Landslides are among the major environmental hazards with large-scale socio-economic and environmental impacts that jeopardize socio-economic wellbeing in mountainous regions. Landslides are due to the interaction of several complex factors such as local or regional geology, geomorphology, topography, and seismic motions. The goal of this study is to review published articles on causes and effects of landslides in Central Asia throughout 2000–2020. In line with this goal, we have collected (using Scopus database), reviewed, and analyzed 79 papers published during 2000–2020. Our results revealed an increasing number of landslide studies in Central Asia during the period under investigation, with authors from Belgium dominating in the published outcomes (28% of total), followed by authors from Central-Asian countries. After then, the paper analyses the mostly applied models and frequently identified driving conditions and triggers of landsliding, such as aspect, altitude, soil types, precipitation, earthquakes and human interventions. Geographic information system (GIS) and remote sensing (RS) had not commonly been used in the papers between 2000 and 2010, and they have progressively been applied in landslide studies in Central Asia in the last decade. According to our analysis, geotechnical, geophysical and statistical methods were preferably used for the landslide studies in Central Asia.

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The authors consider the conditions of occurrence, composition, and properties of the Eocene clays of the Paleogene, common in the northern part of Tamdytau, which were the foundation of the structures. The present study of the authors is aimed at studying the problem of the long-term interaction of Eocene clays with water and identifying the features of changes in their material composition and properties; the variability of the composition, properties of clays, and the reasons for these changes are analyzed. The main factors determining the differences in the composition and properties of Paleogene clays are: genetic - different salinity of the sea basin or less saline at which the reservoirs were connected with the open sea; zonal-climatic - different humidity and other physical properties. So far, no unified methodology has been developed for predicting the composition and properties of clays at the base of structures when interacting with water. The results of granulometric analysis established that Paleogene clays are classified as highly dispersed soils containing more than 55% of clay particles. Analysis of the diffraction pattern showed that the clay fraction of the studied samples contain montmorillonite (M), hydromica (H), kaolinite (K), mixed-layer formations of the montmorillonite-hydromica series.