Projective Sandscapes Manipulation of Desertifying Mechanisms
Aral Sea, Nukus, Uzbekistan
Landscape Urbanism, Architectural Association School of Architecture
Radical Cartography - A0 Maps
1.Atlas
Ground surface is constantly under incessant geological alteration.The Atlas of Guilty Territories is an attempt at unveiling ongoing over-exploiting activities which are engendering high-risk terrains. These processes are provoking arid lands where environmental productivity and liveable condition are significantly compromised. As designers we endeavour to negotiate and choreograph relevant geomorphological formations originated from conflicting systems in the manipulation of projective sandscapes.The capacity of cartography to unveil hidden connections enable us to delve into the argument and the specificity of the territory we are exploring. It allows us to make manifest concealed relationships through historical traditional maps, but also to adopt different perspectives which help us conveying changes that ground surface undergoes ceaselessly.It is important to emphasize that every maps distortions and orientations included in this booklet have been carefully chosen with the intention of better understand and explain their territorial qualities. In particular, the world projection we decided to use for this Atlas help us to show the unknown sand movement in between the Aralkum Desert and Europe, and therefore highlight the veiled relevance these distant territories have on each other’s.Along with the analysis of exploited territories, we have mapped down a series of selected sites across Europe, with the aim of envisage where territorial conflicts would arise in the near future. In sites of exploiting activities, we begun to deep the knowledge about territorial policies over European deserts.Furthermore, we have explored the European legacy on remote territories and the capacity of the Landscape Convention of dealing with the concept of possible responsibilities on adjoining territories. This formed the basis of our site selection of an extreme distant landscape.
2. Territorial Formation
Aralkum is a new terrestrial surface.
This drawing shows the territorial formation of the desert which have been mould from the European production demand for cotton, satisfied by a Soviet massive plan of diversion of two rivers into the steppe of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan during the 60s. What used to be a seabed is now a saline field covered with wind-blown sand.
The 1991 Soviet transference of power meant the inheritance of unwise water use practices that are causing a spreading desertification and the emergence of threatening shifting sand dunes shifting over the territory. As indexed through thicker black lines within the drawing, this resulted in massive migrations from rural to urban (circles) and urban to abroad, especially due to powerful sand storms that destroy rural agricultural fields, the principal production resource of sustainment for the population. Even though various national and international organizations started to focus on the Aral Sea issue, trying to implement planting systems for defence, Karaburan storms, a katabic strong wind, blows Aralkum salty polluted sands miles away.
The area we chose to study in detail is the Aralkum Desert and the city of Nukus, the capital of the Republic of Karakalkpastan, where the construction of the New Silk Road (Eurasian Land Bridge) is taking place, connecting soon China to Europe.
Moreover, from research to our understating of the current environmental condition, we elaborated our own reading of wind dynamic affecting the site considered.
3.Cartography of Sand Storm
In Central Asia, where the sand and dust storms are common phenomena due to the presence of vast areas of sandy and clayey deserts, scarcity of vegetation coverage and strong winds, large-scale anthropogenic changes lead to the formation of new dust-raising sites1.
Formerly, the Aral had acted as a giant climate buffer, and in the course of its shrinkage summers got hotter and controversially winters colder.
What is left behind the Aral Sea depletion is a salty flat territory of nearly 200 square miles (300 square kilometres) wide, infused with pesticides from decades of agricultural run-off. The average number of days with strong winds in most of the Aral Sea region is about 15 days, in some parts it is up to 25-29 days2. The arid climatic conditions and the open surface with fine grains sizes are favourable for the development of regular storms3 which cyclically cause the dispersion of hundreds of tons of sand and salt.
Sandstorms use to occur ten times per year, feeding the emergent new desert and threatening the current insufficient windbreaks which constitute the forest and endured oasis funded by international organizations.
Satellite pictures from NASA Laboratory taken in 2003 started to unveil the physical extent of these storms, indicating evidently the deflation flats of the desiccated sea-floor as the main source. The region is under the influence of the Siberian anticyclone for long times during the year, especially in winter. Thus, northerly winds prevail in January and February. During spring and summer, the wind regime can change: sometimes westerly and southwesterly winds can bring moister air masses4.
Nowadays, many villages are abandoned due to the intolerable sand accumulation (see picture on the left) which are provoking significant health impacts, especially in the Eastern areas. The Karaburan storms, a katabic strong wind, blows Aralkum salty polluted sands to European territories reaching thousand miles away.
4. Social Formation
Nukus, the capital of the Karakalpakistan Autonomous Republic, is located in the down steam Amu Darya River and about 230 km south of the town Muynaq,the former
shoreline of the Aral Sea. The city, which is a center for the growing of cotton, was built in 1932 and in-between three deserts, the Karakum (black sands) atthe South, the Kyzylkum rocky desert (red sands) to its East and the Ustyurt plateau at West. Recently, the fourth new made desert Aralkum (formed by white sands, as a result of the drying up of the salty sea) joined them in the North side.
The system of agriculture production inherited by the Soviet Union forced the state owned mono-cotton production to be practiced as collective farmlands, a system that is proving to be clumsily managed and suffering from the government obstinacy to not update cultivation methodologies, crops rotation and restructure the production chain.
Since 1991, the reform of the agricultural sector has taken place and has been characterized by state-induced farm restructuring, land transfer from collective to individual use, state ownership of land, and area-based state targets for cotton at fixed prices1. Being planned according to the developed irrigation network, the boundaries of the field parcels in the cadastral maps have not been changed over last 20 years2.
Social Formation herein aimed at charting these productive activities in form of network to illustrate a proper understanding and knowledge for further
developments of project.
5. Geomorphology
This projective cartography of geomorphology is from the knowledge of generic sand dune morphology and collective results of simulation of existing oasis, wind corridor, and sand dune.
Based on existing urban condition, the shift sand dune will cover part of the city from 2025 and will penetrate into the deeper part of it in 2065. The morphology and behaviour of the sand dune would also change depending on the topography it covered. The density, form, height, sloping angle of dune would change periodically on time.
This drawing of sediments movement provokes the question of how we could negotiate the drifting geomorphology of dunes simultaneously with the aim of envisioning a future for the city deepening the knowledge on desertification process occurring across it.
