the geography of karakalpakstan

8/12/2019 The Geography of Karakalpakstan

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he Geography of Karakalpakstan

The Geography of Karakalpakstan

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Geography

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Health & Education

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The Aral Sea

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Karakalpakstan

Contents

Geographical Location

The Aral Basin

Climate

Physical Features

The Amu Darya Delta

The Khorezm Oasis

The Ustyurt Plateau

The Qizil Qum Desert

The Sultan Uvays Dag

The Bel'taw Heights

The Aral Sea and the Aral Qum

Vozrozhdeniye Island

References

Geographical LocationKarakalpakstan is located in western Asia. It lies east of the Caspian Seanorth of the Qara Qum and eastern Iran, and south of the Ural MountainsThe latter are normally taken as the dividing line between European andAsiatic Russia, making Karakalpakstan much closer to Europe than to Chor Mongolia.

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Karakalpakstan lies north of Turkmenistan and Iran in western Centr

Asia.

In geological terms Karakalpakstan has one foot in Europe and the other northern Asia. It sits at the southern end of the Uralian orogenic belt, a raof mountains and hills that stretch 3,500 km from the the islands of Novay

Zemlya in the Arctic Ocean southwards to the Aral Sea and perhapsbeyond. It was formed by the collision of the East European and the Sibecratons, or tectonic platelets, a complex event that occurred during thePalaeozoic, between 400 and 250 million years ago. As the European plawas subducted below the Siberian plate, consuming the bed of the UraliaSea, it formed a narrow elevated ridge. The main remnants of this featuretoday are the Ural Mountains in Russia and the Mugodjar Hills inKazakhstan. However this structure seems to continue southwards througthe middle of the Aral Sea, folowing the line of the Kulandy and

Vozrozhdeniye Peninsulas. Deep cores drilled by the Russian geologist IRubanov identified a horst, or uplifted ridge, rising some 1 km above thefloor of the western basin of the Aral Sea below the former island ofVozrozhdeniye. This feature is buried below kilometres of sedimentationsubsequently laid down by the numerous ancient seas that have from timto time inundated the Aral region.

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condition although it carries little traffic. The latter runs south across theQara Qum in Turkmenistan and is almost deserted. It is narrow and somesections are in poor condition. No'kis and Qon'rat are both on one of thetwo railway lines joining Tashkent and Moscow. In addition No'kis has asmall modern airport that links it to Bukhara, Tashkent, Almaty, andMoscow. Navigation on the lower Amu Darya is severely restricted bymodern dams and pontoon briges, as well as by much lower river levels t

in the past. There is no longer any navigation at all on the southern AralSea. Travel from No'kis to Aralsk or Qazaly (formerly Kazalinsk) is onlypossible via Tashkent or Almaty.

The Aral Basin

Topographically Karakalpakstan lies towards the western end of the Aralbasin, an enormous shallow depression that drains a region of just over oand a half million square kilometres. It is almost completely surrounded b

desert, its one lifeline being the river valley of the Amu Darya. This providits only water supply and the main overland communications corridor intoand out of the region. To the south lies the central part of the Khorezm oaand the Qara Qum desert, which extends southwards to the Kopet Dagh the Iranian Plateau. To the east lies the desert of the Qizil Qum, reachingclose to Tashkent, while to the west lies the huge elevated Ustyurt Plateaseparating the Aral from the much deeper Caspian basin and the CaspiaSea, the world's largest inland body of water. Along its north-western bordthe Ustyurt merges imperceptably with the Mangishlaq Plateau. To the noeast, north, and north-west of Karakalpakstan, beyond the shores of the ASea, lies a vast expanse of open steppe land or prairie that stretches fromEuropean Russia, through Kazakhstan and southern Siberia, to MongoliaThese steppes are only interrupted by the ancient and relatively low-lyingUral Mountains, which extend 2,500 kilometres from the Arctic to the UraRiver near Orsk. The Mugodjar hills, an extension of the southern Urals, lto the north of the Aral Sea.



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Karakalpakstan lies in the centre of the Aral Basin in western Centra

Asia.

Bordering the Aral basin to the south-east are massive mountain systemsthat almost split the Eurasian continent in two. They have a profound effeon the geography, climate, and agriculture of Karakalpakstan. The valley the Hari'rud, linking Turkmenistan to Afghanistan, marks the beginning ofHindu Kush, which runs eastward to join the Karakorum Range in Pakistathe western extension of the Himalayas. North of the Hindu Kush andKarakorum are the Pamirs, a huge complex or knot of mountain ranges, anorth-east of these are the Tien Shan (Chinese for Heavenly Mountains),which stretch for almost 2,500km from southern Kyrgyzstan into the west

Xinjiang Province of China. Various chains of mountains extend westwardfrom the Central Tien Shan, some north of Dushanbe and south of theFerghana Valley towards Samarkand (the Turkestan, Zeravshan, and GisRanges of the South Tien Shan), others north of the Ferghana Valleytowards Tashkent (the Chatkalski and Pskemski Ranges).

Most of the Aral catchment area remains inactive, being covered by desewhere rainfall is low. The bulk of precipitation in the region occurs only in complex of mountains, and drains into just two major river systems - the



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Amu Darya and the Syr Darya. The broad valleys between the mountainranges the Ferghana Valley and the Tajik depression further south -channel these river systems in a generally westerly and north-westerlydirection through the deserts towards the Aral Sea.

Karakalpakstan is totally surrounded by arid deserts.

Image formed from composite satellite images, representing vegetati

(and therefore habitation) in red.

The biggest river is the Amu Darya, which was known by the Greeks as tOxusand by the Arabs as the Jaihun. It is formed from the confluence of mountain rivers, the Pyandzh, which originates high in the Pamir andKarakorum Mountains, close to the Chinese border and the Vakhsh, fromthe northern Pamir in Tajikistan. It is possible that the name Oxusderivesfrom the local pronunciation of the word Vakhsh. For much of its uppercourse it forms the border separating Afghanistan from Tajikistan andUzbekistan. The Amu Darya falls sharply as it leaves the highlands on itsthousand-kilometre journey to the Aral Sea. Its rapid flow gives it a power

that far exceeds the resistance of its banks of compacted alluvial sand. Aconsequence it has gained a reputation as "the mad river", continuallychanging its course over time. Today it is a broad, swirling, muddy, andrather featureless river with many islands, sandbanks and shallows,generally bereft of any river traffic. After watering the central Khorezm oait runs through the middle of a broad delta plain before it reaches thesouthern coast of the Aral Sea. The Amu Darya has two major floodseasons, the first in the late spring (March-April) with the melting of theprevious autumn's snow, and the second in midsummer (July-August) fed



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occupied by the valley of the Amu Darya river, the most habitable part of province. Modern satellite photography shows this situation remarkablyclearly:

The Karakalpak Autonomous Republic mostly consists of uninhabite

wilderness

- the Ustyurt plateau in the west, the Qizil Qum desert in the east, and

southern part of the Aral Sea and Vozrozhdeniye Island to the north

Image courtesy of MODIS Rapid Response System at NASA's Goddar

Space Flight Centre, 2003.

This photograph highlights the arbitrary division between the populations Karakalpakstan, northern Turkmenistan, and the viloyatof Khorezm, causby the attempted partitioning of the former Khorezm oasis along ethnic lin

The image also shows how the inhabited part of Karakalpakstan is divideinto three almost separate regions by the artificial border - the northern deof the Amu Darya, sometimes simply called the Aral Delta, the southernoasis on the right bank of the Amu Darya that is essentially the old right



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bank part of the Khorezm oasis, and the small enclave around Man'gtseparated out from the left bank part of the former Khorezm oasis. Followthe Russian conquest in 1873 the whole of the Khorezm oasis waspartitioned between the supposedly independent Khanate of Khiva on theleft bank of the Amu Darya and the Amu Darya Otdelon the right bank, thlatter forming part of Russian Turkestan. During the subsequent ImperialRussian occupation the latter was administratively divided between thesouthern Shoraxan Section and the much larger northern Shmbay SectioThis division between south and north remains very pronounced up to thepresent day.

Climate

Due to its landlocked geographical location the climate of Karakalpakstanextreme continental. In the summer solar radiation is high and humidity isrelatively low, the average July temperature reaching 28C in the south a

26C in the north. However maximum summer temperatures can reach 4C, while in the open desert they can exceed 50C. Winters are moderatecold with little snow, the average temperature in January falling to about -C in the south and about -8C in the north. Minimum recorded wintertemperatures can reach as low as -32C. However the flatlands of the deare sometimes exposed to the cold winds from the Siberian Arctic so, witthe wind chill effect, temperatures can often feel much colder.

Precipitation varies significantly across Karakalpakstan, as well as from yto year, being much lower in sandy desert regions than in neighbouring

irrigated lands. Within the delta, the most populated region, precipitationaverages between 90mm and 180mm (3 to 7 inches) per annum. TheHydrometeorological Service Centre of Uzbekistan (UZHYDROMET) repothe average annual precipitation in No'kis ranging from 92mm to 129mm recent years, with the mean number of precipitation days per annum runnat 72. However considerably wetter years have been frequently recordedover the past 70 years:



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extreme over the past 65 years, with slightly warmer summers and coolewinters. However the progressive dessication of the Aral Sea over the pa50 years has led to an even greater change in the local climate, particuladuring the last decade. The Aral Sea acts like a regulator, partially mitigathe cold winter winds from the north and producing a cooling effect duringthe summer. The massive reduction in the size of the sea and its thermalcapacity has led to a dryer and shorter summer, with temperaturesincreased by two or three degrees, and longer and colder winters. Theseeffects are the greatest the closer one gets to the Sea's former shoreline.Precipitation in the northern part of the delta has also been significantlyreduced, leading to the progessive desertification of many of its formermarshlands and agricultural areas.

Another climatic change brought about by the shrinking of the Aral Sea athe transformation of its shores into sandy desert has been the increasingoccurence of large dust storms.

Satellite Image of a huge dust storm enveloping the Aral Sea in June 2

The dust from Vozrozhdeniye Island is blown directly into the heart of

Amu Darya delta.

Image courtesy of MODIS Rapid Response System at NASA's Goddar

Space Flight Centre.



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Dust storms now occur half a dozen times a year in the Karakalpakstanregion. Some involve enormous dust clouds, recorded at up to an incredi45,000 square kilometres in area, capable of transporting sand and dust fhundreds, if not thousands of kilometres. Calculations suggest they curreremove several million tonnes of sand from the area annually, depositing

to the south and south-west, mainly in the Khorezm oasis. In addition tosand such storms also transfer thousands of tonnes of salt from the driedout bed of the Aral Sea to the agricultural regions of Karakalpakstan andKhorezm. Such storms were rare in the past and have only become frequwith the onset of desertification.

Physical Features

The most prominent physical feature of Karakalpakstan is that it is flat. It one small range of mountains - the Sultan Uvays Dag - and a few smalloutcrops of hills. Most of the deserts are flat or imperceptibly gently slopinand one, the Ustyurt, is situated on an elevated plateau. Karakalpakstanshares its two largest bodies of water with other independent Central Asiastates: the Aral Sea with Kazakhstan and the Sarykamysh Lake withTurkmenistan. Most people live and work in the irrigated river plain and thdelta of the Amu Darya.

A canal close to the Jaihun kolxoz in the middle of the Amu Darya del



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A long and empty road lined with j idenorth of Qon'rat in 2004.

Parts of the northern delta have become an empty and in places quit

charming wilderness.

Despite its flatness Karakalpakstan has a remarkably varied landscape. Ican be dissected into a number of specific physical features that are bestdescribed individually:

The Amu Darya Delta

The Amu Darya delta is a fairly recent topographical feature. During mucthe Quaternary Period - the latest geological era covering the last 2 millioyears - the Amu Darya flowed from Afghanistan in a westerly directionacross the Qara Qum, entering the Caspian Sea in the region of the BalkMountains. Due to mountain building in the Pamirs and Tien Shan and thgradual elevation of the southern Qara Qum the course of the Amu Darya

steadily moved towards the north-west. Following the last Ice Age the AmDarya continued to change its course until it intercepted the Zeravshan rivThe combined flow of these two rivers eventually breached a natural barrat Tu'yemoyn (near Lebap), flooding the depression occupied by the smaLake of Khorezm. As the level of the lake rose it created a huge wetlandwhile the silts deposited from the river formed the Khorezm delta to its soeast, a region of rich alluvial soils that today forms the agricultural heartlaof the Khorezm viloyatiand the southern part of Karakalpakstan.



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Any further northward flow into the Aral depression was blocked by the lofoothills of the Sultan Uvays Dag so, as new channels attempted to find thway into the Sarykamysh depression and the catchment area of the Uzbothe Amu Darya was forced to form a second delta region to the west of thKhorezm Lake. Today this delta region is a desert plain located between Sarykamysh Lake and the towns of Konya Urgench and Dashovuz inTurkmenistan.

At some time during the 5th millennium BC the Amu Darya finally manageto breach the foothills of the Sultan Uvays Dag and began to form a thirdinland delta to the east of these mountains the delta of the southern AkDarya or New River. Even so the main channel continued to follow the roof the Uzboy to discharge into the Caspian Sea. However, before the stathe Bronze Age in the 2nd millennium BC, the Akcha Darya seems to havbroken through the low barrier of foothills that had constrained its northerflow, allowing it to run directly north through the Qizil Qum before turningnorth-west to discharge into the south-eastern corner of the Aral Sea

forming a fourth delta on the south-east Aral coast.

The current or fifth Amu Darya delta has only been formed during the lastone and a half thousand years. The Amu Darya seems to have changeddirection yet again just before the onset of the 7th or 8th centuries AD,flowing along the western escarpment of the Sultan Uvays Dag beforeturning in a north-easterly direction towards the Aral Sea. This led to thecreation of a new eastern delta close to the Beltaw Hills and an internalwetland in the Da'wqara depression to their south. This vast expanse of nmarshland attracted nomadic livestock-breeders, who settled and

established the local Kerder culture. Towards the end of the 9th century Athis north-eastern delta of the Amu Darya began to silt up. A former termibranch of the river that flowed towards the north-west was transformed inthe main channel, flowing around the edge of the tchinkto reach LakeSudoch, before entering the south-west corner of the Aral Sea.



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changing its route, switching eastwards and westwards across the deltaregion as its former beds become choked with silt. It has left behind a flatplain of generally good alluvial and clayey soils covered by a patchwork olakes, marshes, and reed beds, many formed in the old disused channelsMany of the former lakes and marshes have drained in recent decades,while the old river beds have been exploited throughout history by the deinhabitants to build irrigation canals. Here and there the plain is interrupteby small ranges of low hills - the Qusxanataw north of Shmbay; the Qzon the left bank of the Amu Darya; and the Beltaw Heights north of TaxtaKo'pir. The latter are the highest but even then only reach a meagre 142metres above sea level.

The vegetated areas of the Amu Darya river valley identified by NASA

Terra spacecraft in June 2002.

The images produced by the craft's multi-angle imaging spectro-

radiometer highlights highly vegetated areas in red.

Image courtesy of the MISR Project, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NAS



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During the Soviet era the Amu Darya delta has been changed beyondrecognition. Its multitude of lakes and marshlands have been drained.Extensive tugayforests bordering the Amu Darya and other rivers andcanals have been cleared. Extensive pastures and hay meadows have beploughed up into agricultural farmland. Cart tracks have been turned intoroads and the once feudal agricultural system has been modernized, withthe development of a proper irrigation network and the collectivization anmechanization of small farms. According to an INTAS study, reported by Schutter and Dukhovny, the surface area of the lakes in the Amu Daryadelta has declined from 4,000 km in 1960 to 260 km in 2001. The area otugayhas reduced from 13,000 to 500 km, while reedbeds have declinedfrom 6,000 to 300 km. Clearly many of these changes have been mirrorein the Western world as a result of agricultural and economic developmen

A small remnant of tugaywoodland north of Qon'rat in 2004.



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A reed-choked canal close to Aral awl, south of Moynaq, 2004.

However the development of intensive and inefficient cotton, wheat, and farming throughout Soviet Central Asia, coupled with the excessive use ochemical fertilizers and the application of defoliants on the cotton crop hacascaded out of control into a major ecological crisis, with Karakalpakstaand neighbouring Khorezm bearing the brunt of its effects. As more andmore of the Amu Darya's water has been diverted for irrigation upstream,

especially in Turkmenistan, so the volume reaching the Amu Darya deltaand the Aral Sea has continued to decline, precipitating the current Aral Sdisaster - see the Aral Sea section below. Many canals in the northern pa

of the delta have now ceased to function and the Amu Darya itself isfrequently reduced to the size of a small stream, making little contributionthe Aral Sea at all.



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One of the former main channels of the Amu Darya is today little mor

than a tiny stream, easily crossed by a 4WD.

The groundwater table has been reduced by up to 8 metres and riverbedhave been lowered by up to 10 metres. As such, much of the farmland anmarshland grazing in the northern delta has turned into desert, extendingsize of the Aral Qum. The water authorities have responded by dammingmain outlets into the Aral Sea, thereby reserving freshwater supplies in anumber of large lakes and ponders. It is possible that more of these artificlakes will be added in the future.



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The banks of Mejdureche Lake, close to Shege, in 2003.

View from the ponder of Dowat Ku'l Lake in June 2004.

Another ongoing problem is salinization. Just like the oceans, the Aral baacts like a huge salt collector. Much of the salt - sodium chloride and sodsulphate - has accumulated below the surface in the subsoil. Agriculturalirrigation dissolves some of this salt and brings it to the surface. This



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phenomenon, known as secondary salination, has been the curse of thelocal farmer for millennia. In the past the development of irrigated farminga particular area ultimately led to its own demise because of the salting uthe soil. Today local farmers attempt to overcome this problem by floodinthe land before the growing season in an attempt to flush away the salt. Anetwork of collector canals lying at a lower level than the irrigation networdrain away the waste water. However this simply accentuates the problemdownstream and increases the problem of waterlogged soil. Salt levelscontinue to rise throughout the delta and the farmland in many regions habecome unusable.

The salt-covered landscape of Qazaqdarya in the northern delta.



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A scrubland of licorice, tamarisk, and j idetrees north of Bozataw in 20

As a consequence the main agricultural region has become confined to thsouthern half of the delta. The main crops continue to be cotton, rice, whefodder, and maize.

The Amu Darya delta region of Karakalpakstan is divided into the No'kismetropolitan area and eleven regional administrative districts: No'kis,

Kegeyli, Xojeli, Bozataw, Shomanay, Qanlko'l, Qon'rat, Moynaq,Qarao'zek, Taxta Ko'pir, and Shmbay.



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No'kis is located on a narrow strip of land between the Amu Darya an

the Qizil Qum desert.Image courtsey of Google Earth.

No'kis, the capital of Karakalpakstan, is strategically located at the southeentrance to the delta. It is named after one of the Karakalpak tribes. In 18at the time of the Russian annexation, it was a small rural village locatedclose to an important river crossing as well as the start of the caravan routo Kazalinsk. General Ivanov decided that it would be an ideal site for hissecond new Russian garrison. Work began on the construction of Fort No

during the summer of 1874. Unfortunately for Ivanov the location turned oto be less than satisfactory, with the site subject to flooding and with anabsence of clay for brickmaking. Ivanov decided that he would limit the siof the fort to 350 men and would site his main garrison at Petro-Aleksandrovsk, which therefore became the main administrativeheadquarters for the Amu Darya Division. Soon a port was developed forAral Flotilla and a small European-style civilian town grew up around theRussian fort.



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The Qizil Qum encroaches up to the very edge of No'kis city.

Photographed in 2002.

The initial Soviet attempt to modernize Karakalpakstan made limitedheadway during its first five years as an autonomous oblast. Consequentwas transferred to the Russian Federation in 1930 and was elevated instatus to an Autonomous Republic in 1932. With the support of their Russadvisors, the new Central Executive Committee sitting in To'rtku'l decided

within months to found a new capital city at No'kis. When Ella Maillart visNo'kis in the winter of 1933 work was already well under way on a newhospital and new workers were arriving from Kazalinsk. The capital wasfinally transferred from To'rtku'l in 1939.



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A Soviet planner's vision of Lenin Square in the heart of No'kis at som

time in the 1970s.

Today No'kis is a typical Soviet town, laid out on a grid basis with apopulation of about 240,000. It is the seat of the so-called autonomousgovernment and the administrative centre of Karakalpakstan, housing theJoqarg' Ken'esor Supreme Council and the executive Council of Ministe

It is also the main commercial, industrial, scientific, and academic centre Karakalpakstan, although most of its factories are currently in a fairlydecrepit state having lost most of their Soviet markets in the 1990s. Themain industries are in textiles, marble cutting and polishing, food processpasta and flour making, and printing and publishing.

No'kis is also a major residential centre, with a combination of low-risehousing and multi-storey apartment blocks, many lying close to the citycentre.



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Soviet-style appartment blocks in No'kis, 2004.

Much of the city was developed from the 1960s onwards. In the 1950s thUSSR reduced the incentives for growing cotton and this gave rise to thestart of a population movement from the countryside to the cities. Since th1960s and 1970s the Aral crisis has led to a significant migration of peopfrom the northern delta into the capital, swelling its population. In 1991President Karimov even announced a plan to move No'kis itself 50 km to

south to improve the availability of water for its residents. However nothintranspired. Today the No'kis urban area extends into the satellite settlemeof Taqyatas and Xojeli, the latter having a population close to 80,000 andbeing connected to the city by a new road bridge across the Amu Darya.Taqyatas is the site of the lowest dam on the Amu Darya and a hydro-electric power station that supplies Karakalpakstan with its electricity nee



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The main towns and villages of the northern delta.

The two largest towns in the delta are Qon'rat and Shmbay, the two oldsetlements in the region, both founded by nomadic Aral Uzbeks in the 17century. Both have an estimated population of about 50,000. Each isindividually connected to No'kis by a long straight road.



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The industrial wasteland on the outskirts of Qon'rat.

The central bazaar in Shmbay on an overcast day in 2001.

Today Qon'rat is the main industrial centre in the northern delta and is althe local transhipping depot, being located on the southern rail connectiobetween Tashkent and Moscow. It has a major railway maintainance andrepair workshop and has become an important support centre for theKarakalpakstan gas pipeline network. One of the compressor stations for



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Bukhara-Urals pipeline is based in the town. It also has a regional cotton and a meat-packing plant. Shmbay is a more rural centre with its economdependant on agriculture and cotton processing, cooking oil extraction, abuilding materials.

The next biggest town is Taxta Ko'pir, half Karakalpak and half Qazaq.There are no bridges across the river north of No'kis, although it is possibto cross the almost dried-out riverbed at Porltaw in a four-wheeled-drive

vehicle. Travel between Shmbay and Qon'rat is only possible via No'kis

The Khorezm Oasis

The Khorezm oasis was formed as an internal delta of the Amu Darya duthe early Holocene. Initially settled by mesolithic hunters and fishermen - Keltiminar - during the 5th millennium BC, it was subsequently developedinto the agricultural heartland of the region. It has been politically and

economically integrated for most of its history. The creation of the differenSoviet Republics in 1925, followed by the collapse of the USSR in 1991,resulted in its partitioning between the independent Republics of Uzbekisand Turkmenistan. As a consequence Karakalpakstan includes two artificportions of the former Khorezm oasis - the right bank enclave aroundBiruniy, formerly known as the Shoraxan Section, and the smaller left banenclave around Man'gt. Both are rich agricultural regions. They both havhigher ethnic population of Uzbeks and feel more Uzbek than KarakalpakBoth enjoy a higher standard of living than the population of the Amu Dardelta.



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The right bank region of the Khorezm oasis around Biruniy.

Image courtesy of Google Earth.

The right bank region of southern Karakalpakstan is bordered along itssouth-west by the Amu Darya, in the north-west by the Sultan Uvays Dagand elsewhere by the Qizil Qum. The dried-up internal delta of the AkchaDarya lies to its north, lost in the Qizil Qum. The irrigated region isintensively farmed for cotton and wheat. The main urban centre is theindustrialized town of Biruniy, with the smaller town of Bostan laying to itsnorth. The town of To'rtku'l in the south-east was the capital ofKarakalpakstan until 1939, mainly for historical reasons. It was formerlyknown as Petro-Aleksandrovsk, having been chosen as the site of the firsRussian fort in 1873. It subsequently became the headquarters of the Tsagovernor of the Amu Darya Otdel.



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The empty region to the north of Bostan, looking south-west from the

of Ayaz qalaI, a 5th century BC fortress refuge.

The much later 6th century AD fortress of an important feudal lord lies

the foreground.

This region has been irrigated and farmed for 2 thousand years. Parts oits northern and eastern boundary are still lined with the ruins of 4th centuBC defensive forts, built to protect the early civilization of Khorezm fromnomadic attack. The ruins of Dargash, one of the early fortified capital citi

and religious centres, lays close to Bostan while the ruins of the later royapalace of al-Fir lie in a suburb of Biruniy. The ruins of a small part of ancieKath lies on its outskirts.



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The right bank region around Biruniy and the left bank enclave of Man

in southern Karakalpakstan.

Administratively the region is divided into three districts: Biruniy, To'rtku'l Ellikqala. The administrative centres are Biruniy city, To'rtku'l and Bostan

The two southern districts have suffered throughout history from the erosof their river banks by the Amu Darya . The old fort of al-Fir close to mode

Biruniy was abandoned due to flooding in the 10th century and thecommercial centre of Kath was built away from the river. Likewise theoriginal town of To'rtku'l was destroyed by the Amu Darya over the perioda decade. In 1925 the Amu Darya was 8 kilometres from To'rtku'l. In 1937the town was severely flooded for the first time and by 1950 the last streehad been washed away despite all the measures taken to defend the towThe occupants were resettled in the new town of To'rtku'l in 1949,constructed several kilometres away from the river.



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The centre of modern To'rtku'l.

Biruniy and To'rtku'l are the main economic centres of this region, withpopulations estimated at around 50,000. Both are centres of cottonprocessing. However Biruniy is surrounded by numerous derelict-lookingheavy industrial facilities, while To'rtku'l is a centre of light industry. A newcotton-spinning and weaving plant has recently been opened. Theresidential areas surrounding To'rtku'l have a more prosperous appearan

than other parts of Karakalpakstan. The economy of To'rtku'l has beenboosted by the construction of new railway line and station, which opened2002, linking the town directly to No'kis. With the completion of the new"Amudarya" railway bridge in 2004, the town is now also linked to Urgencin neighbouring Khorezm viloyati. The new bridge has been designed witthe rails embedded into a tarmac surface, so the bridge also doubles as aroad crossing.



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The centre of Biruniy town has a very Uzbek atmosphere.

Note the huge poster of President Karimov behind the plinth of the form

Lenin statue.



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The post office in Biruniy.

Biruniy is linked to Urgench and Khiva in the Khorezm viloyatiby a olderpontoon bridge composed of a line of moored barges. Because it crossesthe provincial boundary there are check-points at each end. This ramshacbridge is under constant repair and is sometimes unpassable for largevehicles if the level of the river drops too low.

Bostan is about a quarter of the size of Biruniy and is the headquarters ofthe agricultural Ellikqala district, named after the many ancient mud-brickqalasspread across the region. It also contains a small population of settTurkmen.



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Local government headquarters in Bostan.

Again note the poster of President Karimov behind the base of the Len

statue.



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Entrance to the Ellikqala rayonof southern Karakalpakstan.

The small left bank enclave around Man'gt forms the Amu Darya divisionKarakalpakstan. It is sandwiched between Turkmenistan, the viloyatofKhorezm, and the Amu Darya. The 105 km long border with Turkmenistasealed off with a barbed wire fence. This region is linked to right bankKarakalpakstan by a second rickety pontoon bridge. In some winters thebridge has to be opened because of ice drift on the Amu Darya.



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The decrepit pontoon bridge linking left bank Qpshaq to right bank

Bestam in 1999.

With a population of about 150,000 this is another intensively farmedagricultural and cotton-processing region with an increasing proportion ofethnic Uzbeks. The population of Man'gt is estimated at around 33,000.

The Ustyurt Plateau

The desolate Ustyurt plateau separates the Aral Sea from the Caspian Selike a huge island. It is composed of Sarmatian white limestones, clays, asandstones and its vast elevated surface is covered with a rocky limestondesert that protects it from erosion. The elevation of the plateau took placas a result of tectonic movements during the late Miocene, about 7 millionyears ago, possibly as a consequence of the collision between India andEurasia. Erosion by acid rain, and more recent earthquakes, may be thecause of the many huge rock falls along parts of its edge. The plateau haalso been subjected to intense wind and sand erosion, as can be readilyseen from the sculptured faces of the tchinkin exposed places.

The plateau is devoid of sand dunes and is sparsely covered with dry lowlying vegetation, which rarely exceeds knee height. Small hills, dried saltmarshes, lakebeds, and outcrops of sand occasionally break its otherwisefeatureless landscape. Within Karakalpakstan one of its largest features ithe Barsakelmes dry salt lake, which shows up as a prominent white feat

on satellite images. The name Barsakelmes means "if you go in, you woncome out." Some regions of the Ustyurt, such as the region close to theSarykamysh Lake, are rich in cave systems formed by the erosion of thelimestone rock by acid rain.



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The Ustyurt Plateau is already extremely hot and dry in May.

The plateau is criss-crossed by a myriad of sandy tracks, especially alongeastern escarpment. This is an old caravan route linking the Khorezm oato Emba, Orsk, Orenburg and the Russian steppes. Today it is used by thoccasional small-time smuggler. Another caravan route ran in a north-westerly direction towards Beyneu and the northern Caspian shore. Durinthe Mongol period, when Khorezm was an important trading centre withinthe Qipchaq (or Golden) Horde, the route was lined with a chain ofcaravanserais and was used by Genoan merchants travelling betweenTanais on the Black Sea, Saray on the Volga, and Urgench. Today this isthe route of the railway line that links Karakalpakstan to Makat, the junctiowith the Orsk to Astrakhan line, and ultimately to Moscow.



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The normally dead straight railway line to Jaslq, Karakalpakia, Beyn

and Makat

has to negotiate the Qara u'mbet dry salt lake on the edge of the Usty

Plateau.

Despite its desolation the Ustyurt supports one of the best-preserved herof shy saiga deer who annually migrate south across the plateau fromKazakhstan with the onset of winter. In the historical past they were huntein great numbers using vast funnel-shaped traps known as arans, the ruin

of which still remain on the plateau. Over the last decade the size of theUstyurt herd is estimated to have fallen from 200,000 to just 15,000. TheUstyurt forms a transition zone between the northern deserts of Central Aand the steppe lands of the Urals. As such it supports an unusual ecologyOther mammals include the goitered gazelle and the Ustyurt mountainsheep. It is also home to the rare houbara bustard, the sand grouse, thesakar falcon, the steppe eagle, and the golden eagle.



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The banded cliff face of the tch ink and the elevated Ustyurt Plateau

Photographed close to Aytjan, west of Shomanay, in 2002.

The Ustyurt terminates abruptly along its eastern and south-eastern edgewith banded limestone cliffs, averaging 100 to 200 metres in height butreaching up to 275 metres on the south-western Qarabaur ridge and up t219 metres at Cape Aktumsyk. It was called the tchinkby the early Russiexplorers. In places it forms dramatically shaped cliffs and headlands

stratified into layers of white, green, grey, yellow, and orange rock. The eof the tchinkhas been affected enormously by landslides, probably due topast tectonic activity. As a consequence the foot of the cliff has been turninto an obstacle course of huge boulders, screes, and hillocks, making it almost impenetrable barrier for much of its 1,500 km length until it reachethe shallow gulf of the Caspian, the Kara-Bogaz-Gol. There are a handfuplaces where there are tracks leading to the top of the plateau, capable obeing traversed by a four-wheel-drive vehicle.



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Huge rock falls lie at the foot of the tch ink at Cape Aktumsyk,

on the western shoreline of the Aral Sea.

During the Soviet era the Ustyurt was exploited for its remoteinaccessability. In 1970 three underground nuclear bombs, ranging instrength from 30 to 85 kilotonnes, were exploded some 200km west ofJaslq at the Say-Utes nuclear test site in West Kazakhstan. The objectivtwo of these tests was to see if there was a quick way of producing

underground storage cavities for natural gas condensate, while the third wa seismology application being tested by the Ministry of Geology.

During the early 1980s the Ustyurt was used as a chemical weapons testsite. The Soviet military established a top secret chemical weapons reseainstitute in No'kis to develop a new type of highly lethal binary chemicalweapon called "Novichok", meaning "new guy". This new gas was purporto be five to eight times more toxic than VX nerve gas. Tests wereconducted over an enormous area of the Ustyurt stretching from the eastJaslq to the central and northern parts of the plateau under the pretext o

project to develop smoke bombs. At one time 300 scientists were involvethe programme. Many thousands of saiga and other animals were gassedinadvertently as a result of these tests.

Today the Ustyurt is the location of Uzbekistan's notorious high-securityprison Jaslq. Based on the site of a remote former Soviet army base, wobegan on the prison in 1997 and it was opened in 1999. It reportedly holdup to 500 prisoners. It is supposedly reserved for terrorists and extremelyviolent criminals. However local human rights groups claim that it is all too



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frequently used for political and religious prisoners. The facility is associawith numerous reports of extreme torture, and the mistreatment andunexplained deaths of inmates. Jaslq is only accessible by rail, and trainpassengers can only disembark with a special permit. United Nationsrepresentatives have so far either been refused entry or have been givenvery restricted access.

The Qizil Qum Desert

The Qizil Qum lies to the north-east of the Amu Darya, extending over muof central Uzbekistan and into southern Kazakhstan. It has a more compllandscape than the Qara Qum with higher elevations, especially towards remote outcrop of the Bukantaw hills in its centre. The western Karakalpapart is composed of sandy desert, with sand ridges and numerous low sahills and dunes, but no barchans. In between lay flat clayey takyrs andsolonchaks, some filled by reed beds.

Sand ridges and black saxaul in the Qizil Qum east of No'kis.

According to Professor Ren Ltolle's observations in 1998 the Qizil Qumbordering the eastern shoreline of the Aral Sea has retained some of itsoriginal natural features, with dunes separated by solonchaks, the lattersometimes containing saltwater pools. These are interrupted by occasionthickets of dense saxaul, tamarisk, and other trees. The region located tosouth-east of the Aral Sea is intersected by many of the old channels of tJan'a Darya and the Akcha Darya rivers, which in places appear as strips



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bare clay steppe and in others depressions containing pools of salt water

The dried-up bed of a former river channel breaks the monotony in th

middle of the Qizil Qum.

Despite the scarcity of fresh water and the limited amount of vegetationnomadic livestock-breeders have been able to survive in this hostile regiothroughout history, primarily breeding sheep, but also raising cattle, horse

and camels. In the spring the western part of the Qizil Qum is covered witype of sedge that is a valuable resource for grazing herds. Today thisregion is exploited by a few nomadic Qazaq families who raise karakulsheep for the production of astrakhan lambskins and meat. Some arelocated in the region east of Taxta Ko'pir while others are to be found aroChuqurqaq close to the eastern border of Karakalpakstan. During the 195numerous artesian wells were drilled across the desert to provide a sourcof water for livestock.



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Fresh water miraculously gushes from an old Soviet artesian well in t

middle of the Qizil Qum.

A small nomadic camp of Qazaq shepherds, located in a natural

depression for protection from the wind.

In the Qizil Qum, east of Taxta Ko'pir, during the early spring.

Further east, beyond the border of Karakalpakstan, there are increasingnumbers of rocky hills. The region around Tamd, close to Zeravshan, ha



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The Sultan Uvays Dag sit at the western extreme of a deep subterraniangeological fault that runs eastwards through the Qizil Qum and the NurataMountains to the Turkestan-Alai and Atbashi-Inylchek mountains ofKyrgyzstan and up to to the Chinese border. Probably associated withancient tectonic movements and associated flows of magma, this featureseems to be a source of mineral deposits such as gold, silver, platinum,uranium, zinc, copper, nickel, rare earth elements, and diamonds. To dat

the Sultan Uvays Dag is known to contain deposits of granite and othercrystalline rocks including red and white marbles, talc, Khorezmianturquoise, garnet, and beryl.

The Sultan Uvays Dag contains a number of holy sites which attract

pilgrims from across Uzbekistan.

Local traders supply them with amulets and souvenirs.

The Sultan Uvays Dag is home to the mausoleum of Sultan Uvays Bobo,reputed to be a descendant of the Prophet. Regarded as a sacred site, th

mausoleum is surounded by a massive cemetery. Close by in the mountathere is a feature claimed to represent the knee imprint of the Prophet. Mpilgrims come to visit this region. Women who cannot conceive tie rags totree branches placed on the top of stone beacons in the hope of becominfertile.

The Beltaw Heights



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The Beltaw heights, sometimes referred to as the Beltaw hills or Beltawridge, stretch from the north of Taxta Ko'pir eastwards into the Qizil Qum.They rise gradually on their northern side, but drop steeply to the west ansouth. With a maximum altitute of 142 metres above sea level they onceformed a barrier between the south-eastern corner of the Aral Sea and thDa'wqara Lake. The later has long ago disappeared and has been replacby marshy scrubland.

A large cemetery at the foot of the Beltaw Heights north of Taxta Ko'p2004.



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The western foot of the Beltaw Heights next to Qarateren' Lake.

The lake is situated in a former channel of the Amu Darya river.

The Beltaw heights are remote and generally unexploited, apart fromproviding grazing for local cattle. They contain many endemic and rarereptiles and are under consideration as a future nature reserve.

The Aral Sea and the Aral Qum

As we have already seen, the Aral cavity is an ancient geological featurethat has been been flooded a multitude of times since its formation, in somcases by huge inland bodies of water such as the Paratethys, SarmatianMaeotic, and Pontic Seas. The landscape of the present Aral Sea howevis much more recent. In the late Miocene, about 7 million years ago, tectomovements led to the elevation of the Ustyurt and Vozrozhdeniye, forminan island in the middle of the shallow Maeotic Sea. Although the surround

sea eroded its perimeter, forming the early tchink, the surface of the platewas protected from further erosion by its armoured surface of Sarmatianlimestones and sandstones. The onset of arid conditions some 4 to 3 millyears ago may have led to the sculpturing out of the Aral depressions by process of wind erosion. However the formation of the Aral Sea had to wauntil the arrival of the Syr Darya, an event that occurred at some time eithbefore or just after the last Ice Age. It did not reach a significant size untilarrival of the Amu Darya in the late 3rd or early 2nd millennium BC.

The Aral Sea is not strictly a sea but a terminal lake with no outflow. It ha



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always been very shallow and because of its geographical location it sufffrom high levels of evaporation in the summer (currently equivalent toroughly one and a half metres of depth per annum). The balance betweewater inflow from rivers and local precipitation and its water loss throughevaporation and seepage has always been fine, making it a relativelyunstable physical feature. Consequently during past episodes of low inflosuch as in the 2nd and 3rd centuries and the 15th and 16th centuries, theAral Sea has experienced substantial reductions in its size.

The shallow southern shoreline of the Aral Sea has a dreamlikeappearance,

with the sea and its former seabed appearing to blend into one.

Today it is experiencing another severe contraction, although in this casethe causes are manmade rather than natural. In 1960, when its maximumdepth was 68 metres, the Aral Sea could claim to be the fourth largest lakin the world after the Caspian, and Lakes Superior and Victoria. Howeverthe past forty-seven years it has been shrinking, its water supply a mere

fraction of what it once was. Today it has fragmented into a number ofseparate water bodies. The main part of the Sea has been divided into ashallow eastern basin and a smaller but deeper western basin. The northpart of the Sea consists of a number of separate interconnected lakes thaare collectively known as the Little Aral Sea. The maximum depth of themain western basin is just over 40 metres and that of the main eastern baa little more than 20 metres. However the depth across the majority of theSea is now less than 10 metres. Since 1960 the surface area of the entireAral Sea has shrunk by about 75% and its water volume by 90%. The on



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area that gives rise to hope is in the north in Kazakhstan where the WorldBank has recently funded the building of a permanent dam. This shouldallow the depth of the Little Aral Sea to increase in the future.

The Aral Qum from the cliff top at Moynaq.

The sea shore now lays some 80 kilometres over the horizon.

Today the sea laps up against the dried-out bottom of its former seabed, sandy, sometimes muddy salt-encrusted plain covering more than 50,000

square kilometres, much greater in size than the remains of the sea itselfSome researchers, studying the speed at which vegetation invades thisvirgin landscape, have termed the new desert the Aral Qum. There is a hprobability that most of the eastern basin of the Aral Sea will disappear ovthe next decade, greatly extending its coverage.

The dessication of the sea has had a devastating impact on the northerndelta. The substantial fishing and shipbuilding industries have long gone,has the smaller holiday resort sector. The associated fish processing,



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canning, and smoking industries have been much reduced. The canningfactory at Moynaq is today processing fish caught in the local lakes andrivers. Most of the northern marshland has been destroyed and the cattleherds that depended on them for grazing have gone. Local men find workQon'rat or scrape a living either raising goats and sheep in the Aral Qumplanting saxaul forests on the former seabed for a German aid project.According to Mr. Jarlkal Tursynbekovthe, the mayor of Moynaq, some 50of the working population of his town were without jobs in 2002.

Cockle-shells cover the former bed of the Aral Sea.Cape Aktuimisk.



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The virgin Aral Qum desert viewed from the edge of the tch ink in 200

Note the gas exploration rig in the distance.

The main beneficiary of the dessication of the Aral Sea has beenUzneftegazdobycha, who have found it considerably easier and cheaper explore for hydrocarbons below the former seabed. Now that considerablgas reserves have been discovered, the Aral Qum will have considerableeconomic value for Tashkent. However unlike fishing and shipbuilding,natural gas extraction is a capital-intensive rather than a labour-intensiveindustry. It will provide few jobs for the many unskilled and unemployedresidents of Moynaq and the northern delta.

Vozrozhdeniye Island

It seems likely that the north-south ridge of Vozrozhdeniye was elevated the same time as the Ustyurt. Whereas the Ustyurt was protected fromerosion by its limestone shield, the narrow ridge of Vozrozhdeniye was fa

more vulnerable to sea, wind, and rain erosion and was quicky levelled.

In September 1848 Lieutenant Butakov and Academician Karl Ernst vonBaer discovered a small island in the centre of the Aral Sea, which theynamed the Island of Nicholas the First in honour of the Tsar. The value ofthis remote location was soon exploited by the Tsarist authorities, whoopened a miltary prison on the island. In the early 1930s the GPU secretpolice turned the prison into a concentration camp for Stalin's hated kulakthe bays, and peasant landowners. They sarcastically named the campVozrozhdeniye, meaning rebirth or renaissance in Russian. This



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subsequently became adopted as the name for the whole island.

In 1954 the Soviet Ministry of Defence established the biological warfarefacility known as Aralsk-7 on Vozrozhdeniye and neighbouring KomsomoIsland, following a Soviet decision to resume biological weapons testing tyears earlier. Aralsk-7 was run by scientists but controlled by the military had its own dedicated military detachment under the control of a base inAralsk. The laboratory buildings and military barracks were constructed aKantubak on the north-east coast of the island, along with accommodatioschools, a cafeteria, and a power station. An airstrip on Barkhan Islandprovided plane and helicopter links to Aralsk, and a ferry connected theisland to Aralsk and to Udobnaya Bay on the eastern tchink. The southerpart of the island became an open-air test site with an array of telegraphpoles spaced at one-kilometre intervals for testing the range and dispersainfectious biological aerosols. The agents tested included anthrax,brucellosis, bubonic plague, smallpox, and typhus. Experiments were notonly conducted on laboratory mice and guinea pigs but also on sheep,

donkeys, horses, and monkeys. Their corpses were incinerated in a mobautoclave. Tests were only conducted when the wind was blowing to thesouth away from the research village and towards Karakalpakstan. Theisland was protected from intruders by fast patrol boats. No'kis and thesurrounding region were already strictly off-limits to foreigners. Despite itsremoteness, high-flying Canberra and later U2 spy missions soon trackeddown the existence of the top-secret site. The Americans noticed that it wremarkably similar to their own biological weapons test facility at Dugway



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now known - has testified that testing on Vozrozhdeniye only took place anight, to avoid US satellite detection. Soviet scientists positioned cagedmonkeys on pylons across the test site before firing bomblets overhead,which released their deadly contents for dispersal downwind. Hundreds omonkeys were horrifically poisoned with these appalling materials everyyear.

Close up of Aralsk-7 facilities on the east coast of Vozrozhdeniye Isla

Image courtesy of Google Earth.

In 1979 an accident at a germ warfare factory in Sverdlovsk in the Urals lto a release of anthrax and the death of 70 people. The incident raised Ususpicions and led to a decade of increasing pressure from the West on tSoviet Union to verify that it had not broken its obligations under the

Biological Weapons Convention. When the USA began pressurizing for thdirect inspection of possible anthrax production sites, President Gorbachhad issued instructions in 1988 to "Get rid of it! Hide it!". According to theSoviet bio-weapons defector Kanatjan Alibekov stocks of weapons-gradeanthrax held at Irkutsk were dissolved in calcium hypochlorate and thenshipped to Aralsk in drums by rail and transferred to Vozrozhdeniye IslanThe anthrax was then emptied into eleven shallow pits at a depth of just 12 metres.



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Following Uzbek independence the new Uzbek government soughtinformation on abandoned Soviet research sites on its territory includingAralsk-7. At first the Russians refused to hand over details of such projecbut they finally relented in 1995. The Uzbeks (and the Qazaqs too) soughUS assistance and a Department of Defence team visited VozrozhdeniyeIsland in the same year. Fortunately US intelligence experts were able tolocate the burial sites by referring to historical satellite images taken whilethe pits were being dug. Despite having been treated with concentratedchlorine from the hypochlorate, tests showed that some of the anthraxspores were still alive. This was an alarming finding since the falling levelthe Aral Sea would mean that the island would soon become reconnectedthe southern mainland, making it possible for insects, rodents, lizards, orbirds to spread spores into the human population. The US DefenceDepartment was more concerned that the weapons grade anthrax might finto terrorist hands.

Rotting Soviet naval ships at the dried-up port at Aralsk-7 on

Vozrozhdeniye Island.

Image taken by a joint Qazaq/Japanese expedition to the Aral Sea in 1

In 1999 an Uzbek-US bilateral agreement was signed, allocating $6 milliofor the clean-up of the biological weapons facility on Vozrozhdeniye IslanA plan was presented to the Uzbek military early in 2002 to treat the anthcontaminated soil with more calcium hypochlorate decontamination solutilater that year. A team from the Pentagon's Threat Reduction Agency flewinto Moynaq and were helicoptered out to Kantubek with their equipment May 2002. After identifying the location of the pits they soon obtained



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Ltolle, R., Aral Sea 1998, A short report on the observations made by thFrench expedition round the Aral Sea, http://www.cig.ensmp.fr/~hydro/araaral.htm, May 1998.

Ltolle, R., Considerations on the bottom topography of western trough oAral Sea, http://www.cig.ensmp.fr/~hydro/aral/Bottom.pdf, 8 March 2006.

Lioubimtseva, E., Arid Environments, Chapter 12 in Physical Geography

Northern Eurasia, edited by M. Shahgedanova, pages 267 to 283, OxfordUniversity Press, Oxford, 2002.

Lioubimtseva, E., and Cole, R., Uncertainties of Climate Change in AridEnvironments in Central Asia, Reviews in Fisheries Science, Volume 14,pages 29 to 49, Taylor & Francis, 2006.

Miaud, C., Chikin, Y., Giacoma, C., Joger, U., Nurtazin, S., andDujsebayeva, T., The present state of Aral Sea basin herpetofauna andimplications for conservation of natural habitats and biodiversity, INTAS,

Bukhara, April 2003.

Micklin, P. P., Desiccation of the Aral Sea: A Water Management Disastethe Soviet Union, Science, 241, pages 1170 to 1176, 1988.

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Middleton, N. J., Extremes Along the Silk Road: Adventures Off the World

Oldest Superhighway, John Murray, London, 2005.

Murzayev, E. M., Research on the Aral Sea and Aral Region, Post-SovietGeography, 33, Number 5, pages 296 to 314, 1992.

Nurmukhamedov, M. K., Muminov, I. M., and Dosumov, Y. M., History of Karakalpak ASSR, Volume 2, Fan Publishing, Tashkent, 1986.

Orlovsky, N., and Orlovsky, L., White Sandstorms in Central Asia, Chaptein Global Alarm: Sand and Dust Storms from the Worlds Drylands, Unite

Nations, Bangkok, 2001.

Pala, C., Hunting down tons of anthrax on a remote island, San FranciscoChronicle, 24 March 2003.

Severskiy, I., Chervanyov, I., Ponomarenko, Y., Novikova, N. M., MiagkoS. V., Rautalahti, E., and Daler, D., Global International Watrs AssessmeAral Sea, GIWA Regional Water Assessment 24, University of Kalmar,Sweden, 2005.



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the geography of karakalpakstan

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