzbek, a Turkic language written in the Latin alphabet and spoken natively by approximately 85% of the population, however, Uzbeks constitute 81% of the population, followed by Russians, Tajiks, Kazakhs, and others. A majority of Uzbeks are non-denominational Muslims, Uzbekistan is a member of the Commonwealth of Independent States, Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, UN, and the SCO. While officially a republic, non-governmental human rights organizations define Uzbekistan as an authoritarian state with limited civil rights. Uzbekistans economy relies mainly on commodity production, including cotton, gold, uranium, despite the declared objective of transition to a market economy, its government continues to maintain economic controls which imports in favour of domestic import substitution. Uzbekistan has an area of 447,400 square kilometres and it is the 56th largest country in the world by area and the 42nd by population. Among the CIS countries, it is the 4th largest by area, Uzbekistan lies between latitudes 37° and 46° N, and longitudes 56° and 74° E. It stretches 1,425 kilometres from west to east and 930 kilometres from north to south, Uzbekistan also shares a short border with Afghanistan to the south. Uzbekistan is a dry, landlocked country and it is one of two doubly landlocked countries in the world, the other being Liechtenstein. In addition, due to its location within a series of endorheic basins, less than 10% of its territory is intensively cultivated irrigated land in river valleys and oases. The rest is vast desert and mountains, the climate in the Republic of Uzbekistan is continental, with little precipitation expected annually. The average summer high temperature tends to be 40 °C, while the winter low temperature is around −23 °C. Uzbekistan has a rich and diverse natural environment, the Aral Sea used to be the fourth-largest inland sea on Earth, acting as an influencing factor in the air moisture and arid land use. Since the 1960s, the decade when the misuse of the Aral Sea water began, it has shrunk to less than 50% of its former area, reliable, or even approximate data, have not been collected, stored or provided by any organization or official agency
8.
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
9.
Commonwealth of Independent States
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The Commonwealth of Independent States, also called the Russian Commonwealth, is a regional organization formed during the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Nine out of the 15 former Soviet Republics are member states, Georgia withdrew its membership in 2008, while the Baltic states chose not to participate. The CIS has few supranational powers but aims to be more than a purely symbolic organization, nominally possessing coordinating powers in the realms of trade, finance, lawmaking and it has also promoted cooperation on cross-border crime prevention. Furthermore, eight of the nine CIS member states participate in the CIS Free Trade Area, three organizations are under the overview of the CIS, namely the Collective Security Treaty Organization, the Eurasian Economic Union, and the Union State. While the first and the second are military and economic alliances, in March 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev, the president of the Soviet Union, proposed a federation by holding a referendum to preserve the Union as the Union of Sovereign States. The new treaty signing never happened as the Communist Party hardliners staged a coup in August that year. Following the events of August, the republics had declared their independence fearing another coup, at the same time they announced that the new alliance would be open to all republics of the former Soviet Union, and to other nations sharing the same goals. The CIS charter stated that all the members were sovereign and independent nations, Georgia joined two years later, in December 1993. At this point,12 of the 15 former Soviet Republics participated in the CIS, the three Baltic states did not, reflecting their governments view that the post-1940 Soviet occupation of their territory was illegitimate. In May 2009, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine joined the Eastern Partnership, there are nine full member states of the Commonwealth of Independent States. The Creation Agreement remained the main constituent document of the CIS until January 1993, the charter formalised the concept of membership, a member country is defined as a country that ratifies the CIS Charter. Turkmenistan has not ratified the charter and changed its CIS standing to associate member as of 26 August 2005 in order to be consistent with its UN-recognised international neutrality status, thus it does not regard itself as a member of the CIS. In 1993 Ukraine became an Associate Member of CIS, following the 2014 parliamentary election, a new bill to denounce the CIS agreement was introduced. In September 2015 the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed Ukraine will continue taking part in CIS on a selective basis, since that month Ukraine has had no representatives in the CIS Executive Committee building. Since its inception, one of the goals of the CIS has been to provide a forum for discussing issues related to the social. To achieve this goal member states have agreed to promote and protect human rights, even before the 1995 human rights treaty, the Charter of the CIS that was adopted in 1991 created, in article 33, a Human Rights Commission sitting in Minsk, Belarus. This was confirmed by decision of the Council of Heads of States of the CIS in 1993, in 1995, the CIS adopted a human rights treaty that includes civil and political as well as social and economic human rights. This treaty entered force in 1998
10.
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
11.
California
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California is the most populous state in the United States and the third most extensive by area. Located on the western coast of the U. S, California is bordered by the other U. S. states of Oregon, Nevada, and Arizona and shares an international border with the Mexican state of Baja California. Los Angeles is Californias most populous city, and the second largest after New York City. The Los Angeles Area and the San Francisco Bay Area are the nations second- and fifth-most populous urban regions, California also has the nations most populous county, Los Angeles County, and its largest county by area, San Bernardino County. The Central Valley, an agricultural area, dominates the states center. What is now California was first settled by various Native American tribes before being explored by a number of European expeditions during the 16th and 17th centuries, the Spanish Empire then claimed it as part of Alta California in their New Spain colony. The area became a part of Mexico in 1821 following its war for independence. The western portion of Alta California then was organized as the State of California, the California Gold Rush starting in 1848 led to dramatic social and demographic changes, with large-scale emigration from the east and abroad with an accompanying economic boom. If it were a country, California would be the 6th largest economy in the world, fifty-eight percent of the states economy is centered on finance, government, real estate services, technology, and professional, scientific and technical business services. Although it accounts for only 1.5 percent of the states economy, the story of Calafia is recorded in a 1510 work The Adventures of Esplandián, written as a sequel to Amadis de Gaula by Spanish adventure writer Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo. The kingdom of Queen Calafia, according to Montalvo, was said to be a land inhabited by griffins and other strange beasts. This conventional wisdom that California was an island, with maps drawn to reflect this belief, shortened forms of the states name include CA, Cal. Calif. and US-CA. Settled by successive waves of arrivals during the last 10,000 years, various estimates of the native population range from 100,000 to 300,000. The Indigenous peoples of California included more than 70 distinct groups of Native Americans, ranging from large, settled populations living on the coast to groups in the interior. California groups also were diverse in their organization with bands, tribes, villages. Trade, intermarriage and military alliances fostered many social and economic relationships among the diverse groups, the first European effort to explore the coast as far north as the Russian River was a Spanish sailing expedition, led by Portuguese captain Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, in 1542. Some 37 years later English explorer Francis Drake also explored and claimed a portion of the California coast in 1579. Spanish traders made unintended visits with the Manila galleons on their trips from the Philippines beginning in 1565
12.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
13.
Desert
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A desert is a barren area of land where little precipitation occurs and consequently living conditions are hostile for plant and animal life. The lack of vegetation exposes the unprotected surface of the ground to the processes of denudation, about one third of the land surface of the world is arid or semi-arid. This includes much of the regions where little precipitation occurs. Deserts can be classified by the amount of precipitation falls, by the temperature that prevails. Deserts are formed by weathering processes as large variations in temperature between day and night put strains on the rocks which consequently break in pieces, although rain seldom occurs in deserts, there are occasional downpours that can result in flash floods. Rain falling on hot rocks can cause them to shatter and the resulting fragments and this picks up particles of sand and dust and wafts them aloft in sand or dust storms. Wind-blown sand grains striking any solid object in their path can abrade the surface, rocks are smoothed down, and the wind sorts sand into uniform deposits. The grains end up as level sheets of sand or are piled high in billowing sand dunes, other deserts are flat, stony plains where all the fine material has been blown away and the surface consists of a mosaic of smooth stones. These areas are known as desert pavements and little further erosion takes place, other desert features include rock outcrops, exposed bedrock and clays once deposited by flowing water. Temporary lakes may form and salt pans may be left when waters evaporate, there may be underground sources of water in the form of springs and seepages from aquifers. Where these are found, oases can occur, plants and animals living in the desert need special adaptations to survive in the harsh environment. Plants tend to be tough and wiry with small or no leaves, water-resistant cuticles, some annual plants germinate, bloom and die in the course of a few weeks after rainfall while other long-lived plants survive for years and have deep root systems able to tap underground moisture. Animals need to cool and find enough food and water to survive. Many are nocturnal and stay in the shade or underground during the heat of the day and they tend to be efficient at conserving water, extracting most of their needs from their food and concentrating their urine. Some animals remain in a state of dormancy for long periods and they then reproduce rapidly while conditions are favorable before returning to dormancy. People have struggled to live in deserts and the surrounding lands for millennia. Nomads have moved their flocks and herds to wherever grazing is available, the cultivation of semi-arid regions encourages erosion of soil and is one of the causes of increased desertification. Many trade routes have been forged across deserts, especially across the Sahara Desert, large numbers of slaves were also taken northwards across the Sahara
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Dune
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In physical geography, a dune is a hill of loose sand built by wind or the flow of water. Dunes occur in different shapes and sizes, formed by interaction with the flow of air or water, most kinds of dunes are longer on the windward side where the sand is pushed up the dune and have a shorter slip face in the lee of the wind. The valley or trough between dunes is called a slack, a dune field is an area covered by extensive sand dunes. Dunes occur, for example, in deserts and along some coasts. Some coastal areas have one or more sets of dunes running parallel to the shoreline directly inland from the beach, in most cases, the dunes are important in protecting the land against potential ravages by storm waves from the sea. Although the most widely distributed dunes are those associated with coastal regions, Dunes can form under the action of water flow, and on sand or gravel beds of rivers, estuaries and the sea-bed. The modern word dune came into English from French c,1790, which in turn came from Middle Dutch dūne. Crescent-shaped mounds are generally wider than they are long, the slipfaces are on the concave sides of the dunes. These dunes form under winds that blow consistently from one direction, some types of crescentic dunes move more quickly over desert surfaces than any other type of dune. A group of dunes moved more than 100 metres per year between 1954 and 1959 in Chinas Ningxia Province, and similar speeds have been recorded in the Western Desert of Egypt. The largest crescentic dunes on Earth, with mean crest-to-crest widths of more than three kilometres, are in Chinas Taklamakan Desert. They may be composed of clay, silt, sand, or gypsum, eroded from the floor or shore, transported up the concave side of the dune. Examples in Australia are up to 6.5 km long,1 km wide and they also occur in southern and West Africa, and in parts of the western United States, especially Texas. Straight or slightly sinuous sand ridges typically much longer than they are wide are known as linear dunes and they may be more than 160 kilometres long. Some linear dunes merge to form Y-shaped compound dunes, many form in bidirectional wind regimes. The long axes of these dunes extend in the resultant direction of sand movement, linear loess hills known as pahas are superficially similar. These hills appear to have formed during the last ice age under permafrost conditions dominated by sparse tundra vegetation. Radially symmetrical, star dunes are pyramidal sand mounds with slipfaces on three or more arms that radiate from the center of the mound
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Karakum Desert
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The Karakum Desert, also spelled Kara-Kum and Gara-Gum, is a desert in Central Asia. Its name means Black Sand in Turkic languages, in reference to the soil that lies beneath the sandy surface of much of the desert. It occupies about 70 percent, or 350,000 km², the population is sparse, with an average of one person per 6.5 km². Rainfall is also sparse, ranging from 70 to 150 mm per year, covering much of present-day Turkmenistan, the Karakum Desert lies east of the Caspian Sea, with the Aral Sea to the north and the Amu Darya river and the Kyzyl Kum desert to the northeast. In modern times, with the shrinking of the Aral Sea, although the level of the Aral Sea has fluctuated over its existence, the most recent level drop was caused by the former Soviet Union building massive irrigation projects in the region. Although the North Aral Sea is currently rising, the South Aral Sea is still dropping, the sands of the Aral Karakum are made up of a salt-marsh consisting of finely-dispersed evaporites and remnants of alkaline mineral deposits, washed into the basin from irrigated fields. The dust blown on a full east-west airstream carry pesticide residues that have found in the blood of penguins in Antarctica. Aral dust has also found in the glaciers of Greenland, the forests of Norway. The Karakum Desert is home to the Darvaza Gas Crater, 40°15′08. 40″N 58°26′23. 10″E The area has significant oil and natural gas deposits. To the south the Murghab and Tejen rivers flow out of the Hindu Kush Mountains, flow west, the desert is crossed by the second largest irrigation canal in the world, the Kara Kum Canal, which brings water from the Amu Darya to southern regions of the desert. Construction on the canal was started in 1954 and completed in 1958 and it is 1,375 km in length, and carries 13-20 km³ of water annually. Leakages from the canal have created lakes and ponds along the canal, within the Karakum are the Uly Balkan, a mountain range in which archaeologists have found human remains dating back to the Stone Age. The oases of Mary and Tejen are noted for cotton growing, the desert is crossed by the Trans-Caspian Railway. Kyzylkum Desert List of deserts by area Gonur Depe site in the Karakum Desert photos and about the Karakum Desert TravelBlog Darvasa Craters, Entrance to Hell
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Sarygamysh Lake
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The Sarygamysh Lake, also Sarykamysh or Sary-Kamysh, is a lake situated in Central Asia. It is geographically located approximately midway between the Caspian Sea and the Aral Sea, the northern quarter of the lake belongs to the country of Uzbekistan, while the rest belongs to Turkmenistan. Up until the 17th century, Lake Sarygamysh was fed by the Uzboy River, a distributary of the Amu Darya River, today, it is largely fed by the runoff water from surrounding irrigated lands, containing high levels of pesticides, herbicides and heavy metals. The name of the lake comes from Turkmen sarykamysh yellow reed, the Turkmen section of the lake and the land around it is protected by the Sarygamyş Sanctuary
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Mount Ayrybaba
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Aýrybaba is a mountain in Central Asia. At 3,138 metres Aýrybaba is the highest mountain in Turkmenistan and it is located in the Köýtendag Range of the Pamir-Alay chain in the southeast of Turkmenistan on the Uzbekistan border. List of Ultras of Central Asia Ayrybaba, Turkmenistan
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Gora Arlan
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Mount Arlan is an 1, 880-metre peak in the western plains of Turkmenistan in Balkan Province. Mount Arlan stands about 2,000 metres above the shore of the below-sea level Caspian Sea and it is the highest point of the Balkan Daglary range. The town of Balkanabat, the capital of Balkan Province, lies 25 km to the southwest, list of Ultras of Central Asia Gora Arlan, Turkmenistan
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Balkan Region
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Balkan Region is one of the regions of Turkmenistan. It is in the far west of the country, bordering Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, the Caspian Sea and its capital is Balkanabat, formerly known as Nebit Dag. Balkan is Turkish for Wooded mountain and it has an area of 139,270 square kilometers and a population of approximately 553,500 people. Its population density of 3.3 persons per square kilometer is the lowest in Turkmenistan, other cities include, Bereket, Türkmenbaşy, Gumdag, Serdar, Hazar, Gyzyletrek, Esenguly. The Balkan Region has significant energy reserves, which account for 94% of Turkmenistans natural gas production and it also generates 18% of the countrys electric power. Due to the low water supply, agriculture is negligible. Off its Caspian shores the Balkan Province includes the island of Ogurja Ada, Balkan Region is administratively divided into six districts and seven cities
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Turan Depression
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The Turan Depression, Turan Lowland or Turanian Basin is a low-lying desert basin region stretching from southern Turkmenistan through Uzbekistan to Kazakhstan. The lowland region lies to the east of the Caspian Sea and southeast of the Aral Sea in the vast Aral–Caspian Depression and it is one of the largest expanses of sand in the world. On average, the region less than 15 inches of rainfall per year. The Kara Kum desert lies at the portion of the Turan Lowlands. Three of the largest cities in the Turan Depression are, Daşoguz in Turkmenistan, Nukus in Uzbekistan, vpadina Akchanaya in Turkmenistan is 267 feet below sea level. The Amu Darya River runs in a direction through the lowlands
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Kopet Dag
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The highest peak of the range in Turkmenistan is southwest of the capital Ashgabat and stands at 2,940 metres. The highest Iranian summit is Mount Quchan with 3,191 metres, the word kopet or in Persian koppeh means pile or heap, and the word dag or dagh means mountain in Turkic. So Kopet Dagh or Koppeh Dagh could be defined as the mountain that is piled or heaped, geologically, the Kopet Dag Range is made chiefly of Lower Cretaceous sedimentary rocks with a smaller portion of Jurassic rocks in the southeastern parts. The mountains were formed in the Miocene and the Pliocene during the Alpine orogeny and this collision folded the entire rocks that had been deposited in this geosyncline or basin from the Jurassic to the Miocene and formed the Kopet Dag Mountains. The Kopet Dag Range is a characterized by foothills, dry and sandy slopes, mountain plateaus. The Kopet Dag is undergoing transformation, and is subject to severe earthquakes. Earthquakes exceeding seven on the Richter scale have been recorded, the most western foothills of the Kopetdag mountains are known as the Kyurendag Ridge. The foothills of the Kopet-Dag near Ashgabat are the site of the remains of the ancient Parthian city of Nisa and this mountain range has a ski resort, officially opened by the former president of Turkmenistan, Saparmurat Niyazov. Despite the lack of snow in the Kopet Dag mountains, Niyazov was determined to build a resort there
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Ashgabat
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Ashgabat — known as Poltoratsk between 1919 and 1927, is the capital and the largest city of Turkmenistan in Central Asia, situated between the Karakum Desert and the Kopet Dag mountain range. The Karakum Canal runs through the city, carrying waters from the Amu Darya from east to west, Ashgabat is called Aşgabat in Turkmen, Ашхабад in Russian, and Ešq-ābād in Persian. Before 1991, the city was usually spelled Ashkhabad in English and it has also been variously spelled Ashkhabat and Ashgabad. From 1919 until 1927 the city was renamed Poltoratsk after a local revolutionary, the name means city of love or city of devotion. Some Turkmen scholars insist that the name back to the Parthian era, 3rd century BC, deriving from the name of the founder of the Parthian Empire, Arsaces I of Parthia. Ashgabat is a young city, having been founded in 1881 as a fortification. Konjikala was rebuilt because of its advantageous location on the Silk Road, after that it survived as a small village until Russians took over in the 19th century. A part of Persia until the Battle of Geok Tepe, Askhabad was ceded to the Russian Empire under the terms of the Akhal Treaty, russia developed the area as it was close to the border of British-influenced Persia. It was regarded as a pleasant town with European style buildings, shops, in 1908, the first Baháí House of Worship was built in Askhabat. It was badly damaged in the 1948 earthquake and finally demolished in 1963, the community of the Baháí Faith in Turkmenistan was largely based in Ashgabat. Soviet rule was established in Ashgabat in December 1917, after receiving some support from General Malleson, the British withdrew in April 1919 and the Tashkent Soviet resumed control of the city. In 1919, the city was renamed Poltoratsk, after Pavel Poltoratsky, when the Turkmen SSR was established in 1924, Poltoratsk became its capital. The original name was restored in 1927, from this period onward, the city experienced rapid growth and industrialisation, although severely disrupted by a major earthquake on October 6,1948. An estimated 7.3 on the Richter scale, the earthquake killed 110-176,000, in July 2003, all the names of streets in Ashgabat were replaced by serial numbers except nine major highways, some named after Saparmurat Niyazov, his father and mother. The Central Palace area is designated 2000 to symbolize the beginning of the 21st century, the rest of the streets have larger or smaller four-digit numerical names. In 2013, the city was included in the Guinness Book of Records as the worlds highest concentration of white marble buildings, Russians form 7. 7% of the population, followed by Armenians, Turks, Uzbeks, and Azeris. When Ashgabat was under Russian rule, the number of Baháís in the city rose to over 1,000, the community elected one of the first Baháí local administrative institutions. The building was designed under the guidance of Abdul-Bahá by Ustad Ali-Akbar Banna Yazdi who also wrote a history of the Bahais in Ashgabat, under the Soviet policy towards religion, the Baháís, strictly adhering to their principle of obedience to legal government, abandoned these properties in 1928
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Earthquake
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An earthquake is the shaking of the surface of the Earth, resulting from the sudden release of energy in the Earths lithosphere that creates seismic waves. Earthquakes can range in size from those that are so weak that they cannot be felt to those violent enough to people around. The seismicity or seismic activity of an area refers to the frequency, type, Earthquakes are measured using measurements from seismometers. The moment magnitude is the most common scale on which earthquakes larger than approximately 5 are reported for the entire globe and these two scales are numerically similar over their range of validity. Magnitude 3 or lower earthquakes are mostly imperceptible or weak and magnitude 7 and over potentially cause damage over larger areas. The largest earthquakes in historic times have been of magnitude slightly over 9, intensity of shaking is measured on the modified Mercalli scale. The shallower an earthquake, the damage to structures it causes. At the Earths surface, earthquakes manifest themselves by shaking and sometimes displacement of the ground, when the epicenter of a large earthquake is located offshore, the seabed may be displaced sufficiently to cause a tsunami. Earthquakes can also trigger landslides, and occasionally volcanic activity, in its most general sense, the word earthquake is used to describe any seismic event — whether natural or caused by humans — that generates seismic waves. Earthquakes are caused mostly by rupture of faults, but also by other events such as volcanic activity, landslides, mine blasts. An earthquakes point of rupture is called its focus or hypocenter. The epicenter is the point at ground level directly above the hypocenter, tectonic earthquakes occur anywhere in the earth where there is sufficient stored elastic strain energy to drive fracture propagation along a fault plane. The sides of a fault move past each other smoothly and aseismically only if there are no irregularities or asperities along the surface that increase the frictional resistance. Most fault surfaces do have such asperities and this leads to a form of stick-slip behavior, once the fault has locked, continued relative motion between the plates leads to increasing stress and therefore, stored strain energy in the volume around the fault surface. This continues until the stress has risen sufficiently to break through the asperity, suddenly allowing sliding over the portion of the fault. This energy is released as a combination of radiated elastic strain seismic waves, frictional heating of the fault surface and this process of gradual build-up of strain and stress punctuated by occasional sudden earthquake failure is referred to as the elastic-rebound theory. It is estimated that only 10 percent or less of a total energy is radiated as seismic energy. Most of the energy is used to power the earthquake fracture growth or is converted into heat generated by friction
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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
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Kyzylkum Desert
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The Kyzylkum Desert, also spelled Qyzylqum, is the 16th largest desert in the world. Its name means Red Sand in Turkic languages and it is located in Central Asia in the doab between the rivers Amu Darya and Syr Darya, a region historically known as Transoxania or Sogdiana. Today it is divided between Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, the territory consists mainly of an extensive plain at an altitude up to 300 m above sea level, with a number of depressions and highlands. Most of the area is covered with dunes, in the northwest large areas are covered with takirs. There are agricultural settlements along the rivers and in the oases, temperatures can be very high during the summer months, from mid-May to mid-September. Kerki, one inland city located on the banks of the Amu Darya River. Desert fauna include the Russian tortoise and a large lizard known as the Transcaspian or Desert Monitor, the Saiga Antelope also occasionally migrates through the northern part of the desert. There is a Kyzylkum nature reserve in Bukhara Province, founded in 1971, the area of the reserve amounts to 101,000 km2 and it is located on flood-land drained by the Amu-Darya close to the settlement Dargan Ata. Fauna include, the Bukhara Deer, Wild Boar, Common Pheasant, another reserve, Djeyran, is located 40 km to the south of Bukhara. The total area of this reserve is 51,450 km2 and it is a breeding centre for rare animals such as, the Goitered or Persian Gazelle Gazelle, Przewalskis Horse, the Turkmenian Kulan and Houbara Bustard. The reserve was founded in 1977 on the area in 5,131 ha. The Kyzylkum Desert has exposed rock formations that have yielded a number of fossils, tyrannosaurid, therizinosaurid, ostrich-mimic, oviraptorosaurian, troodontid, armored, duckbilled, and horned dinosaurs are also known from this rock unit. Paleontologists that have worked in area include J. David Archibald, Alexander Averianov, Sergei Kurzanov, Lev Nesov, Anatoly Riabinin, Anatoly Rozhdestvensky. The local population uses the large spaces of the Kyzylkum Desert as a pasture for livestock, the desert is well known for its deposits of gold, uranium, copper, aluminium and silver, natural gas and oil. The development of most the famous gold-field at Muruntau began in the early 1970s, the centres for the mining and smelting industry at the region are Navoi, Zarafshan city, Uchkuduk. The major industrial enterprises are, НГМК and the Uzbek U. S. A, the centres of the gas-production industry are Gazli and Mubarek
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Continental climate
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In the Köppen climate system, Continental climates were bordered to the south by Temperate climates or C climates and to the north by Boreal climate or E climates. Köppen also defined continental climates as having more than 30 days with continuous snowcover on the ground, Continental climates often have a significant annual variation in temperature. They tend to occur in the latitudes, where prevailing winds come from over land. Continental climates occur mostly in the Northern Hemisphere which has the large landmasses required for this type of climate to develop, most of northern and northeastern China, eastern and southeastern Europe, and the central and upper eastern United States have this type of climate. In Continental climates, Precipitation tends to be moderate in amount, a portion of the annual precipitation falls as snowfall, and snow often remains on the ground for more than a month. Summers in continental climates can feature thunderstorms and frequent cool temperatures, the timing of intermediate spring-like or autumn-like temperatures in this zone vary depending on latitude and/or elevation. For example, spring may arrive as soon as early March in the parts of this zone. Annual precipitation in this zone is usually between 600 millimetres and 1,200 millimetres, most of it in the form of snow during winter and it also has cold winters and warm summers. Most such areas fit Köppen classifications of Dfa, Dwa or Dfb or Dwb, dry summer continental climates exist in high altitude areas near Mediterranean climates. In some cases, the climate classification of BSk can also be considered to be continental as long it has cold winter. Some climatologists use the 0 °C isotherm instead for the coldest month, Continental climates exist where cold air masses infiltrate during the winter and warm air masses form in summer under conditions of high sun and long days. Places with continental climates are as a rule either far from any moderating effects of oceans or are so situated that prevailing winds tend to head offshore. Such regions get quite warm in the summer, achieving temperatures characteristic of tropical climates but are colder than any other climates of similar latitude in the winter. These climates grade off toward subtropical climates equator-ward where winters are less severe, in Europe these climates may grade off into oceanic climates in which the influence of moderating air masses is more marked toward the west. The subarctic climate, with cold, long and dry winters. Canada, Throughout much of southern Canada from the Rocky Mountains to Atlantic Canada, major cities, Whistler, Prince George, Kamloops, Calgary, Edmonton, Fort McMurray, Saskatoon, Regina, Winnipeg, Kenora, Thunder Bay, Sault Ste
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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
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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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Hari (Afghanistan)
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The Heray Rud River is a river flowing 1,100 kilometres from the mountains of central Afghanistan to Turkmenistan, where it disappears in the Kara-Kum desert forming the Tejend oasis. In Turkmenistan it is known as the Tejen or Tedzhen river, old books call it the Hari Rud. To the Ancient Greeks it was known as the Arius, in Latin, it was known as the Tarius. The river originates in the Baba mountain range, part of the Hindu Kush system, still some 200 kilometres upstream from Herat the river meets the Jam River at the site of the Minaret of Jam, the second tallest ancient minaret in the world at 65 metres. In western Afghanistan the Herey flows to the south of Herat, the valley around Herat was historically famous for its fertility and dense cultivation. After Herat, the river turns northwest, then north, forming the part of the border between Afghanistan and Iran. Farther north it forms the part of the border between Iran and Turkmenistan. The Iran–Turkmenistan Friendship Dam is on the river, the Afghan-India Friendship Dam is a hydroelectric and irrigation dam project located on the Herey in Chishti sharif District of Herat Province in western Afghanistan. In 2000, the dried up completely during a 10-month drought. The Rigveda records the Hereyrud as the River Sarayu, the river Horayu is also mentioned in the Avesta. A Buddhist monastery hand-carved in the bluff of the river Hereyrud existed in the first centuries during the prevalence of Buddhism, the artificial caves revealed testimony of daily life of the Buddhist monks. UNESCO, Minaret of Jam and Minaret and Archaeological Remains of Jam, university of Texas, A map showing the river. A mention of the Tedzhen river, badhyz State Nature Reserve Kushk River Rigvedic rivers
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Murghab River
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The Murghāb River, also called Margos, Margu and Margiana River, and also transliterated as Murgab and Murgap, is an 850-kilometre long river in Central Asia. It rises in central-western Afghanistan and runs north-west towards the Murghab District, which takes its name from the river, and then the Kara Kum desert in Turkmenistan, where it peters out. The Murghab originates in central-western Afghanistan, on a plateau situated among the chain of mountains of Paropamisus, Gharjistan, in its higher course, oriented from east to west, and to the locality of Mukhamedkhan—i. e. Over a length of 300 kilometres —the valley of Murghab is narrow, there are narrow gorges in some places. Between Darband-i Kilrekht and Mukhammedkhan, the Murghab crosses the western part of Band-i Turkestan and it then runs toward the northwest in a deep canyon. In Mukhammedkhan, it crosses the gorges of Jaokar, after this, the valley widens somewhat gradually, reaching a width of 2 kilometres in Turkmenistan. Beyond Mukhamedkhan, a portion of the water of the Murghab is used for irrigation. The Murghab receives the waters of the Kaysar river on the right, in the territory of Turkmenistan, close to Takhta-Bazaar, the Murghab receives the Kachan river from the left bank, and 25 kilometres further, there is the confluence of the Kushk. Reaching the oasis of Merv, the Murghab mingles its waters with those of the Karakum Canal, the catchment area of the Murghab is estimated at 46,880 square kilometres. Map of the province of Ghor, with trace of the flow of water Map of vegetation cover in the province of Badghis, with trace of the flow of water Morghab River, in Britannica
31.
Dissolution of the Soviet Union
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The Soviet Union was dissolved on December 26,1991. It was a result of the declaration number 142-Н of the Soviet of the Republics of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union and that evening at 7,32, the Soviet flag was lowered from the Kremlin for the last time and replaced with the pre-revolutionary Russian flag. Previously, from August to December, all the individual republics, the week before the unions formal dissolution,11 republics signed the Alma-Ata Protocol formally establishing the CIS and declaring that the Soviet Union had ceased to exist. The Revolutions of 1989 and the dissolution of the USSR also signalled the end of the Cold War, on the other hand, only the Baltic states have joined NATO and the European Union. Mikhail Gorbachev was elected General Secretary by the Politburo on March 11,1985, Gorbachev, aged 54, was the youngest member of the Politburo. His initial goal as general secretary was to revive the Soviet economy, the reforms began with personnel changes of senior Brezhnev-era officials who would impede political and economic change. On April 23,1985, Gorbachev brought two protégés, Yegor Ligachev and Nikolai Ryzhkov, into the Politburo as full members. He kept the power ministries happy by promoting KGB Head Viktor Chebrikov from candidate to full member and this liberalisation, however, fostered nationalist movements and ethnic disputes within the Soviet Union. Under Gorbachevs leadership, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1989 introduced limited competitive elections to a new central legislature, in May 1985, Gorbachev delivered a speech in Leningrad advocating reforms and an anti-alcohol campaign to tackle widespread alcoholism. Prices of vodka, wine, and beer were raised in order to make these drinks more expensive and a disincentive to consumers, unlike most forms of rationing intended to conserve scarce goods, this was done to restrict sales with the overt goal of curtailing drunkenness. Gorbachevs plan also included billboards promoting sobriety, increased penalties for public drunkenness, however, Gorbachev soon faced the same adverse economic reaction to his prohibition as did the last Tsar. The disincentivization of alcohol consumption was a blow to the state budget according to Alexander Yakovlev. Alcohol production migrated to the market, or through moonshining as some made bathtub vodka with homegrown potatoes. The purpose of these reforms, however, was to prop up the centrally planned economy, unlike later reforms. The latter, disparaged as Mr Nyet in the West, had served for 28 years as Minister of Foreign Affairs, gromyko was relegated to the largely ceremonial position of Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, as he was considered an old thinker. In the fall of 1985, Gorbachev continued to bring younger, at the next Central Committee meeting on October 15, Tikhonov retired from the Politburo and Talyzin became a candidate. Finally, on December 23,1985, Gorbachev appointed Yeltsin First Secretary of the Moscow Communist Party replacing Viktor Grishin, Gorbachev continued to press for greater liberalization. The CTAG Helsinki-86 was founded in July 1986 in the Latvian port town of Liepāja by three workers, Linards Grantiņš, Raimonds Bitenieks, and Mārtiņš Bariss and its name refers to the human-rights statements of the Helsinki Accords
32.
Environmental regulation
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The core environmental law regimes address environmental pollution. Other areas, such as environmental impact assessment, may not fit neatly into either category, early examples of legal enactments designed to consciously preserve the environment, for its own sake or human enjoyment, are found throughout history. In the common law, the protection was found in the law of nuisance. Thus smells emanating from pig stys, strict liability against dumping rubbish, private enforcement, however, was limited and found to be woefully inadequate to deal with major environmental threats, particularly threats to common resources. During the Great Stink of 1858, the dumping of sewerage into the River Thames began to smell so ghastly in the heat that Parliament had to be evacuated. In 19 days, Parliament passed a further Act to build the London sewerage system, London also suffered from terrible air pollution, and this culminated in the Great Smog of 1952, which in turn triggered its on legislative response, the Clean Air Act 1956. The basic regulatory structure was to set limits on emissions for households, notwithstanding early analogues, the concept of environmental law as a separate and distinct body of law is a twentieth-century development. Air quality laws govern the emission of air pollutants into the atmosphere, a specialized subset of air quality laws regulate the quality of air inside buildings. Air quality laws are designed specifically to protect human health by limiting or eliminating airborne pollutant concentrations. Regulatory efforts include identifying and categorizing air pollutants, setting limits on acceptable emissions levels, Water quality laws govern the release of pollutants into water resources, including surface water, ground water, and stored drinking water. Some water quality laws, such as drinking water regulations, may be designed solely with reference to human health, regulatory areas include sewage treatment and disposal, industrial and agricultural waste water management, and control of surface runoff from construction sites and urban environments. Waste management laws govern the transport, treatment, storage, and disposal of all manner of waste, including solid waste, hazardous waste. Regulatory efforts include identifying and categorizing waste types and mandating transport, treatment, storage, Environmental cleanup laws govern the removal of pollution or contaminants from environmental media such as soil, sediment, surface water, or ground water. Chemical safety laws govern the use of chemicals in human activities, as contrasted with media-oriented environmental laws, chemical control laws seek to manage the pollutants themselves. Regulatory efforts include banning specific chemical constituents in consumer products, Environmental impact assessment is the assessment of the environmental consequences of a plan, policy, program, or concrete projects prior to the decision to move forward with the proposed action. Environmental assessments may be governed by rules of administrative procedure regarding public participation and documentation of decision making, Water resources laws govern the ownership and use of water resources, including surface water and ground water. Regulatory areas may include water conservation, use restrictions, and ownership regimes, mineral resource laws cover several basic topics, including the ownership of the mineral resource and who can work them. Mining is also affected by regulations regarding the health and safety of miners
33.
Forestry
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Forestry is the science and craft of creating, managing, using, conserving, and repairing forests and associated resources to meet desired goals, needs, and values for human and environment benefits. Forestry is practiced in plantations and natural stands, the science of forestry has elements that belong to the biological, physical, social, political and managerial sciences. A practitioner of forestry is known as a forester, other terms are used a verderer and a silviculturalist being common ones. Silviculture is narrower than forestry, being concerned only with forest plants, Forest ecosystems have come to be seen as the most important component of the biosphere, and forestry has emerged as a vital applied science, craft, and technology. Forestry is an important economic segment in various industrial countries, the preindustrial age has been dubbed by Werner Sombart and others as the wooden age, as timber and firewood were the basic resources for energy, construction and housing. The development of forestry is closely connected with the rise of capitalism, economy as a science and varying notions of land use. Roman Latifundiae, large estates, were quite successful in maintaining the large supply of wood that was necessary for the Roman Empire. Large deforestations came with respectively after the decline of the Romans, however already in the 5th century, monks in the then Byzantine Romagna on the Adriatic coast, were able to establish stone pine plantations to provide fuelwood and food. This was the beginning of the massive forest mentioned by Dante Alighieri in his 1308 poem Divine Comedy, the use and management of many forest resources has a long history in China as well, dating back to the Han Dynasty and taking place under the landowning gentry. A similar approach was used in Japan and it was also later written about by the Ming Dynasty Chinese scholar Xu Guangqi. In Europe, land rights in medieval and early modern times allowed different users to access forests. The notion of commons refers to the traditional legal term of common land. The idea of enclosed private property came about during modern times, however, most hunting rights were retained by members of the nobility which preserved the right of the nobility to access and use common land for recreation, like fox hunting. Systematic management of forests for a yield of timber is said to have begun in the German states in the 14th century, e. g. in Nuremberg. Typically, a forest was divided into sections and mapped. Large firs in the black forest were called „Holländer“, as they were traded to the Dutch ship yards, large timber rafts on the Rhine were 200 to 400m in length, 40m in width and consisted of several thousand logs. The crew consisted of 400 to 500 men, including shelter, bakeries, ovens, timber rafting infrastructure allowed for large interconnected networks all over continental Europe and is still of importance in Finland. The notion of Nachhaltigkeit, sustainability in forestry, is connected to the work of Hans Carl von Carlowitz
34.
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
35.
Kyoto Protocol
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The Kyoto Protocol was adopted in Kyoto, Japan, on 11 December 1997 and entered into force on 16 February 2005. There are currently 192 parties to the Protocol, the Protocols first commitment period started in 2008 and ended in 2012. Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine have stated that they may withdraw from the Protocol or not put into force the Amendment with second round targets. Japan, New Zealand and Russia have participated in Kyotos first-round but have not taken on new targets in the commitment period. Other developed countries without second-round targets are Canada and the United States, as of July 2016,66 states have accepted the Doha Amendment, while entry into force requires the acceptances of 144 states. Of the 37 countries with binding commitments,7 have ratified, negotiations were held in the framework of the yearly UNFCCC Climate Change Conferences on measures to be taken after the second commitment period ends in 2020. This resulted in the 2015 adoption of the Paris Agreement, which is an instrument under the UNFCCC rather than an amendment of the Kyoto protocol. The view that human activities are responsible for most of the observed increase in global mean temperature since the mid-20th century is an accurate reflection of current scientific thinking. Human-induced warming of the climate is expected to continue throughout the 21st century, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have produced a range of projections of what the future increase in global mean temperature might be. The IPCCs projections are baseline projections, meaning that they assume no future efforts are made to reduce gas emissions. The IPCC projections cover the period from the beginning of the 21st century to the end of the 21st century. The likely range is a increase in global mean temperature over the 21st century of between 1.1 and 6.4 °C. The range in temperature projections partly reflects different projections of greenhouse gas emissions. Different projections contain different assumptions of social and economic development. The range also reflects uncertainty in the response of the system to past. 1992 The UN Conference on the Environment and Development is held in Rio de Janeiro and it results in the Framework Convention on Climate Change among other agreements. 1995 Parties to the UNFCCC meet in Berlin to outline specific targets on emissions,1997 In December the parties conclude the Kyoto Protocol in Kyoto, Japan, in which they agree to the broad outlines of emissions targets. 2002 Russia and Canada ratify the Kyoto Protocol to the UNFCCC bringing the treaty into effect on 16 February 2005,2011 Canada became the first signatory to announce its withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol
36.
Sahara
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The Sahara is the largest hot desert and the third largest desert in the world after Antarctica and the Arctic. Its area of 9,200,000 square kilometres is comparable to the area of the United States. The desert comprises much of North Africa, excluding the fertile region on the Mediterranean Sea coast, the Atlas Mountains of the Maghreb, and the Nile Valley in Egypt and Sudan. It stretches from the Red Sea in the east and the Mediterranean in the north to the Atlantic Ocean in the west, where the landscape gradually changes from desert to coastal plains. To the south, it is bounded by the Sahel, a belt of tropical savanna around the Niger River valley. The Sahara can be divided into several regions including, the western Sahara, the central Ahaggar Mountains, the Tibesti Mountains, the Aïr Mountains, the Ténéré desert, the name Sahara is derived from ṣaḥārā, the plural of the Arabic word for desert. The Sahara covers large parts of Algeria, Chad, Egypt, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Western Sahara, Sudan and it covers 9 million square kilometres, amounting to 31% of Africa. If all areas with an annual precipitation of less than 250 mm were included. It is one of three physiographic provinces of the African massive physiographic division. The Sahara is mainly rocky hamada, Ergs form only a minor part, wind or rare rainfall shape the desert features, sand dunes, dune fields, sand seas, stone plateaus, gravel plains, dry valleys, dry lakes, and salt flats. Unusual landforms include the Richat Structure in Mauritania, several deeply dissected mountains, many volcanic, rise from the desert, including the Aïr Mountains, Ahaggar Mountains, Saharan Atlas, Tibesti Mountains, Adrar des Iforas, and the Red Sea hills. The highest peak in the Sahara is Emi Koussi, a volcano in the Tibesti range of northern Chad. The central Sahara is hyperarid, with sparse vegetation, the northern and southern reaches of the desert, along with the highlands, have areas of sparse grassland and desert shrub, with trees and taller shrubs in wadis, where moisture collects. In the central, hyperarid region, there are subdivisions of the great desert, Tanezrouft, the Ténéré, the Libyan Desert, the Eastern Desert. These extremely arid areas often receive no rain for years, the northern limit also corresponds to the 100 mm isohyet of annual precipitation. To the south, the Sahara is bounded by the Sahel, the southern limit of the Sahara is indicated botanically by the southern limit of Cornulaca monacantha, or northern limit of Cenchrus biflorus, a grass typical of the Sahel. According to climatic criteria, the limit of the Sahara corresponds to the 150 mm isohyet of annual precipitation. The Sahara is the worlds largest low-latitude hot desert and this steady descending airflow causes a warming and a drying effect in the upper troposphere
37.
Sahel
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The Sahel is the ecoclimatic and biogeographic zone of transition in Africa between the Sahara to the north and the Sudanian Savanna to the south. Having a semi-arid climate, it stretches across the south-central latitudes of Northern Africa between the Atlantic Ocean and the Red Sea, the Arabic word sāḥil literally means shore, coast, while the word Sahara is derived from the Arabic word for desert. Together, these names evoke an image of the Sahels vegetation as a coastline on the Saharas ocean of sand, historically, the western part of the Sahel was sometimes known as the Sudan region. This belt was roughly located between the Sahara and the areas of West Africa. It is an ecoregion of semi-arid grasslands, savannas, steppes. The topography of the Sahel is mainly flat, most of the region lies between 200 and 400 meters in elevation, several isolated plateaus and mountain ranges rise from the Sahel, but are designated as separate ecoregions because their flora and fauna are distinct from the surrounding lowlands. Annual rainfall varies from around 100–200 mm in the north of the Sahel to around 600 mm in the south, the Sahel is mostly covered in grassland and savanna, with areas of woodland and shrubland. Grass cover is continuous across the region, dominated by annual grass species such as Cenchrus biflorus, Schoenefeldia gracilis. Species of acacia are the dominant trees, with Acacia tortilis the most common, along with Acacia senegal, other tree species include Commiphora africana, Balanites aegyptiaca, Faidherbia albida, and Boscia senegalensis. In the northern part of the Sahel, areas of shrub, including Panicum turgidum and Aristida sieberana, alternate with areas of grassland. During the long dry season, many lose their leaves. The larger species have greatly reduced in number by over-hunting and competition with livestock. The seasonal wetlands of the Sahel are important for birds moving within Africa. The Sahel has a tropical, hot steppe climate, the climate is typically hot, sunny, dry and somewhat windy all year long. The Sahels climate is similar to, but less extreme than, the Sahel mainly receives a low to a very low amount of precipitation annually. The steppe has a long, prevailing dry season and a short rainy season. The precipitation is extremely irregular, and varies considerably from season to season. Most of the rain falls during only one or two months, while the other months may remain absolutely dry
38.
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
39.
Karakum Canal
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The Karakum Canal in Turkmenistan is one of the largest irrigation and water supply canals in the world. The canal opened up new tracts of land to agriculture, especially to cotton monoculture heavily promoted by the Soviet Union. The canal is also a factor leading to the Aral Sea environmental disaster. The current Karakum Canal was not the first major attempt to bring the Amu-Darya water to the Karakums, in the early 1950s, construction began on the Main Turkmen Canal, which would start at a much more northerly location, and run southwest toward Krasnovodsk. The canal would have used around 25 percent of the Amu-Daryas water, the works were abandoned after the death of Joseph Stalin, the current Karakum Canal route being chosen instead. Reservoirs such as Hanhowuz Reservoir were created to regulate it
40.
Desiccation
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Desiccation is the state of extreme dryness, or the process of extreme drying. A desiccant is a substance that induces or sustains such a state in its local vicinity in a moderately sealed container. A desiccator is a glass or plastic container used in practical chemistry for making or keeping small amounts of materials very dry. The material is placed on a shelf, and an agent or desiccant. Often some sort of humidity indicator is included in the desiccator to show, by color changes and these indicators are in the form of indicator plugs or indicator cards. The active chemical is cobalt chloride, when it bonds with two water molecules, it turns purple. Further hydration results in the pink hexaaquacobalt chloride complex 2+, ecologists frequently study and assess various organisms susceptibility to desiccation. Several bacterial species have shown to accumulate DNA damages upon desiccation. Deinococcus radiodurans is extremely resistant to ionizing radiation, the functions necessary to survive ionizing radiation are also necessary to survive prolonged desiccation. Radiation resistance is considered to be a consequence of the organism’s evolutionary adaptation to dehydration. The chromosomal DNA from desiccated D. radiodurans revealed increased DNA double-strand breaks, DNA double-strand breaks are repaired principally by a RecA-dependent recombination process that requires the presence of two genome copies. By this process D. radiodurans can survive thousands of double-strand breaks per cell, NHEJ appears to be the preferred pathway for repairing double-strand breaks caused by desiccation during stationary phase. NHEJ can repair double-strand breaks even when only one chromosome is present in a cell, upon exposure to extreme dryness, Bacillus subtilis spores acquire DNA-double strand breaks and DNA-protein crosslinks. In broadcast engineering, a desiccator may be used to pressurize the feedline of a high-power transmitter, because it carries a large amount of energy from the transmitter to the antenna, the feedline must have low dielectric losses. Because it must also be lightweight so as not to overload the radio tower, since moisture can condense in these lines, desiccated air or nitrogen gas is pumped in. This pressure also keeps water or other dampness from coming in the line at any point along its length, list of desiccants Hygroscopy Mummy A Desiccant Requirements Calculator
This article incorporates public domain material from the Library of Congress Country Studies website http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/.
This article incorporates