In what vegetation belt did the former Soviet Union get it cotton from?

Question

Is it the steppe, forest, desert, or tundra? Please show your reference.

Answer 1

To say the steppes would be accurate.

The Soviets basically drained the Aral sea to irrigate their cotton crops.

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http://www.panna.org/files/conventionalC...

"Uzbekistan: Cotton has left a severe scar on the once-fertile steppes of Uzbekistan, formerly a Soviet state. Early this century, government planners decided that the Soviet Union should be self-sufficient in cotton and began draining the Aral Sea to irrigate millions of acres for cotton production.

Uzbekistan eventually became the source of 90% of the Soviet Union's cotton crop and remains one of the top five cotton producing countries worldwide. But the price of this production has been deadly. Intense pesticide use combined with poor irrigation practices have left fields barren, too contaminated with pesticides and salt to grow anything. Drinking water supplies over vast areas are dangerously polluted. In Kzyl-Orda, the largest city in the Aral region, there has been a frightening increase in childhood illnesses, including blood diseases and birth defects. Pesticide residues in women's breast milk, first measured in 1975, are now detected with increasing frequency. In addition, water diversion has reduced the Aral Sea to 60% its original surface area; some 11,000 square miles once under water are now dry and saline, and villages once dependent on fishing are now stranded miles from the shore. Thanks to conventional cotton production, the Aral Sea, once the world's fourth largest body of fresh water, is too saline and polluted with pesticides to support fish."

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http://unimaps.com/aral-sea/index.html

"Once the world's fourth largest lake, the mighty Aral Sea is now in it's death throws. Starved of it's lifeblood of the waters of the Syr Darya and the Amu Darya rivers, the sea has been shrinking for the last 40 years.

From the 1930s, the former Soviet Union started building large scale diversion canals to irrigate vast cotton fields in a grand plan to make cotton a great export earner. This was achieved, and even today Uzbekistan is still a large exporter of cotton. But the cost in ecological and human terms have been astronomical.

By 1960, 25 to 50 cubic kilometres of river water was being diverted annually for irrigation, and naturally enough, the shoreline began to recede. The mean sea level dropped 20cm (8") per year for 10 years, then the drop rate accelerated to 60cm/year in the 70s, then to almost a metre per year in the 80s.

By 1990, as a result of the continuing water diversion and evaporation, the shrinking Aral divided in two and it's salinity increased from 10 grams per litre to 45. In some parts of the south Aral, salinity tops out at 98 g/litre (2001). Average seawater salinity is 33 g/litre. The once thriving fishing industry has been destroyed along with the fish and most of the flora and fauna. Salt pans and contaminated runoff lakes have appeared, and winters have become harsher and longer, summers hotter and shorter.

Attempts in 1992 and 1997 to build the 14 km long Karateren-Kokaral d**e between the north and the south Aral (the south being abandoned, the north reflooded) was successful for 9 and 12 months until they were both breached by the weight of the water, and the fact that only enough money was available to build an inherently weak sand structure. This same plan, using concrete, has been revived in 2003 by the Kazakh government.

Vozrozdeniya Island -growing larger since 1960, joined the mainland in 2001, and added another cruel ingredient to the Aral disaster. Vozrozdeniya was a Soviet Army research and biological weapons facility until 1992, dealing reportedly in anthrax and other nasties that now have the potential to migrate. Ironically, Vozrozdeniya is Russian for 'rebirth' or 'renaissance'.

The area is now constantly subject to toxic duststorms and desertification, the people of the area have 9 times the world average rate for throat cancer, and infant/maternity mortality is the highest in all of the former Soviet Union's republics. Respiratory complications, tuberculosis and eye diseases are also rising alarmingly."

Answer 2

two areas of the old Soviet Union that grew most of the cotton were Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, and the area would have been steppe and/or desert areas.

http://asia.msu.edu/centralasia/Uzbekist...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_o...

Answer 3

Steppe.