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Remoteness vs Connectivity: Roads in High Tajikistan
At the first light of dawn, the Pamir Highway seems almost empty- just a thin ribbon of asphalt unspooling through rock and sky. A truck grinds up a long incline, leaving a wake of dust and echoes, and for a brief moment the only sound is the wind. From here, where the road cleaves the…
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Pistachio Forests in Decline: Cultural Landscapes Vanishing
In valleys of southern Tajikistan, slopes once draped in pistachio and almond trees whisper of a vanished abundance. Now, the forests appear thinner, patchy, edged by bare rock and scrub. To walk these slopes is to walk memory and erosion together. The pistachio forest is not simply ecological, it is a cultural landscape, a human-shaped…
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Mapping Tajikistan’s Deserts: The Southern Steppe as Living Frontier
The southern edges of Tajikistan stretch into color: ochre and lavender dusts, pale grasses, scattered shrubs, and an urge toward boundary. The terrain here is not full desert like the Sahara, but a semi-arid steppe pushed by climate, water limits, and human need. To walk across it is to sense land doing what land does:…
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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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Cotton vs Wheat: Balancing Export and Bread
In the irrigated valleys of southern Tajikistan, late summer means the cotton fields turn white. Bolls crack open in the heat, revealing the soft fiber that once earned this region the name “white gold.” The crop’s geometry is clear from above: rectangular plots, evenly furrowed, stretching toward the horizon. Alongside them, though, another geometry is…
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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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Vulnerable Basins
The sound comes first—a low rumble that grows into a roar. By the time villagers hear it clearly, the brown torrent is already spilling down the mountainside, carrying stones, branches, and the unmistakable smell of wet earth. In Tajikistan floods and mudflows are not rare events. They are seasonal realities, woven into life in valleys…
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