Karakum Canal
| Karakum Canal | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| location |
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| length | 1445 km | ||||||||
| Built | 1954–1967 to Gökdepe, reservoir 38 ° 15 ′ 16 ″ N , 57 ° 49 ′ 9 ″ E |
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| Expanded | 1970s-1988 | ||||||||
| Beginning | Flow Amudarja before Kerki 37 ° 35 '0 " N , 65 ° 43' 0" O | ||||||||
| The End | before Kizyl-Atrek (city) 37 ° 41 ′ 43 ″ N , 54 ° 48 ′ 11 ″ E on the Caspian Sea
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| Ports | Ashgabat | ||||||||
| Junctions, crossings |
Murgab 37 ° 41 ′ 25 ″ N , 61 ° 59 ′ 4 ″ E Hari Rud 37 ° 2 ′ 21 ″ N , 60 ° 47 ′ 4 ″ E |
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| Downhill | To the west | ||||||||
| Flow rate: about 12 to 13 km³ annually | |||||||||
The Karakum Canal (today after the "honorary name" of the former Turkmen President Saparmyrat Nyýazow Türkmenbaşy Canal and formerly called the Turkmen Main Canal , Turkmen Garagum kanaly , Russian Каракумский канал ) is a canal in Turkmenistan .
The 1,445 km long canal runs between the Amudarja river (near Kerki ) and the Caspian Sea through the Karakum desert and on the northern edge of the Kopet-Dag mountain range on the border with Iran . At least as far as the area of the oasis settlement Merw (near Mary ), the canal was built on the bed of the Kelifer Usboi , the further course of the Usboi is unknown, but numerous other evidence of dried up river arms were found during the canal construction, not all of them in this one Area widely ramified (Kelifer) Usboi could be assigned. At Nebit-Dag ( Balkanabat ) the canal also meets the bed of the Western Usboi, another arm that would have been identical to the Turkmen main canal ( coming from Taxiatosh ) from the Sarykamysch Depression .
Construction began in 1954 by the Soviet Union in order to meet the increasing demand for water due to the increased cultivation of cotton and rice in the area. The canal, almost half of which can be used by smaller boats, was the largest in the Soviet Union. The water diversion led to the doubling of the irrigated land area. However, the conditional loss of water from the Amu Darya had some negative consequences.
Side effects
The Karakum Canal is the cause of 40 percent of the water loss in the Aral Sea and is therefore decisive for the increasing drying up of the lake: it removes around 12 to 13 km³ of water annually from the Amu Darya, which corresponds to an average discharge of 400 m³ / s. As a result, the river only reaches the lake temporarily, so that it shrinks considerably as a result of the drying out and leaves a sandy desert. The evaporation and the regional winds carry the salt dust onto the nearby fields and make them sterile. The local farmers try to compensate for the lack of water by over-fertilization and thus contaminate the groundwater. This dramatically increased child mortality in the region (infant mortality is one of the highest in the world at around 10%) and also results in the death of numerous animal herds. Flooding occurs again and again because of the dried-out soil. Fishing no longer plays a significant role in the region that was once extremely rich in fish.
Because the canal to Bereket (former name Gazanjyk, 39 ° 15 ' N , 55 ° 31' E ) is open and has no concrete bed, around half of the water that flows through it evaporates or seeps away. The other half of the water is withdrawn mainly for agricultural use. From Bereket a branch leads south-west to Kizyl-Atrek (also called Gyzyletrek). Another branch leads to Balkanabat.
The main city on the Karakum Canal is Ashgabat , the capital of Turkmenistan. The canal is accompanied in different sections by the Trans-Caspian Railway . It crosses the Murgab River near the cities of Murgap and Mary, which are close together .
Differentiation from the Turkmen Main Canal
In 1950 a second large canal was planned in the Soviet Union on what is now Turkmenistan , the Turkmen Main Canal. This construction project was part of Stalin's "Great Plan to Transform Nature". Among other things, this envisaged a decisive improvement in agricultural conditions through large-scale irrigation systems. The project was caused by a prolonged drought in 1946 and the resulting famine. Up to a million people fell victim to this.
The name is often mistakenly associated with the Karakum Canal. However, the Turkmen Main Canal was supposed to run in the north of the country and connect the Aral Sea , from the confluence of the Amu Darya , with the Caspian Sea near Krasnowodsk (today Turkmenbasy ). The planned length was 1100 km (for comparison: that of the Panama Canal is around 82 km).
The Turkmen Main Canal was mainly intended for electricity generation. For this purpose, the water masses from the north, flowing over the Aral Sea, should be channeled through several hydropower plants.
Due to the large-scale water management, the northern part of the country should be turned into usable agricultural area, in order to be able to produce more cotton in particular.
After Stalin's death in 1953, the realization of this large-scale construction project was stopped because of its inefficiency. At the same time, a large number of similar projects were abruptly ended in the wake of de-Stalinization . A year later, construction of the Karakum Canal began elsewhere. In order to gain broad popular support for state action, some literary works on this topic were published during the construction period. These should represent the construction and the later use of the canal extremely valuable and serve as a guiding symbol for the "re-establishment" of Turkmenistan . The best-known works include the production novels Durst by Yuri Trifonov and A Drop of Water - a Grain of Gold by the Turkmen writer Berdy Kerbabayev.
literature
- Herbert Grund: The energy industry in the Soviet Union . Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1952
- Julia Obertreis: I mperial Desert Dreams - Cotton Growing and Irrigation in Central Asia, 1860–1991 . V&R unipress, Göttingen 2017, ISBN 978-3-8471-0786-6
Web links
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Turkmenistan: Administrative Divisions and Transportation System 1996 (JPG image, 261 kB),
a map created by the CIA showing the entire length of the Karakum Canal to the Caspian Sea. - OpenStreetmap The end of the canal at Kizyl-Atrek (Gyzyletrek) near the Caspian Sea
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Encyclopædia Britannica : Karakum Canal
- ↑ a b c Article Karakum Canal in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia (BSE) , 3rd edition 1969–1978 (Russian)
- ↑ Amu Darya . In: Microsoft Encarta online
- ↑ Qaraqum Canal on the English Wikipedia
- ↑ Vladimir Kunin: Conqueror of the Desert. Brockhaus, Leipzig, 1957