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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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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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Forests and Deforestation: The Vanishing Green
The forest in Tajikistan is never far, though its presence is often overlooked. Scattered across valleys, clinging to slopes, lining rivers with narrow bands of green, these woodlands are fragile fragments of what once covered more. In the Hissar range, walnut trees shade villages, their nuts gathered in baskets by children each autumn. In Sughd,…
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Climate and Glaciers: Melting Heights
High above the valleys, the mountains gleam white, their glaciers stretching across ridges like frozen rivers. From afar they seem eternal, a steady crown of ice feeding the rivers below. Up close, they are moving, groaning, shrinking. In Tajikistan’s Pamirs and Alay ranges, glaciers cover thousands of square kilometers, storing the water that sustains life…
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Soils, Agriculture, Tajikistan, Erosion, Salinity, Farming, Land Management, Central Asia
The rivers of Tajikistan move fast. Snowmelt pours from glaciers, tumbling through gorges, twisting around boulders, white spray catching the light. For centuries these waters carved valleys, nourished fields, and gave rhythm to life. Today, they carry another kind of power: electricity. Hydropower plants line the Vakhsh and other rivers, their dams rising like walls…
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The Ozone Layer Over Tajikistan: Scientific Warnings
The sky above Dushanbe looks impossibly clear on a crisp autumn morning. From the city’s edges, the blue stretches wide, broken only by the snowy ridges of the Gissar Range. To most people, the sky is simply background—a canvas for weather, birds, or airplanes. But for scientists at the Academy of Sciences, it is a…
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Soils and Agriculture: Living with the Earth
The earth in Tajikistan is never just earth. In the Vakhsh Valley, it crumbles between fingers like powder, light and pale, laced with salt from decades of irrigation. In Gissar, it is darker, richer, holding the roots of wheat and apricot trees. In the Pamirs, it is thin, clinging to terraces carved by hand. Soils…
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Urban Growth in Dushanbe: Expanding Edges
From the rooftop of an old Soviet apartment block near Rudaki Avenue, the city stretches out in layers. The center hums with traffic, broad boulevards lined with new glass-fronted shops. Beyond, cranes swing above construction sites, and dust rises from the edges where farmland once lay. Dushanbe is changing before its residents’ eyes. The capital…
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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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