Thread by @ChrisO_wiki

1/ A year after the destruction of Ukraine's Kakhovka Dam, vegetation cover in formerly irrigated parts of the southern Kherson region and Crimea has fallen by 85% or more. It's a sign that the former breadbasket region is reverting rapidly to its previous semi-desert state. ⬇️

2/ Recent data from NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer instrument on the Terra and Aqua satellites shows drastic changes in the region's Vegetation Condition Index. It currently shows vegetation cover across much of the region to be at 15-25% of historical trends.

3/ The area where vegetation cover has fallen the most in both Crimea and the southern Kherson region closely matches the area formerly irrigated by the North Crimean Canal and the Kakhovka Canal on the mainland. The Kakhovka Dam's destruction cut both canals off from the Dnipro.

4/ In total, some 12,000 km of canals were fed by the reservoir on both sides of the Dnipro. The Kakhovka Canal alone irrigated 220,000 hectares of land and enabled the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of people in the agricultural sector and heavy industries.

5/ Before the dam and the canals were built, the Azov region was very arid. The average annual rainfall is 350 mm while evaporation amounts to 1000-1100 mm. Two Russian attempts to invade Crimea via the Azov region failed in 1687 and 1689 because there was nothing to drink.

6/ Northern Crimea was even worse for agriculture and human habitation. It was a hot, arid, dusty plain with frequent droughts, dust storms and crop failures. The native Crimean Tatars scraped a living with subsistence agriculture and the production of crafts, rather than crops.

7/ As an English traveller wrote in 1855, Crimea's interior in the summer was a place "of melancholy desolation. The grasses and flowers are then dust and ashes; the surface is a perfect desert; and can only support a few herbs and scrubby bushes..." Hunger was frequent.

8/ Until the late 1940s, the Russians barely even bothered with the interior of Crimea, preferring to settle instead on the Mediterranean-to-subtropical coast. In contrast to "European" Crimea on the coast, "Asiatic" inland Crimea was desperately poor and neglected.

9/ The big problem was the lack of water. Soviet agronomists found that it took 500 tons of water to grow a single ton of wheat in the region, but there are few rivers in Crimea or the southern Kherson oblast. As Soviet official Leonid Melnikov wrote in 1950:

10/ "The fertile soils of these regions do not always properly reward the labours of the collective farmers... Dry winds and black dust storms frequently devastate the fields and destroy the fruits of the labour of many thousands of people ...

11/ "In 60 years, at the junction of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, there were 20 drought-stricken years in the southern districts of the Ukraine ... Drought, occurring every three or four years, frequently assumed the proportions of a calamity."

12/ The construction of the Kakhovka Dam and the canal network enabled industrial agriculture for the first time. Many circular fields watered on the centre-pivot irrigation principle can be seen clearly in satellite images, built along the lines of the canals.

13/ Despite the loss of the dam, demands on the water supply have actually increased since 2022 due to Russia's military presence. Civilian settlements have had their water supplies cut off for days at a time to ensure that the military receives enough water.

14/ Within a couple of weeks of the dam's destruction on 9 June 2023, NASA satellites recorded the North Crimean Canal drying up. It provided 85% of Crimea's water. The Russians are now reportedly trying to top it up with water from Crimea's few small reservoirs and from wells.

15/ The peninsula has 15 reservoirs to capture rainwater and snowmelt, with a combined volume of about 250 million cubic meters. However, half of them have capacities of under 10 million cubic meters, and they were never intended to replace the canal water.

16/ Crimea had an extremely dry winter in 2023-24, with only 10-50% of the normal precipitation overall and only 17% of the normal mountain precipitation. Rivers have dried up and reservoirs are already severely depleted, as seen here in the case of the Bilohirs'ke reservoir.

17/ The outcome is that Crimea and the Azov region seem to be reverting rapidly to their pre-Soviet condition as near-desert areas. Much agriculture, and even human habitation, may no longer be possible. As many as 500,000 people have been predicted to be forced to leave.

18/ The region's vegetation had already been stressed badly by the North Crimean Canal being cut off by the Ukrainians between 2014 and 2022 (it was reopened briefly after the 2022 invasion). The difference in vegetation cover between July 2013 and July 2024 is stark.

19/ One farmer interviewed by Radio Free Europe has noted that even drought-resistant crops are now dying out. Farmers have had to write off their crops. Little is now growing:

20/ "Everything has dried up, there were few strawberries this year, and the wild berry glades have burned out from the heat, there are stone fruits, but they are small.

21/ "Because of the heat and drought, there is no green grass, only dry grass, and milk yields have dropped sharply. There will be no hayfields in such conditions, which means that they will have to buy hay at high prices, if it is available at all.

22/ "In such circumstances, villagers are beginning to reduce the number of livestock and abandon vegetable gardens. In many villages, the water pressure in the system is already low, as water consumption is in excess of the norm.

23/ "I think we will soon start to see water cut-offs, and there will be a big problem with water in Crimea this summer." /end

Sources:
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🔹earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/151622/…
jamestown.org/program/water-…
ukrinform.net/rubric-society…
unn.ua/en/news/crimea…
unn.ua/en/news/crimea…
unn.ua/en/news/even-d…
24tv.ua/ru/zasuha-v-kr…
crimea.ria.ru/20240504/v-kry…
crimea.ria.ru/20240521/v-kry…

🔹glam1.gsfc.nasa.gov

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