Amu Darya

Amu Darya, one of the longest rivers of Central Asia. The Amu Darya was traditionally known to the Western world from Greek and Roman times as the Oxus and was called the Jayḥūn by the Arabs. It allegedly derives its present name from the city of Āmul, which is said to have occupied the site of modern Türkmenabat (formerly Chärjew) in Turkmenistan. As well known as it was in antiquity, the river nevertheless received but little attention in Europe until the reign of Peter I the Great, tsar of Russia. Though the first relatively authentic map of the river was made in 1734, systematic research in the region began only at the end of the 19th century. At the end of the 1920s, a map of the entire Amu Darya basin was published in Tashkent.

River course and basin

The river is formed by the confluence of the Vakhsh and Panj (Pyandzh) rivers (at which point it becomes known as the Amu Darya) and flows west-northwest. In its upper course the Amu Darya forms part of Afghanistan’s northern border with Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan. It then flows across the desert of eastern Turkmenistan and in its lower course forms part of the boundary between Uzbekistan to the northeast and Turkmenistan to the southwest. The Amu Darya is 879 miles (1,415 km) long, but its length is 1,578 miles (2,540 km) if measured from the sources of its headstream, the Panj River, in the Pamirs. In the past the Amu Darya discharged into the Aral Sea, but the diversion of river water for agriculture in the 20th and 21st centuries has contributed to the shrinking of the Aral Sea and ensured that the river no longer reaches its historic terminus.

Not far below the junction of the Panj with the Vakhsh, the Amu Darya is joined by three additional tributaries: from the left (south) by the Qondūz River and from the right (north) by the Kofarnihon (Kafirnigan) and Surkhan rivers. After leaving the highland zone, the river veers to the northwest to cross the arid Turan Plain, where it forms the boundary between the Karakum Desert to the southwest and the Kyzylkum Desert to the northeast. The Amu Darya loses much of its water in this region to irrigation, evaporation, and seepage.

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The Amu Darya’s basin extends for 600 miles (950 km) from north to south and for more than 900 miles (1,450 km) from east to west. It borders the Syr Darya basin to the north, the Tarim Basin to the east, and the Indus and Helmand river basins to the south. Of the basin’s total area of 179,700 square miles (465,500 square km), only half lies within its source region, the mountain ranges of the Pamirs and the Hindu Kush to the east.

Climate and hydrology

Rainfall and temperature in the Amu Darya basin vary mainly according to topography. Mid-latitude westerlies are the main source of precipitation in the river basin. The precipitation falls mainly as snow during the winter and helps feed the glaciers in the source areas of the Amu Darya, at the highest elevations in the Pamirs and the Hindu Kush, where temperatures average below freezing in winter and annual precipitation may exceed 40 inches (1,015 mm). Mean monthly temperatures increase and precipitation decreases at lower elevations. In the lower reaches of the Amu Darya, mean annual precipitation is less than 4 inches (100 mm), with mean July temperatures above 77 °F (25 °C) and mean January temperatures ranging between 32 °F and 50 °F (0 °C and 10 °C).

Hydrologically, therefore, the Amu Darya basin consists of two units: a mountainous zone of nourishment and a lowland zone of depletion. The Amu Darya’s headwaters rise in the mountains of Tajikistan and Afghanistan, among the permanent snows and glaciers of the Pamirs, the Trans-Alay Range to the northwest, and the Hindu Kush, where elevations range from 16,400 to 23,000 feet (5,000 to 7,000 metres). The river’s two principal sources, the Vakhsh River and the Panj River, whose tributaries include the Pamir, follow a westerly course.

The Amu Darya’s flow increases from March to May, when snow melts on the plains and rainfall increases, and the flow is further augmented in summer as the ice and snow of the mountain ranges melt. The flow gradually abates from September to February. During winter, ice forms along the banks of the river’s upper reaches, and its lower sections may freeze completely for more than two months. As the ice floes begin to disperse in February and March, they jam the river downstream, forming a natural dam. These dams sometimes burst catastrophically and cause major flooding. In its upper course the river’s flow is stable; in its lower course it is much less so. The river’s sediment load is high.

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Human impact on the natural environment

Before the 1970s, the Amu Darya branched into a number of tributaries that emptied into the Aral Sea through an extensive delta. However, the Soviet government began diverting massive amounts of water from the river beginning in the 1950s to irrigate cotton and other crops grown in the river’s lower basin. The main section of the Karakum Canal was completed in the 1960s to carry water from the Amu Darya at Kerki, Turkmenistan, westward to Mary and Ashgabat. The diversion of water from the Amu Darya for irrigation decreased the amount of water entering the Aral Sea, which consequently began shrinking. Increased irrigation on the hot, dry floodplains of the Amu Darya and in adjacent regions resulted in evaporation that left salt deposits that make the soil infertile. Surface runoff transported these salts into surface waters and increased the salinity of the Amu Darya. By the first decade of the 21st century, the southern shore of the Aral Sea had receded many miles from the former delta of the Amu Darya. Lakes and wetlands fed by the river in the delta area shrank to only a tiny percentage of their former size.

Junipers and poplars grow down to the river’s edge in the mountain regions, where sweetbrier and blackberries also abound. Willows, buckthorn, poplars, and oleasters predominate at lower elevations. The trees along the river’s lowest reaches once formed an impenetrable tangle at the river’s reed-covered delta, but salt- and drought-resistant plants are now the predominant flora there. The depleted and polluted waters of the lower Amu Darya and its former delta, once rich with wildlife, are now nearly devoid of fish and birds.

Even before its diminished lower reaches were closed to navigation, the Amu Darya carried little traffic because of its unstable riverbed and shoals. A complex system of dams was erected beginning in the mid-20th century, mainly on the lower course, to provide irrigation and to protect the cultivated fields from flood. A giant 984-foot (300-metre) dam and hydroelectric station was constructed on the Vakhsh River at Norak (Nurek), Tajikistan, in the 1970s and ’80s. Construction of another dam on the Vakhsh at Rogun, Tajikistan, was halted when floodwaters ravaged the site in 1993; some work on the project has been done since then.