Hunger steppe
Coordinates: 46 ° 2 ′ 0 ″ N , 70 ° 12 ′ 0 ″ E
The Hunger Steppes ( Kazakh Бетпақдала Betpaqdala for Evil Plain ) is a steppe - like semi - desert in the center of Kazakhstan .
geography
It is bounded in the north by the Ulutau Mountains and the Kazakh Threshold , in the east by Lake Balkhash and in the south by the mostly dry valley of the Tschüi River , behind which the Mujunkum desert joins. In the southwest it abuts the depression Asikol behind which the flow Syrdarja in runs southeast-northwest direction. In the west the hunger steppe turns into the Aralkarakum desert .
Only two roads run through the hunger steppe in a north-south direction, namely the A344 from Schesqasghan to Qysylorda and the M36 on the shores of Lake Balkhash from Karaganda to Almaty . A railway line also runs from Karaganda to the city of Shu .
In the center of the hunger steppe lies a deserted area the size of Hungary, through which no traffic routes lead. In the western part of the Hunger Steppe lies the Karakojun Salt Lake , which is the only lake in this area.
fauna
In the Hunger Steppe living desert dormouse or Desert dormouse ( Selevinia betpakdalaensis ).
The hunger steppe is home to the largest occurrence of the saiga antelope in Central Asia. After the population of saiga antelopes had reduced to only 26,000 specimens by the year 2000, they rose again to around 250,000 individuals by 2014. In May 2015, the population in the hunger steppe suffered a puzzling mass extinction , which killed over 120,000 animals. According to a research team led by Richard Kock from the Royal Veterinary College in London, the causes of this epidemic are a combination of warm, humid weather and the bacterium Pasteurella multocida . This was shown by comparative studies of several mass extinctions of this antelope species. However, the phenomenon is far from being fully clarified. In particular, how the two factors weather and bacteria interact is still unknown.
Web links
- Christian Rottenegger: Through the Ryn desert and the hunger steppe in Kazakhstan . Travel report with photos from the Ultratour II, German, June 2011
Individual evidence
- ↑ Ralf Nestler: Saiga antelopes: Enigmatic mass extinction in Kazakhstan at tagesspiegel.de, accessed on June 4, 2015.
- ↑ Mysterious mass extinction: 120,000 saiga antelopes perish at n-tv.de, accessed on June 4, 2015.
- ↑ A third of the world's inventory has died ( memento of the original from June 5, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at nabu.de, accessed on June 4, 2015.
- ↑ derstandard.at pattern of mass death .
