Rise and decline of the fishery industry in the Aydarkul–Arnasay Lake System (Uzbekistan): effects of reservoir management, irrigation farming and climate change on an unstable ecosystem

Groll, Michael; Kulmatov, Rashid; Mullabaev, N; Opp, Christian; Kulmatova, Dilafruz

doi:10.1007/s12665-016-5691-5

Cited by 17 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…As described above, the desertification of the Aral Sea in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan is the most striking, but not the only [41,43], example of the convergence of this tragic set of policies. The elimination of this formerly productive fishery had obvious direct impacts on the livelihoods of the fishers.…”

Section: Water-energy-food Impacts On Fisheries and Aquaculture In Cementioning

confidence: 93%

“…The most striking fact is that until recently, and then only partially, none of the successor regimes sought to address the most important root issues such as the harmful pursuit of expansive hydroelectric generation strategies that dramatically disrupt fish habitat. The cultivation of inappropriate crops like cotton and rice in arid regions also inflicts damage via excessive evaporation, waterlogging and salinization of the soil, erosion, and accumulation of pesticides [41,42].…”

Section: Water-energy-food Impacts On Fisheries and Aquaculture In Cementioning

confidence: 99%

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The Current Status and Future of Central Asia’s Fish and Fisheries: Confronting a Wicked Problem

Graham

Pueppke

Uderbayev

2017

Water

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Central Asia's arid lowland ecosystems are dependent on water that originates in nearby mountains and is carried by rivers to terminal lakes and freshwater seas with no outlets to the ocean. Fish traditionally thrived in these waterways, but they have become increasingly jeopardized by water impoundment and diversion for energy and crop production. Fish capture in the five new Central Asian republics consequently entered a period of long decline, a trend that was accelerated by removal of the centralized controls imposed by the former Soviet Union. Production levels have recovered during the past decade, but only in some countries. A similar trend is evident with aquaculture, which reached its lowest production levels in 2003-2008 but now is partially recovering. In both cases, progress is most evident in water-deficient Uzbekistan. Fish capture in Kazakhstan's Ili River ecosystem, including Kapchagay Reservoir and Lake Balkhash, is now dropping precipitously. Effects on the lake's fisheries have been magnified by the disproportionate rates of disappearance of valuable carp and pike-perch. The interrelationships between water, energy, and food underlie these threats to Central Asia's fish and define a classic "wicked problem" that must be addressed regionally with explicit attention given to fish as important components of the ecosystem. Recent developments, although not all positive, give reason for cautious optimism that the region's fisheries and aquaculture industries can be stabilized.

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Section: Water-energy-food Impacts On Fisheries and Aquaculture In Cementioning

confidence: 93%

Section: Water-energy-food Impacts On Fisheries and Aquaculture In Cementioning

confidence: 99%

The Current Status and Future of Central Asia’s Fish and Fisheries: Confronting a Wicked Problem

Graham

Pueppke

Uderbayev

2017

Water

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“…As there is no provision in the basin water distribution agreement for the discharge of water from the Chardara reservoir to the Aydar depression, Kazakhstan may tend to release the surplus water from the Chardara reservoir to Koksaray rather than the Aydar depression. This will threaten the volume, water salinity, stability and fishery production (Groll et al, 2016) of the Aydar depression in Uzbekistan and intensify the water conflict between Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. In addition, the contribution of some variables (such as livestock water use) has always been very low, possibly because the livestock water consumption only accounts for a small amount of the total runoff.…”

Section: Comparing the Wefe Nexus Of The Sdb And Adb During The Past mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, the observations of the water resources in the mountainous areas of this region have been greatly restricted (Chen et al, 2017), especially after the collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), and some gauging stations were abandoned. It has restricted the implementation of the physics-based and statistical models for the runoff prediction, although remote-sensing technology proved helpful in the estimation of the alpine precipitation and glacier melting (Guo et al, 2017;Pohl et al, 2017) as forcing data. In addition, the weak prediction capacity of incoming water might propagate the uncertainty in the downstream water use, food production, energy production, ecology and their interactions in the WEFE nexus.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A novel causal structure-based framework for comparing a basin-wide water–energy–food–ecology nexus applied to the data-limited Amu Darya and Syr Darya river basins

Shi

Luo

Zheng

et al. 2021

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci.

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Abstract. The previous comparative studies on watersheds were mostly based on the comparison of dispersive characteristics, which lacked systemicity and causality. We proposed a causal structure-based framework for basin comparison based on the Bayesian network (BN) and focus on the basin-scale water–energy–food–ecology (WEFE) nexus. We applied it to the Syr Darya River basin (SDB) and the Amu Darya River basin (ADB), of which poor water management caused the Aral Sea disaster. The causality of the nexus was effectively compared and universality of this framework was discussed. In terms of changes in the nexus, the sensitive factor for the water supplied to the Aral Sea changed from the agricultural development during the Soviet Union period to the disputes in the WEFE nexus after the disintegration. The water–energy contradiction of the SDB is more severe than that of the ADB, partly due to the higher upstream reservoir interception capacity. It further made management of the winter surplus water downstream of the SDB more controversial. Due to this, the water–food–ecology conflict between downstream countries may escalate and turn into a long-term chronic problem. Reducing water inflow to depressions and improving the planting structure prove beneficial to the Aral Sea ecology, and this effect of the SDB is more significant. The construction of reservoirs on the Panj River of the upstream ADB should be cautious to avoid an intense water–energy conflict such as the SDB's. It is also necessary to promote the water-saving drip irrigation and to strengthen the cooperation.

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“…This overexploitation of the water resources led to a sizeable annual water deficit and to the largest man-made ecological disaster, known as the Aral Sea syndrome [6][7][8][9]. As less and less water reached the Aral Sea and the evaporation surpassed the freshwater inflow, the water volume and lake surface decreased, increasing the salinity of the lake's water to toxic levels (from 10.2 g/l in 1947 to 80.0 g/l in 2005 [10]). The extensive use of agrochemicals (fertilizers based on Ammonium, Nitrogen, Phosphor and Potassium, pesticides like DDT, Phosalone, Lindane or Toxaphene [11]) and salts leached from salinized fields in the Aral Sea basin further contributed to the accumulation of hazardous substances in the lake for many decades [6,[12][13][14][15][16][17][18].…”

Section: Introduction and Study Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

Physical and Chemical Characterization of Dust Deposited in the Turan Lowland (Central Asia)

et al. 2019

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The desiccation of the Aral Sea ranks among the largest man-made ecological catastrophes and has become a global symbol for the overexploitation of limited resources and the environmental and socio-economic consequences caused thereby. Formerly the fourth largest inland lake, large parts of the Aral Sea have been transformed into a salty desert – the Aralkum. The exposed lake bed sediments are subject to wind erosion, resulting in white sand and dust storms which have been tracked over several hundred kilometres using remote sensing images. Dust deposition data, on the other hand, requires excessive field work over prolonged periods of time and thus is scarce. But this kind of ground-based monitoring provides valuable insights into the physical and chemical composition of the transported material. The dust transported from the Aralkum contains, among other things, salts, heavy metals and agrochemicals deposited in the Aral Sea over decades. It can contribute to soil salinization, damage crops and technical infrastructure and impair the human health in the region surrounding the Aralkum, making the analysis of the aeolian dust deposition highly relevant. In the study presented here passive dust deposition data from 23 meteorological stations in the Turan lowland have been collected between 2003 and 2012 and analyzed for their grain size, mineralogical, and chemical characterization in order to identify the influence the newly formed Aralkum has on the Central Asian dust dynamic.

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Rise and decline of the fishery industry in the Aydarkul–Arnasay Lake System (Uzbekistan): effects of reservoir management, irrigation farming and climate change on an unstable ecosystem

Cited by 17 publications

References 27 publications

The Current Status and Future of Central Asia’s Fish and Fisheries: Confronting a Wicked Problem

The Current Status and Future of Central Asia’s Fish and Fisheries: Confronting a Wicked Problem

A novel causal structure-based framework for comparing a basin-wide water–energy–food–ecology nexus applied to the data-limited Amu Darya and Syr Darya river basins

Physical and Chemical Characterization of Dust Deposited in the Turan Lowland (Central Asia)

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