A landcover change study of takyr surfaces in Turkmenistan

Maman, Shimrit; Orlovsky, L.; Blumberg, Dan G.; Berliner, Pedro; Mamedov, B.

doi:10.1016/j.jaridenv.2011.04.002

Cited by 11 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…Due to its finer spatial resolution than many other global satellite imagers, Landsat imagery has been the data source of choice for many land cover and land use change studies [13][14][15][16][17][18]. Landsat has been widely used to study the dynamics of various earth surfaces like forest cover [19,20], grassland [21], delta [22], takir [23], urban areas [24,25], pampas [26], rangelands [27], and arid regions [18].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tracking Land Use/Land Cover Dynamics in Cloud Prone Areas Using Moderate Resolution Satellite Data: A Case Study in Central Africa

Basnet

Vodacek

2015

Remote Sensing

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Tracking land surface dynamics over cloud prone areas with complex mountainous terrain is an important challenge facing the Earth Science community. One such region is the Lake Kivu region in Central Africa. We developed a processing chain to systematically monitor the spatio-temporal land use/land cover dynamics of this region over the years 1988, 2001, and 2011 using Landsat data, complemented by ancillary data. Topographic compensation was performed on Landsat reflectances to avoid the strong illumination angle impacts and image compositing was used to compensate for frequent cloud cover and thus incomplete annual data availability in the archive. A systematic supervised classification was applied to the composite Landsat imagery to obtain land cover thematic maps with overall accuracies of 90% and higher. Subsequent change analysis between these years found extensive conversions of the natural environment as a result of human related activities. The gross forest cover loss for 1988-2001 and 2001-2011 period was 216.4 and 130.5 thousand hectares, respectively, signifying significant deforestation in the period of civil war and a relatively stable and lower deforestation rate later, possibly due to conservation and reforestation efforts in the region. The other dominant land cover changes in the region were aggressive subsistence farming and urban expansion displacing natural vegetation and arable lands. Despite limited data availability, this study fills the gap of much needed detailed and updated land cover change information for this biologically important region of Central Africa. These multi-temporal datasets will be a valuable baseline for land use managers in the region OPEN ACCESSRemote Sens. 2015, 7 6684 interested in developing ecologically sustainable land management strategies and measuring the impacts of biodiversity conservation efforts.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tracking Land Use/Land Cover Dynamics in Cloud Prone Areas Using Moderate Resolution Satellite Data: A Case Study in Central Africa

Basnet

Vodacek

2015

Remote Sensing

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“…Desert soil in the region consists of two types: clay/loam and loess/gravel (Babaev, 1994). The clay and loam desert soil includes 'takyrs, ' which are clay surfaces, often found in interdune regions or depressions, that have a hard, cracked crust appearance (Babaev, 1994;Maman et al, 2011;Markofsky et al, 2017). Their high clay content contributes to poor drainage and makes takyrs natural water traps (Maman et al, 2011;Markofsky et al, 2017).…”

Section: Environmental Settingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Agriculture in the Karakum: An archaeobotanical analysis from Togolok 1, southern Turkmenistan (ca. 2300–1700 B.C.)

Billings

Cerasetti²,

Forni³

et al. 2022

Front. Ecol. Evol.

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Southern Central Asia witnessed widespread expansion in urbanism and exchange, between roughly 2200 and 1500 B.C., fostering a new cultural florescence, sometimes referred to as the Greater Khorasan Civilization. Decades of detailed archeological investigation have focused on the development of urban settlements, political systems, and inter-regional exchange within and across the broader region, but little is known about the agricultural systems that supported these cultural changes. In this paper, we present the archaeobotanical results of material recovered from Togolok 1, a proto-urban settlement along the Murghab River alluvial fan located in southeastern Turkmenistan. This macrobotanical assemblage dates to the late 3rd - early 2nd millennia B.C., a time associated with important cultural transformations in southern Central Asia. We demonstrate that people at the site were cultivating and consuming a diverse range of crops including, barley, wheat, legumes, grapes, and possibly plums and apples or pears. This, together with the associated material culture and zooarchaeological evidence, suggest a regionally adapted mixed agropastoral economy. The findings at Togolok 1 contribute to the ongoing discussion of dietary choices, human/landscape interactions, and the adaptation of crops to diverse ecosystems in prehistoric Central Asia.

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“…Oytak farming is an indigenous technique based on water harvesting from naturally occurring takyrs (clay surfaces), which uses furrows to collect water and deposit it on agricultural fields. Oytak farming has a deep history in Khorezm, with written accounts of it being used to grow summer crops stretching back a millennium (Fleskens et al, 2007: 25; Hansen, 2015; Lalymenko, 1999; Maman et al, 2011; Mavlyanova et al, 2005; Nepesov et al, 1999; Paris et al, 2012: 30). It is still used today in some areas, mostly to grow melons, but can also support fruit trees, grapes, and animal fodder, all of which are summer cultivated.…”

Section: The Khorezm Oasismentioning

confidence: 99%

Millet cultivation in Central Asia: A response to Miller et al.

et al. 2017

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In a recent special issue of The Holocene, Miller et al. review the evidence for the spread of millet ( Panicum miliaceum and Setaria italica) across Eurasia. Among their arguments, they contend that millet cultivation came to Eurasian regions with hot, dry summers when irrigation was introduced, as part of a region-wide shift toward agricultural intensification in the first millennium BC. This hypothesis seems to align with the pattern of agricultural change observed in the Khorezm oasis, a Central Asian polity of the first millennium BC and first millennium AD. While we wholeheartedly accept this hypothesis for its explanatory value regarding trends across Eurasia, in this paper we nevertheless suggest that the introduction of millet to Central Asia needs further explication. Specifically, we seek to address the underlying assumption that this introduction was predicated upon centrally organized, state-level land development, increased sedentism, and the rise of Mesopotamian-style social complexity. We describe how millet cultivation in Khorezm was preceded by multi-resource strategies that included the cultivation of summer crops, and emphasize that this earlier history mattered significantly to the evolution of Khorezmian society and agriculture in the first millennium BC. In contrast to the imperial systems of West Asia, in Khorezm the introduction of complex irrigation works supported the expansion and greater stratification of pre-existing agropastoral lifeways, and helped to buttress the rise of nomadic elites within an agrarian zone. We believe the example of Khorezm is important because it helps to explain the emergence of integrated mobile-sedentist societies in the first millennium AD in Central Asia as a result of agricultural change. It also provides cultural and historical context to the spread of millet cultivation in the first millennium BC, suggesting that this phenomenon had significantly different implications for societies across Eurasia.

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A landcover change study of takyr surfaces in Turkmenistan

Cited by 11 publications

References 13 publications

Tracking Land Use/Land Cover Dynamics in Cloud Prone Areas Using Moderate Resolution Satellite Data: A Case Study in Central Africa

Tracking Land Use/Land Cover Dynamics in Cloud Prone Areas Using Moderate Resolution Satellite Data: A Case Study in Central Africa

Agriculture in the Karakum: An archaeobotanical analysis from Togolok 1, southern Turkmenistan (ca. 2300–1700 B.C.)

Millet cultivation in Central Asia: A response to Miller et al.

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