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International Conference on Rapid Sea Level Change- a Caspian Perspective

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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. We shall try to demonstrate that Uzboy was unable to carry out all water from the Amu Darya, and that other dissipative ways are to be found. In fact, this 750 km long channel ( fig.1) regained life on several occasions , after the end of the Würm glaciation ( about 11 000 years BC ), due to climatic episodes more humid than today and/or diversions by man of the main course of Amu darya towards the West. Now this 1 For a short history of the first discoveries, see E.D. Morgan, The old channels of the lower Oxus, from Russian and othe sources, Jl. Royal Soc.,48,301-320,1878, and K. Yusupov, Palaeogeography of the Uzboy as based on historical data.Probl. Desert Dev., 2, 29-34 ( translation of Probl. osv. pustyn) 2 channel is dry except for several elongated small pools, fed by spring rain and snow, as was the case in recent years, and perennial springs from the Ust Urt plateau in the North and from sands of the Karakum desert in the SW, a reservoir of low transmissivity fed by southern waters , essentially from the slopes of Khopet Dag and inland deltas of the rivers Tejen and Murgab. Some of these pools, as Topiatan, Burgun and Kurtysh “lakes”, are perennial. At various times in the past, the rising level of Caspian made a narrow gulf from the lower course of the Uzboy, up to 0 m a.s.l. But this never was the case during the last millennia. Most often when one refers to Uzboy – the Amu Darya running towards the Caspian Sea- this implies that Amu was completely diverted towards Caspian ( fig. and map in Aladin et al, 1996). But was it only a part of its flow, with the remnant going on to the Aral, or being lost elsewhere? And is the fossil bed of Uzboy able to carry the tens of billions cubic meters of water it is supposed to have carried every year? Barthold (1910) recalls that Arab historians stated that Uzboy in the middle Ages was a course used by merchants who navigated it for centuries, and had several rapids to overcome. The track since the Caspian sea left the Uzboy near Kurtysh ( see fig 1) to cross a part of the Karakum desert, fetch the Saksenem station halfway from Khiva and Urgench. Jenkinson in 1548 , arriving from Russia through the Ust Urt plateau, camped on the shore of Sary Kamysh ( fig. 1) , the lake from which Uzboy originates, the water of which he found “ fresh and sweete” ( sic), which proves that the lake contained fresh water at this time, and consequently was exorheic; then he saw, east of Urgench, the main course of Amu running north and said that the current had been recently re-established, and “ was swifte”. Fig 1: General map of Uzboy 3 This study will examine the capabilities of flow in the Uzboy at that time, when occurred the last pre-Soviet recession of the Aral Sea in the XVth-XVII th times. At that time, the present topographic configuration was already established , except for minor changes essentially linked with wind erosion and sedimentation ( mobile sand dunes). Our intent here is to determine which constraints hydrology brings to the possibility of a complete diversion of Amu Darya towards the Caspian Sea- as this has been often asserted without proof- during the prehistorical and historical eras. In effect, the main cause of several important regressions of the Aral Sea level cannot be attributed to climatic variations, such as the “ Small Ice age”; which is not the case for Aral transgressions, although those are limited by the sill formed by the Amu delta between Aral and Sary Kamysh lakes. The maximum altitude of this sill is 61 m a.s.l (above sea level ). For centuries, the idea that the Amu darya flowed to the Caspian preoccupied historians . Much later, Konshin ( 1897), one of the first scientific explorers of Western Central Asia, considered already that Uzboy could not carry the whole water flux ( or at last its biggest part) of the Amu Darya to the Caspian sea. A common assertion is yet today that the whole water flux of Amu Darya was turn aside to the west, wittingly or not, depriving Aral from most of its water supply. This would imply that the total Amu Darya flow ( fig.2), averaging 56 km3 4 Fig.2: Hydrogram of AmuDarya 100 km south of Nukus per year for the instrumental measuring period 1911-1960 ( before extension of irrigation processes around the Amu valley), with a range of 30 to 70 km3 per year and instantaneous values from 6560 to 325 m3/sec ( before the building of dams along the river and its tributaries in the second part of the XXth century) went to the Caspian Sea. Various authors, since Kes, have already concluded that Uzboy was unable to carry more than, say, 15 km3 per year of the mean Amu flow . Here is presented a new study of the capabilities of Uzboy to convey water. Most of the geographical information on Uzboy comes from the magnificent works – and maps- of Kes, published in the proceedings of the Khorezm Expedition ( Tolstov, 1960, 1962). Kes was able to identify the fluvial alluviums of the Holocene period ( less than 10 000 years B.P.) from the oldest from Pleistocene age ( last glaciation and before). To this material are added some details from other authors ( see Letolle, 2000), and many topographical documents (satellite images) I The Amu Darya/Sary Kamysh/Uzboy system Presently drainage waters, the origin of which are diverted waters from Amu Darya , flow to the Sary Kamysh depression through canals which follow more or less ancient natural channels, those of Darya Lyk and Daudan Darya, the latter not reaching the present lake. Sary Kamysh lake is set in an oval depression of tectonic origin, subsequently carved mainly by aeolian erosion during the successive glaciations from 2 millions years ago to 10,000 BC. It was filled during the Holocene, partly by aeolian sand and dust, but mainly by alluviums of the Amu Darya delta, which choked the pre-existing lacustrine link between Aral and Sary Kamysh (“ the Great Aral”, Boomer et al, 2000, fig C, )2. Then the western branches of the Amu carved these geological formations and also, beneath them, those of Upper Tertiary and 2 A smaller branch of Amu Darya, during the times this river went to the West, fed also the Sudoche lake, a satellite of Aral North of Kungrad, as shown by Yagodin ( 2002), and perhaps poured some water in the Aral south western basin which at that time was reduced to a permanent solonchak where was deposited sodium sulfate ( mirabilite), as shown by Rubanov ( q.v.) 5 Lower Quaternary periods, creating the Darya Lyk canyon. These channels were inactive when the lake was discovered by the Petrosevich expedition in 1876, just after Khiva was occupied by the Russian army: at that time the Sary kamysh lake was reduced to a series of small salt lakes with a total volume of 1 km3, fed by karstic springs and scanty precipitation. In 1878 the lake was almost flooded by a giant flood of Amu darya which destroyed its western dykes. The lake received in its 2004 state approximately 5 to 6 km3/year of drainage water, which stabilized its level at about 0 ± 2m a.s.l.. ( Kes, 1997) . This corresponds to the equilibrium of inputs ( essentially the Daryalik waters) with evaporation ( about 1.2 m/year, in Kes, 1991), infiltration and springs being of little importance. Complete filling of the depression, the southern tip being at an altitude of 58m (53 m following Saparov and Golubenko,2001) should be possible in a few years with an input of at last 15-20 km3/year. The minimum water input to keep the lake filled to its maximum level with no overflow to the Uzboy is about 9.5 km3/year.
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