scholarly journals Cenozoic evolution of the steppe-desert biome in Central Asia

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (41) ◽  
pp. eabb8227
Author(s):  
N. Barbolini ◽  
A. Woutersen ◽  
G. Dupont-Nivet ◽  
D. Silvestro ◽  
D. Tardif ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Central Asia ◽  
Regime Shifts ◽  
Stable States ◽  
Temporal Scales ◽  
Spatial And Temporal Scales ◽  
Central Asian ◽  
The World ◽  
Human Use

The origins and development of the arid and highly seasonal steppe-desert biome in Central Asia, the largest of its kind in the world, remain largely unconstrained by existing records. It is unclear how Cenozoic climatic, geological, and biological forces, acting at diverse spatial and temporal scales, shaped Central Asian ecosystems through time. Our synthesis shows that the Central Asian steppe-desert has existed since at least Eocene times but experienced no less than two regime shifts, one at the Eocene–Oligocene Transition and one in the mid-Miocene. These shifts separated three successive “stable states,” each characterized by unique floral and faunal structures. Past responses to disturbance in the Asian steppe-desert imply that modern ecosystems are unlikely to recover their present structures and diversity if forced into a new regime. This is of concern for Asian steppes today, which are being modified for human use and lost to desertification at unprecedented rates.

scholarly journals Tajikistan’s Perspective on Eurasia

2019 ◽  
Vol 75 (1) ◽  
pp. 100-107
Author(s):  
Jovid Ikromov
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
Central Asia ◽  
World Economy ◽  
Asian Countries ◽  
The West ◽  
Eurasian Continent ◽  
Central Asian ◽  
The World ◽  
Central Asian Countries

In this article, the place of Central Asia, particularly of Tajikistan, in the Eurasian continent has been examined. The slow and confident transfer of engine of the world economy from the West to the East and South increasing the role of the countries located between them. Located between Europe, Russia and South Asia, five Central Asian countries are interested in the development and participation in broader transcontinental trade and transit corridors connecting in all directions. Tajikistan has a unique opportunity to become a hub of trade and transit as it is located at the crossroads of growing ties between South and Central Asia.

Central Asian states face high climate change risks

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Central Asia ◽  
Irrigation Canals ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Climate Change Responses ◽  
Central Asian ◽  
Climate Change Risks ◽  
The World ◽  
Summer Temperatures ◽  
International Climate

Subject Climate change in Central Asia. Significance As the Central Asian states emerge from months of sweltering summer temperatures, attention is increasingly turning to the effects of climate change. In a region always short of rainfall and dependent on glacier-fed rivers, rising global temperatures look set to have deeper and swifter impacts than in many other parts of the world. Impacts International climate change responses will have limited impacts on Central Asian specifics. Regional structures may become more effective as the situation's urgency becomes apparent. One part-solution involves repairing irrigation canals to reduce massive leakage.

scholarly journals CENTRAL ASIAN REGION AT THE FOCUS OF GEOPOLITICAL INTERESTS

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (383) ◽  
pp. 192-198
Author(s):  
Z. K. Ayupova ◽  
D. U. Kussainov ◽  
M. T. Beisenbayeva ◽  
Winston Nagan
Keyword(s):  
Central Asia ◽  
Developing Economies ◽  
Raw Materials ◽  
The United States ◽  
Raw Material ◽  
Alternative Source ◽  
Central Asian ◽  
Natural Energy ◽  
The World ◽  
Sphere Of Influence

In the XXI century the role of Central Asia in international politics is increasing. This region, possessing rich natural, energy, mineral and raw material resources, has an important geostrategic position, in which we see the geopolitical confrontation of global actors. The confrontation is explained by the fact that, for example, for Russia this region, being a “vulnerable underbelly”, is included in the traditional sphere of influence, from the perspective of China, the region seems to be an alternative source of energy and a vital partner for stabilizing and developing the troubled Xinjiang province. As for the United States and their allies, this region appears to be an important transportation hub, for example, for military supplies to unstable Afghanistan. Central Asia is not only a key region on the world map, the establishment of control over which allows you to manage the regional transit of hydrocarbons and other types of strategic raw materials for the largest developing economies, primarily China, and, as a result, affect their economic growth and aggregate power. Central Asia is a crossroad of civilizations, control over which, as was believed over the centuries, allows you to rule the world. The region retains its exceptional geopolitical significance today.

Prospects for Central Asia in 2016

2015 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Central Asia ◽  
World Bank ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The World Bank ◽  
Central Asian ◽  
The World ◽  
State Group ◽  
The Imf

Subject Prospects for Central Asia in 2016. Significance In October, both the World Bank and the IMF downgraded Central Asia's economic growth outlook for 2016. The previous month, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan had signalled the rising influence of extremist organisations, first and foremost the Islamic State group (ISG) across the region. Central Asian regimes are faced with a multitude of risks, including political destabilisation.

scholarly journals We Are the World? Anthropocene Cultural Production between Geopoetics and Geopolitics

2015 ◽  
Vol 34 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 147-168 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angela Last
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Production ◽  
Aime Cesaire ◽  
The Political ◽  
Temporal Scales ◽  
Spatial And Temporal Scales ◽  
Political Work ◽  
The World ◽  
Simone Weil ◽  
Human World ◽  
Artistic Interest

The proposal of the ‘Anthropocene’ as a new geological epoch where humans represent the dominant natural force has renewed artistic interest in the ‘geopoetic’, which is mobilized by cultural producers to incite changes in personal and collective participation in planetary life and politics. This article draws attention to prior engagements with the geophysical and the political: the work of Simone Weil and of the editors of the Martinican cultural journal Tropiques, Suzanne and Aimé Césaire. Synthesizing the political and scientific shifts in human-world relationships of their time, both projects are set against oppressive or narcissistic materialisms and experiment with the image of the ‘cosmic’ to cultivate a preoccupation not (only) with a tangible materialism but with an intangible one that emphasizes process and connectivity across wide spatial and temporal scales. The writers’ movement between poetics and politics will be used to enquire what kind of socio-political work a contemporary geopoetic could potentially do.

scholarly journals The Homogocene: a research prospectus for the study of biotic homogenisation

NeoBiota ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 37 ◽  
pp. 23-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julian D. Olden ◽  
Lise Comte ◽  
Xingli Giam
Keyword(s):  
Global Change ◽  
Biological Diversity ◽  
Significant Progress ◽  
Temporal Scales ◽  
Spatial And Temporal Scales ◽  
Conservation Implications ◽  
The World ◽  
Biotic Homogenisation ◽  
Long Term Preservation

In an era of global change, the process of biotic homogenisation by which regional biotas become more similar through time has attracted considerable attention from ecologists. Here, a retrospective look at the literature is taken and the question asked how comprehensive is the understanding of this global phenomenon? The goal is to identify potential areas for additional and future enquiries to advance this research frontier and best ensure the long-term preservation of biological diversity across the world. Six propositions are presented here to; (1) broaden our geographic and taxonomic understanding, (2) diversify the spatial and temporal scales of inquiry, (3) reconcile past and embrace new approaches to quantification, (4) improve our knowledge of the underlying drivers, (5) reveal the conservation implications and (6) forecast future homogenisation. It is argued that significant progress in the understanding of the causes, consequences and conservation implication of biotic homogenisation will come by integrating concepts and approaches from ecology, evolution and conservation across a hierarchy of spatial and temporal scales.

scholarly journals Biblical Legends in the Folklore of the Turkic Peoples in Southern Siberia

Folklorica ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nadezhda Oinotkinova
Keyword(s):  
Central Asia ◽  
Historical Data ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Conceptual Systems ◽  
Southern Siberia ◽  
Tower Of Babel ◽  
Central Asian ◽  
The World ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Christian Beliefs

The article deals with the ethnic specificity of biblical legends about the flood and the Tower of Babel in the folklore of the Turkic peoples of Southern Siberia (the Altai, Tuva, Khakassia and Shor). These folk legends, rooted in early Christianity, confirm the cultural and historical contacts between the peoples of Central Asia and peoples holding Christian beliefs. The subjects of the legends, associated with the biblical idea of the creation of the world and man and the flood, found their way into Siberia even before the Russians initiated the process of Christianization in the region from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. This assertion is confirmed not only by the specific features of folk legends under discussion, but also by historical data on the influence of Manichaeism and Nestorianism on the culture of the Central Asian peoples, including on the Turkic peoples of Siberia. The persistence of these legends can be attributed to the fact that their plots are often adapted to local realities, concepts, myths, and events. In the construction of these narratives, use is made of national mythological terminology and conceptual systems. The saturation of the folk legends with local mythology and local beliefs in the Siberian context may be a contributing factor to their ongoing existence as a part of the folklore. The appropriation of the contents of biblical legends by the peoples of Siberia also shows the seriousness of their adoption of Christian ideas in the distant past.

ECONOMIC RELATIONS OF GLOBAL POWERS WITH CENTRAL ASIA

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (20) ◽  
pp. 123-136
Author(s):  
Sabina Malikova
Keyword(s):  
Central Asia ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Economic Interests ◽  
Economic Relations ◽  
Religious Conflicts ◽  
Central Asian ◽  
The World ◽  
Divide And Rule ◽  
Power Center ◽  
Global Powers

The dominant worldpowers, whose qualification of being a power center got stronger with globalization, have had a structure that affects everywhere. These powers could not be expected tore main in different to Central Asia. Because the Central Asia Region has an interesting structure with it srich underground and above ground resources. Considered as the first homeland of the Turks, Central Asia is a part of the world that has always been the domain of sovereignty wars in the historical process. The Turks, who have been living in Central Asia since the earliest times of history, have been in the struggle of the world's global powers. The great effects of the global competition, sometimes between the great powers with in there gionand sometimes by the powers outside the region, have always been felt. Russia and China have more opportunities in Central Asia than distant global powers. For this reason, various invasions, regional wars, division strategies, in short, power wars in Central Asia have become an unchangeable fate. Inthisstudy, the economic relations in Central Asiaand the position of the global powers, which can also be named as Great Powers, were evaluated with the method of theoretical analysis. As a result of this evaluation, it has been determined that the economic interests of the great powers of the world are effective on the basis of even various regional, ethnological and religious conflicts. Especially Russia and China's divide-and-rule policy has been the determinant of the fate of the Central Asian people for the last three centuries. It was as if the set wopower sagreed with each other and shared and invaded the regions and as a result, the poverty of the societies in Central Asia increased while the exploitation order they formed strengthened themselves.

scholarly journals Ecosystem shifts at two mid-Holocene tipping points in the alpine Lake Son Kol (Kyrgyzstan, Central Asia)

The Holocene ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (10) ◽  
pp. 1410-1419 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Laug ◽  
Anja Schwarz ◽  
Stefan Lauterbach ◽  
Stefan Engels ◽  
Antje Schwalb
Keyword(s):  
Central Asia ◽  
Ecosystem Dynamics ◽  
Tipping Points ◽  
Gradual Change ◽  
Stable States ◽  
Lake Ecosystems ◽  
Central Asian ◽  
Subfossil Chironomid ◽  
High Turbidity ◽  
Chironomid Fauna

Tipping points can be defined as critical ecosystem thresholds that start self-enforced dynamics pushing systems into new stable states. Many lake ecosystems of arid Central Asia are sensitive to hydrological changes as they are located at the intersection of the influence of the dry Siberian Anticyclone and the relatively humid mid-latitude Westerlies, and their sediment records can be used to study past tipping points. We studied subfossil chironomid remains preserved in a ca. 6000-year-long sediment record from the Central Asian lake Son Kol (Central Kyrgyzstan) to reconstruct past ecosystem dynamics. Our results show abrupt transitions from a chironomid fauna dominated by macrophyte-associated, salinity-indicating taxa, to a vegetation-independent fauna, and subsequently to a macrophyte-associated, freshwater-indicating fauna. A comparison of the chironomid-based environmental reconstruction to other proxy indicators from the same record suggests a phase of increased Westerly strength starting about 4900 cal. yr BP. This increase led to enhanced precipitation and sediment fluxes into the lake, which in turn led to high turbidity levels and consequently to a macrophyte collapse causing abrupt changes in the chironomid fauna. At 4300 cal. yr BP, a weakening of the Westerlies in combination with higher lake levels led to lower turbidity and ultimately to the recovery of the macrophyte population and associated changes in the chironomid assemblage. These two sequences of events show how the occurrence of a gradual change in an external trigger (Westerlies) can trigger a cascade of within-lake processes (turbidity, macrophyte density) and may ultimately lead to an abrupt reorganization of the ecosystem (chironomid fauna), providing models for tipping points.

scholarly journals “My Silk Road to You”: Re-imagining routes, roads, and geography in contemporary art of “Central Asia”

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diana T. Kudaibergenova
Keyword(s):  
Central Asia ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Video Art ◽  
Silk Road ◽  
Social Critique ◽  
Cultural Transformations ◽  
Central Asian ◽  
The World ◽  
The Silk Road

This paper re-focuses the Silk Road discussions from the position of contemporary art in Central Asian region. Since the late 1980s contemporary art in Central Asia boomed and it eventually became an alternative public space for the discussion of cultural transformations, social and global processes and problems that local societies faced. Initially the questions raised by many artists concerned issues of lost identity and lost heritage during the period of Soviet domination in the region. Different artists started re-imagining the concept of the Self in their works and criticising the old rigid approaches to geography, history and mobility. Nomadic heritage became one of the central themes in contemporary art of Central Asia in the 1990s. Artists started experimenting with symbols of mobility, fluid borders and imagined geography of the “magic steppe” (see Kudaibergenova 2017, “Punk Shamanism”). Contemporary art in Central Asia continues to serve as a space for social critique and a space for search and re-conceptualisation of new fluid identities, geographies and region's place on the world map. In this paper I critically evaluate three themes connected to the symbolism of Silk Road heritage that many artists engage with – imagined geography, routes, roads and mobility. All three themes are present in the selected case studies of Gulnara Kasmalieva's and Muratbek Djumaliev's TransSiberian Amazons (2005) and A New Silk Road: Algorithm of Survival and Hope (2007) multi-channel video art, Victor and Elena Vorobievs’ (Non)Silk Road (2006) performance and photography, Almagul Menlibayeva's My Silk Road to You video-art and photography (2010–2011), Yerbossyn Meldibekov's series on imagining Central Asia and the Mountains of Revolution (2012–2015), and Syrlybek Bekbotaev's Kyrgyz Pass installation (2014–2015) as well as Defenders of Issyk Kul (2014). I trace how artists modernise, mutate and criticise main discourses about Silk Road and what impact this has on the re-imagination processes.

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