This article will explore some of the Qing Empire’s primary adaptations, mainly pastoral and agricultural, to the arid environments of southern, eastern and northern Xinjiang – that is, the Tarim, Hami-Turfan and Zünghar basins respectively. It first examines the region’s arid climate and its constraining implications for, first, agriculture as the empire’s standard form of territorial incorporation in the south and east; and, second, pastoralism and agro-pastoralism in the north. These relations were not purely social, but were conditioned within both human and natural parameters. Xinjiang’s general aridity informed Qing interactions with the territory’s diverse peoples, which presented both cultural and ecological – that is, environmental – obstacles and opportunities.
Influence of technology without tillage on indicators of soil fertility in arid conditions of the South of Russia
