News & Blog – Page 4 – GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY OF TAJIKISTAN

GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY OF TAJIKISTAN

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4

Feb

Cotton Landscapes: Water, Monoculture, and Soil

In the lowland plains of Tajikistan, cotton fields stretch in orderly rows toward the horizon, green leaves shimmering against pale loess soils under an unforgiving sun. These landscapes are both entirely human-made and deeply geographical. Cotton here depends on a massive redirection of water, the reshaping of soils, and a social-ecological system built around monoculture.
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9

Dec

Agroforestry Practices: Between Tradition and Modernity

Across Tajikistan’s valleys and foothills, trees grow not only in forests but also in fields, canalsides, and village gardens. This blending of trees with crops and pastures is part of a long agroforestry tradition that shapes both landscapes and livelihoods. In recent decades, changing climate patterns, land-use reforms, and development programs have introduced new methods,
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9

Oct

Glacial Permafrost Thaw in the Pamirs

High in the Pamirs, where the landscape folds into sharp ridges and cirques, ice is not confined to glaciers alone. Much of it lies hidden within the ground, frozen into the soil and rock. This is permafrost: a perennially frozen ground that has shaped Pamiri landscapes for millennia. Now, under a warming climate, that frozen
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6

Aug

Climate Migration: Villages Relocating from Risk

In the mountain valleys of Tajikistan, migration is often imagined as a social phenomenon: people moving for work, education, or opportunity. Yet in many villages, movement is increasingly shaped not by choice but by shifting land and water. Climate change alters hydrological patterns, accelerates erosion, and destabilizes slopes, gradually pushing communities to relocate. This is
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18

Jun

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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10

Jun

Earthquake Memories: Oral Histories of Tremors

The earth moves quietly at first, almost imperceptibly. A low vibration, a shudder through walls and ground, then the sudden sway that makes people step into doorways or rush outside. In Tajikistan, earthquakes are part of life in a seismically active landscape where mountain-building and faulting shape not only geology but memory. For many communities,
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8

Apr

Droughts in Khatlon: Climate Pressures on Lowlands

The lowlands of Khatlon stretch wide and flat beneath a hard summer sky. Irrigation canals run like veins across fields of cotton and wheat, pulling water from distant rivers to sustain a landscape that depends on every drop. The sun beats down, hot winds rise from the Afghan plain, and the horizon shimmers. In dry
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22

Mar

Tigrovaya Balka Reserve: Floodplain Ecology in Peril

Where the Vakhsh River meets the Amu Darya, a floodplain stretches into thickets, wetlands, and forests of willow and poplar. This is Tigrovaya Balka, Tajikistan’s oldest nature reserve and one of Central Asia’s most important floodplain ecosystems. To walk here is to enter a geography defined by water’s ebb and flow, by forests that rise
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12

Feb

Urban Morphology in Khujand: Soviet Planning Visible

Khujand sits at a bend of the Syr Darya River, a city shaped by water, trade, and power. From above, its structure is unmistakable: rectilinear avenues radiating from a central core, residential blocks arranged in planned grids, green corridors following canals, and newer neighborhoods spreading toward the southern hills. It is a city where the
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24

Dec

Dust Storms from the South: Transboundary Skies

In southern Tajikistan the air sometimes thickens into haze. It comes not from local chimneys or urban traffic but from the south, rising from deserts beyond the border. Dust storms lift across Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, carried by wind into valleys of Khatlon and across the Amu Darya. These storms are transboundary events, reminders that
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