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Erosion in the Vakhsh Valley: How Soil Disappears into Rivers
The Vakhsh flows swift and muddy through its gorges, carrying soil from slopes high above into its depths: a river of dust, rock, and memory. From the ridges of the Pamirs down toward the lowland plains, erosion is never distant; it breathes in every valley, slips through every side stream, and tests every patch of…
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Riverine Fisheries: Decline and Adaptation
On the lower reaches of Tajikistan’s rivers, as spring runoff gives way to summer flows, fishermen gather at dawn along the banks with nets, handlines, and aging wooden boats. Their activity is both timeless and newly fragile. Riverine fisheries, which once was an abundant, integral part of local livelihoods and riparian ecosystems have been steadily…
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Hydropower and Rivers: Nurek and Roghun as Geography of Control
The Vakhsh River carves a path through mountains, its waters tumbling fast and brown, carrying silt from high Pamir glaciers. Along this river, concrete walls rise, transforming torrents into reservoirs, valleys into lakes. Nurek and Roghun are more than dams: they are landscapes of control, reshaping hydrology, sediment, and even the atmosphere above. To stand…
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Rivers as Borders: The Panj and Beyond
The Panj River moves steadily, carving its way between steep cliffs of the Pamirs and the Hindu Kush. On one side is Tajikistan, on the other Afghanistan. The water itself seems indifferent, tumbling with a roar in spring and shimmering quietly in summer. Yet for those who live along its banks, the river is not…
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Syr Darya’s flows: water beyond Tajikistan
The Syr Darya is not born in Tajikistan, yet Tajik mountains breathe into it. Glaciers and streams from the Pamir and Tian Shan ranges feed tributaries that later merge into the great river. The river itself stretches more than 2,200 kilometers across Central Asia, through Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan, before seeping into the basin of…
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Iskanderkul Lake: myth, beauty, and geography
The morning light spills over the Fann Mountains, touching icy peaks and then cascading down slopes until it reaches a stretch of water so clear it mirrors clouds and cliffs alike. That lake is Iskanderkul– known as “Alexander’s Lake”, a jewel set deep in Tajikistan’s highlands, both mythic and geological, where glacial waters collect in…
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Glacial Lakes: The Hidden Floods of the Pamirs
High in the Pamirs the sky is vast and the silence deep. In that silence, water is gathering. Where glaciers retreat, meltwater fills hollows: lakes that seem quiet, serene, unmoving. Yet these glacial lakes hold tension. They sit behind moraines, perched on slopes, waiting. When their dams fail, they unleash floods that are hidden hazards,…
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Irrigation Systems, Decades of Use and Decay
The water begins high in the glaciers, clear and frigid, tumbling through rock gorges until it flattens into the valleys. By the time it reaches the cotton fields of the Vakhsh or the orchards of the Zarafshan, the water is a different thing altogether: it is clouded, diverted, slowed by gates and channels built decades…
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