Religion and Forced Displacement in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia

This book examines the social and political mobilisation of religious communities towards forced displacement in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. It analyses religious strategies in relation to tolerance and transitory environments as a result of the breakup of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, the post-2011 Syrian crisis and the 2014 Russian takeover of Crimea. How do religious actors and state bodies engage with refugees and migrants? What are the mechanisms of religious support towards forcibly displaced communities? The book argues that when states do not act as providers of human security, religious communities, as representatives of civil society and often closer to the grass roots level, can be well placed to serve populations in need. The book brings together scholars from across the region and provides a comprehensive overview of the ways in which religious communities tackle humanitarian crises in contemporary Armenia, Bulgaria, Greece, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Poland, Russia, Serbia, Ukraine and Uzbekistan.

Sogdian Archetypes in Chatkal Oronymia as an Ancient Substrate of Toponyms of Central Asia

The relevance of studying the oronymy of the Chatkal area of Kyrgyzstan is associated with the fact that many mountain names are well preserved in sound and semantic terms. This factor is an important condition for studying the retrospective of any language, including the Turkic languages too. Also, in the sound shells of mountain names, despite their deep antiquity, long disappeared elements of languages that are in contact in the same linguistic area in the deep past have survived. As part of the mountain names of the Chatkal zone of the mountain ranges of Kyrgyzstan, individual morphemes and sounds of the ancient Turkic languages have been preserved, and at the same time, East Iranian topolexemes of the Indo-European language family are found. At the same time, the structure of oronyms to some extent shows the evolution of the language as a whole and of each tier in it - in particular. The history of the Kyrgyz language and its interaction with various systemic linguistic structures are reflected in the stratigraphy of oronymy. This allows you to explore the historical plan of the Turkic languages in more depth in the diachronic sense.

Glacier Runoff Variation Since 1981 in the Upper Naryn River Catchments, Central Tien Shan

Water resources in Central Asia strongly depend on glaciers, which in turn adjust their size in response to climate variations. We investigate glacier runoff in the period 1981–2019 in the upper Naryn basin, Kyrgyzstan. The basins contain more than 1,000 glaciers, which cover a total area of 776 km2. We model the mass balance and runoff contribution of all glaciers with a simplified energy balance melt model and distributed accumulation model driven by ERA5 LAND re-analysis data for the time period of 1981–2019. The results are evaluated against discharge records, satellite-derived snow cover, stake readings from individual glaciers, and geodetic mass balances. Modelled glacier volume decreased by approximately 6.7 km3 or 14%, and the majority of the mass loss took place from 1996 until 2019. The decreasing trend is the result of increasingly negative summer mass balances whereas winter mass balances show no substantial trend. Analysis of the discharge data suggests an increasing runoff for the past two decades, which is, however only partly reflected in an increase of glacier melt. Moreover, the strongest increase in discharge is observed in winter, suggesting either a prolonged melting period and/or increased groundwater discharge. The average runoff from the glacierized areas in summer months (June to August) constitutes approximately 23% of the total contributions to the basin’s runoff. The results highlight the strong regional variability in glacier-climate interactions in Central Asia.