International Conference on Rapid Sea Level Change- a Caspian Perspective
1 INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON RAPID SEA LEVEL CHANGE- A CASPIAN PERSPECTIVE May 2-9, 2005 Rasht, Islamic Republic of Iran PREPRINT Uzboy and the Aral regressions: an hydrological approach. By Nikola Aladin*, René Létolle**, Philip Micklin***, Igor Plotnikov* *Academy of Science, Saint Petersburg, Russia. **Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, France ***Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan USA Summary Study of the hydrological possibilities of the fossil bed of Uzboy for the diversion of Amu Darya during the last regressions of the Aral sea. in the XV-XVIth centuries; some alternative possibilities are studied. Introduction. Uzboy, an enigmatic dry river in western central Asia (fig.1), has for more than one century set the problem of its history1. Correctly mapped in 1884 by Konshin, Uzboy was thoroughly studied, as concerns its geological setting, by Kes from 1937 up to today ( Tolstov and Kes, 1960, Tolstov, 1962, Andrianov, 1969, Kes et Klyukanova, 1990). For a recent monograph, one may refer to Létolle ( 2000). Although some authors affirm, without any conclusive arguments that Uzboy never was a real river, it may not be contested that Uzboy was an important river, a western branch of Amu Darya, as was well established by Kes some time ago. We shall try to establish in this paper some hydrological characteristics of the most recent characteristics of the Uzboy flow, in the Middle Ages, and especially in the XVIth century A.D., when the Aral suffered a regression of the same importance as the present one ( Aladin et al., 1996). This epoch is the best documented and geomorphological characteristics of the channel remain essentially undamaged since this time.
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