Environment - Central Asia - page 450

Mountains, the Chinese-named Tian Shan (the local translation is
Tengri Tau) extend over 1500km from southwest Kyrgyzstan into China.
The summit of the range is Pobedy (7439m) on the Kyrgyzstan-China
border. The forested alpine valleys and stunning glacial peaks of the
range were favourites among such Russian explorers as Fedchenko,
Kostenko, Semenov and Przewalski.
These two mountain ranges hold some of the largest glaciers and
freshwater supplies on earth (around 17,000 sq km) and are one of the
region's most significant natural resources. The 77km-long Fedchenko
Glacier is the longest glacier outside the polar regions and allegedly con-
tains more water than the Aral Sea.
The Caspian Sea is called either the world's biggest lake or the world's
biggest inland sea. The Caspian Depression, in which it lies, dips to 132m
below sea level. Lake Balkhash, a vast, marsh-bordered arc of half-sa-
line water on the Kazakh Steppe, is hardly deeper than a puddle, while
mountain-ringed Lake Issyk-Köl in Kyrgyzstan is the fourth-deepest lake
in the world. Other glacially fed lakes dot the mountains, including Song-
Köl in Kyrgyzstan and stunning Kara-Kul, first described by Marco Polo,
in Tajikistan.
Most of Central Asia's rainfall drains internally. What little water flows
out of Central Asia goes all the way to the Arctic Ocean, via the Irtysh
River. The Ili River waters Lake Balkhash; the Ural makes a short dash
across part of Kazakhstan to the Caspian Sea. The region's two mighti-
est rivers, the Syr-Darya (Jaxartes River) and Amu-Darya (Oxus River),
used to replenish the Aral Sea until they were bled dry for cotton. There
is evidence that the Amu-Darya once flowed into the Caspian Sea, along
the now-dry Uzboy Channel.

Marco Polo sheep
are named after
the Italian travel-
ler who wrote of
them after visit-
ing the Pamirs:
'There are…wild
sheep of great
size, whose horns
are a good six
palms in length.'

Central Asia, as
defined by this
book, occupies
just over 4 million
sq km, of which
68% belongs to
Kazakhstan.

Geology
The compact, balled-up mass of mountains bordering Tajikistan, Kyr-
gyzstan, China and Afghanistan is often called the Pamir Knot. It's the
hub from which other major ranges extend like radiating ropes: the
Himalaya and Karakoram to the southeast, the Hindu Kush to the south-
west, the Kunlun to the east and the Tian Shan to the northeast. These
young mountains all arose (or more correctly, are arising still) from the
shock waves created by the Indian subcontinent smashing into the Asian
crustal plate more than 100 million years ago. Amazing as it seems, ma-
rine fossils from the original Tethys Sea have been found in the deserts
of Central Asia as a testament to the continental collision. The Tian Shan
are currently rising at the rate of around 1cm per year.
Central Asia is therefore, unsurprisingly, a major earthquake zone.
Ashgabat was 80% destroyed by a massive earthquake in 1948 that killed
110,000 and Tashkent was levelled in 1966. More recently, devastating
earthquakes hit the Tajikistan-Afghanistan border in 1997 and 1998.
Wildlife
Central Asia is home to a unique range of ecosystems and an extra-
ordinary variety of flora and fauna. The ex-Soviet Central Asian republics
comprised only 17% of the former USSR's territory, but contained over
50% of its variety in flora and fauna.
The mountains of Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan are the set-
ting for high summer pastures known as jailoo s. In summertime the
wild flowers (including wild irises and edelweiss) are a riot of colour.
Marmots and pikas provide food for eagles and lammergeiers, while the
elusive snow leopard preys on the ibex, with which it shares a prefer-
ence for crags and rocky slopes, alongside the Svertsov ram and Marco
Polo sheep (argali). Forests of Tian Shan spruce, ash, larch and juniper

Since the 1930s
Caspian seal
numbers have
dropped from
over a million to
100,000.