El Canal de Karakum

El canal de Karakum (Karakum Canal, Kara Kum Canal, Garagum Canal; (ruso: Каракумский канал), Karakumsky Kanal) en Turkmenistán, es el más extenso canal de irrigación y suministro de agua del mundo. Su construcción comenzó en 1954, y fue concluido en 1988, es navegable a lo largo de toda su extensión de 1,375 km, y transporta 13 km³ de agua anualmente desde el río Amu-Darya a través del desierto de Karakum en Turkmenistán. El canal permitió el desarrollo de la agricultura en grandes extensiones de tierra, especialmente el monocultivo del algodón muy promocionado por la Unión Soviética, y es una fuente de agua muy importante para Ashgabat.

Desafortunadamente, por deficiencias en su método de construcción casi el 50% del agua se pierde durante el transporte a través de fisuras en el canal, generando lagos y lagunas a su paso, y una elevación del nivel de la napa de agua lo que ha generado grandes problemas por salinización de la tierra. El canal es un factor importante en lo que se conoce como el desastre ambiental del mar de Aral. El actual canal de Karakum no fue el primer intento de llevar agua desde el Amu-Darya a los Karakums. A comienzos de la década de 1950, se comenzó la construcción del Canal Principal de Turkmen, cuyo inicio estaba planificado para una ubicación mucho más al norte (cerca de Nukus), y correría en dirección suroeste hacia Krasnovodsk. El canal utilizaría aproximadamente el 25% del agua del Amu-Darya.

Source:Wikipedia

The Lost River the Uzboy

The Uzboy River (Uzboj) is  located in the north-western part of the Karakum Desert of Turkmenistan. Once a distributary of the Amu Darya it is now a dry river channel and a centre for archaeological excavations. The Uzboy once flowed some 750 kilometers, from a branch in the Amu Darya River via Sarykamysh Lake to the Caspian Sea.

A riverine civilization existed along the banks of the river from at least the 5th century BC until the 17th century AD, when the water which had fed the Uzboy abruptly stopped flowing out of the main course of the Amudarya and into the Sarykamysh depression. Today the bed of the ancient Uzboy River passes through these vast sandy expanses of the Karakum desert as a narrow, blue broken stripe.  

In the early 1950s, construction work started to build a major irrigation canal roughly along the river bed of the former Uzboy. However, the project was abandoned in 1953; later on the Qaraqum Canal was constructed along an entirely different, much more southerly, route.

According to scholars, humans started to settle on the lands along the course of the Uzboy in the 5th century BC. The river witnessed many historic events. The troops of King Cyrus II crossed it during his march on the Massagetae. During the war of Alexander the Great with the Persian ruler, King Darius, the tribe of Aderbics, part of the Massagetae, sent 40 thousand infantrymen and 2 thousand horsemen from the region to the camp of Darius the Great in Babylon, evidence of the large population living on the banks of the Uzboy. The numberless hordes of Genghis Khan and the cavalries of Tamerlane would have also crossed the Uzboy.

To protect their territory from the enemy, to control the water and trade routes the inhabitants of the Uzboy built fortification structures. One  such edifice is the stone-built Parthian Fortress the Igdy  Qala built by the parthians to ensure traders using the great silk road paid taxes..

IGDY QALA

 Igdy quala is a Pathian era fortress built to ensure the payment of taxes. It corresponds to irregular trapezium with 60 х 60 х 75 х 45 m size. The northeast wall is constructed on a steep at a height of 30 m, from remaining 3 sides the fortress is surrounded with a ditch carved in a rock. The fortification is built up from flat stone flags and fortified by right-angled towers (11 towers like these remained throughout the walls’ perimeter, but walls themselves today are only up to 1.5m height).

Inside of the walls and towers there are narrow loopholes arrow-shaped, typical of the military architecture of Khorezm. The outside walls were covered by puddle clay and on the inside there used to be a corridor used as an archers shooting gallery. S.P.Tolstov mentioned that the fortress was constructed from stone which is non-typical of material in Khorezm, however in all other details its external design didn’t differ much from other late Khorezm fortifications. 

By 1717 in the time of Peter the Great an expedition led by Prince Alexander Bekovich-Cherkassky, who had explored the Caspian region made new maps of the Aral and Caspian basins, in which the Amudarya did not flow into the Caspian Sea any more. With the drying out of the Uzboy, the population started to leave this territory. Some went to the east to live on the banks of the Amudarya, the others settled in the foothills of the Kopetdag Mountains, closer to the mountain streams. Nowadays, only a few villages exist on the banks of the Uzboy. There is the preserved moisture in some parts of the bed, but it is salty and is formed due to the nourishment of subsoil waters.

Several small water reservoirs are however still in existence. One of them is salty, and the second one — the Yaskha Lake — is full of fresh water.  From here drinking water is pumped by the 150 km conduit to the residents of the city of Balkanabat, the capital of the oil region of Turkmenistan.

One can observe an unusual thing in other places of the Uzboy riverbed. Very often, small reservoirs consist of two parts — salty and fresh water. In winter, when the sun rises, wild animals and birds come to the small reservoirs to drink water. At this time, the salty layer, due to its heaviness, lies beneath serving as a "cushion" for the fresh water. As soon as it heats the salt water rises (under the effect of temperature) and the water becomes salty.

Source: Uzboy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uzboy_River

Well recommended that those interested in this fascinating river read the following publication

Uzboy and the Aral regressions: an hydrological approach

by Igor Plotnikov and Nikola Aladin -Academy of Science, Saint Petersburg, Russia; René Létolle - Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, France and Philip Micklin - Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan USA go to http://www.hydrologie.org/aral/Uzboy.pdf

Kunya Urgench

Photo: Kutlug-Timur minaret and Tekesh mausoleum

INTRODUCTION

Just across the border on the left bank of the Amu-Daria River (50 Km SW of Nukus) is found the ancient fascinating city of Kunya-Urgench located in Dashoguz velayat of Turkmenistan.

Nowadays Konye-Urgench as it is known in Turkmen, is a quiet town but in the 12th century at the height of the powerfull Khorezm empire it was one of the most important cities in the Islamic world. The origins of Kunya-Urgench go back to the 6th or 5th centuries founded during the early Achaemenid period. In 712, Kunya-Urgench was invaded by Arabs and renamed Gurgandj. Being at the crossing of trade routes, the town prospered, becoming a major centre from the 10th-14th centuries. It was the capital of Khorezm from the 12th century and the second city after Bukhara in Central Asia.

The city, destroyed by Genghis Khan in 1221 but rebuilt, was described as the finest city of the Turks with fine bazaars and impressive buildings. It was once again ravaged by Timurid troops between 1372 and 1388 and never regained its position.  In the 16th century, the capital was transferred to Khiva, and the city was finally abandoned (the Amu Darya River changed its course at the same time).The city was newly colonised by Turkmen from 1831: however, the new development took place outside the old town, part of which served as a graveyard.

Today the area of the old town still contains a series of monuments dating mainly from the 11th to 16th centuries.  Most of it however is deserted with only the remains of its ancient fortified settlements, including a mosque, the gates of a caravanserai, fortresses, mausoleums and a 63-m high minaret all that is left of a once great city.

IBU BATTUTA

The great Moroccan traveller and Islamic scholar Ibn Battuta in 1333 visited the city when it was still thriving and reported that:

 "After journeying through this desert we have arrived at Khwarizm which is the largest, most beautiful and most important city of the Turks. It has fine bazaars and broad streets, a great number of buildings... the city is in the dominions of the Sultan Uzbek who is represented in it by the great Emir called Qutludumur. It was he who built the college and the dependencies annexed to it. As for the Mosque, it was built by his wife, the pious Khatun Turabak.”

Genghis Khan destroyed the city (along with many others towns in the territory of Khoresm) because of a short-sighted decision by the Khorezmshah, Mohammed II, who ruled from Urgench.

Ibn Battuta relates to the time when Genghis Khan came in 1219.

“It happened that Tankiz (Genghis Khan) sent a party of merchants with the wares of China and al-Katha (northern China) such as silk fabrics etc. to the town of Utrar (a city in todays Khzakhstan on the banks of the Syr Darya river about 100 miles north of Tashkent)....his governor in the town sent a message to him informing him of this event and enquiring of him what action he should take in regard to them. Jalal ad-Din (son of the King Mohammed II) wrote to him commanding him to seize their goods, mutilate them, cut off their limbs, and send them back to their country.......So when he carried out this action Tankiz made ready to set out in person with an army of uncountable numbers to invade the lands of Islam. When the governor of Utrar heard of this advance he sent spies to bring back a report about him and the story goes that one of them went into a mahalla  (an open area in an for large crowds to pray near a neighbourhood mosque) of one of the emirs of Tankiz disguised as a beggar. He found nobody to give him food and set up a position beside one of their men but he neither saw any provisions with him nor did the man give him anything to eat. In the evening the man brought out some dried intestines that he had with him, moistened them with water, opened a vein of his horse, filled the intestines with its blood, tied them up and cooked them on a fire; this was his food. So the spy returned to Utrar, reported on them to the governor and told him that no one had the power to fight against them.........”
            
In 1333 when he visited the city it had already recovered but it was later to once again fall victim to yet another invader, Timur the Great, known as Tamerlane.

The interior dome of the double-domed Turabak Mausoleum

Tamerlane who was not willing to see the  city potentially rival his grand capital of Samarkand, first invaded in 1379 and again in 1388 when he razed it to the ground and in a gesture of finality reminiscent of the Romans’ treatment of Carthage when they ordered the ruins to be covered with salt, ordered that barley be sown over what was left of Urgench.


UNESCO LISTING

In 2005 Konye-Urgench was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list. In giving the city world heritage status they noted that "The tradition of architecture expressed in the design and craftsmanship of Kunya-Urgench has been influential in the wider region to the south and south-west (Iran and Afghanistan) and later in the architecture of the Mughal Empire (16th-century India)".

Sarygamysh Lake

The Sarygamysh Lake, also Sarykamysh or Sary-Kamysh (Turkmen: Sarygamyş köli, Uzbek: Sariqamish ko‘li, Russian: Сарыкамы́шское озеро) is a lake situated on the border of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. It is geographically located approximately midway between the Caspian Sea and the Aral Sea.

Lake Sarygamysh was fed, up to the 17th century, by the Uzboy River, a distributary of the Amu Darya River, which continued on to the Caspian Sea. The name of the lake comes from Turkmen word sarykamysh 'reed.'


Sattelite Image of Lake Sarygamysh: The northwest quarter of the lake is in the Repubic of Karakalpakstan (Uzbekistan), while the rest is part of  Turkmenistan. Tan colored sediments can be seen entering the lake by its eastern shores. The Amu Darya River, bordered by fertile green land in contrast with the surrounding arid landscape, can be observed. Use of water from the Amu Darya for irrigation has been a major contributing factor in the growth of the Sarygamysh that receives irrigation drainage and to the shrinking of the Aral Sea since the late 1950s.

Sarygamysh Lake GPS Coordinates are 42°00′N 57°20′E / 42.000°N 57.333°E / 42.000; 57.333.The lake has a surface area ca. 5,000 km²  and surface elevation of 5 m. Go to Satelite Link
for a closer view.
Sources:

http://www.eosnap.com/tag/amu-darya-river/page/2/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarygamysh_Lake

Threats to the Aral Basin

Irrigation/Drainage canals in the delta

Alongside the Amu Darya are a dense series of irrigation and drainage ditches which are visible in the adjacent photo, The waterways clearly visible due to the reflection of sunlight off the surface of the water. The Amu Darya flows to the northwest from the bottom left hand corner of this photograph to the top providing life-giving water to crops on the Amu Darya Delta (in dark green). It originates many hundreds of kilometers to the southeast in the more temperate Pamir Mountains, flowing across the arid Turanian plain to eventually run into drainage channels that flow eventually into the Aral Seas.

The Amu Darya before entering the Aral Sea forms a vast delta, which dominates these images.

Water is utilized intensively in the delta to irrigate cotton and other crops such as rice. The delta continue to lose arable land to soil salinisation as a result of rising groundwater levels that accompany the intensive crop irrigation.

Further as a consequence of the diversion of vast quantities of freshwater from the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers for irrigation the water volume of the Aral Sea has dropped by more than 90% in the last 50 years.

Aral Basin

The Amu Darya and Syr Darya combined flow is equal the Nile and accounts for some 90 percent of water use in Central Asia. Long-term average flow is the Amu Darya is 79 cubic km / year and 37 cubic km / year in the Syr Darya.

Water flowing in the two rivers comes almost entirely from glaciers in the Pamir Mountains and Tian Shan, which, standing above the surrounding arid plain, collect atmospheric moisture which otherwise would probably have escaped somewhere else. Without its mountain water sources, the rivers would contain little water because it rarely rains in the lowlands that characterize most of the river.

Whilst water inputs (general precipitation and glacial meltwater) come from near the river's source in the mountains of Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. It is the countries downstream Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan that most depend on its regular spring and summer water discharges for their agriculture.

Continued Dam Construction - A Looming Problem

Over the last few years, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan have increasingly hoarded water in their alpine reservoirs to generate electricity in the winter.

Tajikistan

In Tajikistan the Nurek Dam an icon of 1960s Soviet infrastructure ingenuity is at over 300 m the tallest Dam in the world. It located not far from Dushambe the capital of Tajikistan fuels nine hydroelectric turbines producing 3.0 gigwatts, or 40% of Central Asia’s power needs and 98% of Tajikistan’s.

Just up-river from Nurek is another dam project, Rogun, that has been in the works – and then stalled due to major geological problems *1 and then the collapse of the Soviet Union and then the Civil War - for over 30 years.

Rogun Dam Site

Despite widespread opposition by its neighbours the Tajik Government has started raising 1.4 billion dollars from Tajik citizens* 2 to complete the dam. It is however estimated that for the project to be delivered in full they would need to spend something like double that amount. As Tajikistan’s whole GDP is less than 2 billion a year the project will likely require significant overseas funding if it is ever to be completed.

Notes:

1. Soviet Geologists worried that the base of the dam is very fragile and water seepage undermining the base was a very real possibility, some believed that even a small earthquake could cause a catasrophe. Should any accidents occur during or after the construction of the Rogun dam, it could flood large areas of arable land as far afield as Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan.

2. The Tajik government has been seeking to collect funds for the construction of Rogun through the issue of stock (shares) and has made it mandatory for citizens and businesses to purchase them. The stock price ranges 100, 500, 1000 and 5000 somoni ($23 to $1,150) (www.centrasia.ru, December 24, 2009). Citizens who buy shares also will be allowed to turn any funds they have generated outside of the official system (ie. money from the black economy) into legal income.

Nurek Dam








Recently the Uzbek Prime Minister Shavkat Mirziyaev sent a letter to his Tajik counterpart warning Dushanbe of potential damage by the Roghun power plant to Central Asia's "frail environmental balance. He called on Tajikistan to conduct a thorough review of the Soviet-era project, designed "some 40 years ago” based on "outdated” technical expertise. He pointed out that Tajikistan has to examine the possible impact of the Rogun plant on Amudarya water volumes, "as the very survival of millions of people” depends on it. Further he mentioned that the Rogun power plant is located in an area with a track record of "several major earthquakes of up to magnitude 10.0.”

Kyrgyzstan

In Kyrgystan another Soviet era dinosaur is also being restarted. The former Kyrgiz Government  pushed ahead with the Kambarata Dams and hydropower stations projects (I & II) on the Naryn River. Again this dam site is located in a seismic area and is also being developed without proper planning or consideration for the rights of the downstream countries. As it now stands with the country now almost totally broke revealed after the recent turmoil, it has only 16 million Euro in its treasury, so  like Tajikistan it will not be able to complete the construction of the planned dams without external financial and technological support. Given this Kyrgyzstan would be financially much better off using its ample coal resources for their energy needs.

Afghanistan

In Afghanistan the US government also has plans to build more dams within the Amu darya catchment. The fertile plains of the Amu Darya basin, account for about 40% of mountainous Afghanistan’s irrigated lands. Whilst it is reasonable for the existing infrastructure to be upgraded, new irrigation projects are not needed. One major driver is that the far north of Afghanistan is one of the very few safe areas that the U.S aid agencies can operate. Further such Irrigation projects as they can generate income and be able to service US loans which of course are tied to providing work for US agribusiness and construction companies. Sadly the cost to others downstream is unlikley to be considered after all in truth the US has little real interest in Central Asia.

New Afghan Dam in the Amu Darya catchment area

Conclusion

The three countries affected downstream are understandably very worried about these new dam projects that will further disrupt the water flow and increase evaporation and therefore considerably effect an already fragile agriculture cycle in the lower aral basin. The loss of vast quantities of water to evapouration and the retention of water for hydroelectricity generation is of particularly concern to Uzbekistan whose western areas (particularly those of Khoresm and Karakalpakstan) and also that of Turkmenistan whose northern areas, are already very water stressed.

They fear that these dams will not only curb water flows down a waterway on which their agriculture largely depends, but that they will only release water in winter, when the there is the greatest need to generate electricity, rather than storing it for the warmer seasons when they need to irrigate their fields.

Central Asia is already facing environmental problems in the aftermath of the Aral "catastrophe.” The inland sea has almost dried up over the past four decades after the Amudarya and other rivers that fed the sea were diverted by Soviet era irrigation projects, by building more dams in the catchment will cause even more problems to millions of people downstream.

The current position of Uzbekistan is that these hydroelectric schemes should not go ahead unless a proper study is carried out into their environmental impacts and human cost throughout the region.

The World Bank, IMF, ADB and others should now follow Russia's lead and not participate in new energy projects in Central Asia unless the concerns of all states in the region are considered.

Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan need broad based development not expensive dams if they are going to solve their deep rooted structural problems.