The Kulunda Main Canal () is an

irrigation Irrigation (also referred to as watering of plants) is the practice of applying controlled amounts of water to land to help grow crops, landscape plants, and lawns. Irrigation has been a key aspect of agriculture for over 5,000 years and has bee ...

canal Canals or artificial waterways are waterways or engineered channels built for drainage management (e.g. flood control and irrigation) or for conveyancing water transport vehicles (e.g. water taxi). They carry free, calm surface ...

Altai Krai Altai Krai (, ) is a federal subject of Russia (a krai). It borders, clockwise from the west, Kazakhstan ( East Kazakhstan Region, Abai Region and Pavlodar Region), Novosibirsk and Kemerovo, and the Altai Republic. The krai's administrative ce ...

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.Кулундинский канал. altairegion.ru (Archived from the original)
/ref>Water of Russia - Кулундинский магистральный канал
/ref> The canal was built to bring water to the

Kulunda Steppe The Kulunda Steppe or Kulunda Plain (, , ''Qūlyndy dalasy'') is an alluvial plain in Russia and Kazakhstan. It is an important agricultural region in Western Siberia. Geography The steppe is located between the Ob River, Ob and Irtysh rivers in ...

, a region periodically subjected to severe droughts.

Topography

The canal begins close to

Kamen-na-Obi Kamen-na-Obi (), known until 1933 as Kamen (), is a town in Altai Krai, Russia, located on the left bank of the Ob River northwest of Barnaul, the administrative center of the krai. As of the 2010 Census, its population was 43,888. Hist ...

and runs first southwards; shortly thereafter it heads in a southeast direction then it bends and runs in a roughly southwest direction. It passes through the Kamensky, Tyumentsevsky, Bayevsky, Blagoveshchensky and Rodinsky districts. The total length of the canal is with a capacity of and two pumping stations. The main pumping station is in Kamen-na-Obi and it pumps the water of the Ob river at an elevation of to the edge of the

Ob Plateau The Ob Plateau (, ''Priobskoye Plato''), is one of the great plateaus of Siberia. Administratively it falls within Altai Krai and Novosibirsk Oblast, Siberian Federal District, Russia. The plateau is named after the Ob River and is part of its ba ...

at an elevation of . The secondary one is further south in Klyuchi village, Tyumentsevsky District. The canal ends at the Kuchuk river close to

Novotroitsk Novotroitsk () is a types of inhabited localities in Russia, town in Orenburg Oblast, Russia, located on the right bank of and along the Ural River, from Orenburg, on the Kazakhstan–Russia border, border with Kazakhstan. In the east Novotroi ...

. A extension reaching Zlatopol was projected, but never carried out.

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Novotroitsk 2024-06-23-23 59 Sentinel-2 L2A

History

Construction of the canal began in August 1973, at the time of the

USSR The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

. The project had been put forward at the beginning of the decade and aimed to irrigate in the area of Novotroitsk, as well as Zlatopol, located further west near the

Kazakhstan–Russia border The Kazakhstan–Russia border is the international border between the Kazakhstan, Republic of Kazakhstan and the Russia, Russian Federation. It is the longest continuous international border in the world and the second longest by total length, ...

. Besides, it was expected that the canal would also benefit of agricultural fields and around of pastureland in the areas located by the eastern section of the canal.

Current situation

In present times the surfaces watered by the canal have diminished. The canal has become silted in some places with water overflowing its banks in heavy rain, leading to the flooding of inhabited areas. In other stretches its waters are absorbed by the sandy soil, owing to the deterioration of the original watertight coating. The canal crosses areas with various types of soil, including clayey, sandy, loamy, and

solonetz Solonetz (, rus, Солоне́ц, p=səlɐˈnʲɛts) is a Reference Soil Group of the World Reference Base for Soil Resources (WRB). They have, within the upper 100 cm of the soil profile, a so-called "natric horizon" ("natrium" is the Lati ...

soils. A length totaling approximately running through sandy soil sectors was planned to be provided with an anti-filtration

polyethylene Polyethylene or polythene (abbreviated PE; IUPAC name polyethene or poly(methylene)) is the most commonly produced plastic. It is a polymer, primarily used for packaging (plastic bags, plastic films, geomembranes and containers including bott ...

coating over a thick protective layer of soil. But in the end only a length of canal sections were treated against filtration and the coating has a lifetime of about 30 years, which already ran out by the turn of the millennium. Plans for the maintenance and overhaul of the canal have been put forward, but so far they have not been implemented.Humanitarian sciences in Siberia — Projects of agrarian development of Kulunda steppe in the 1930s
/ref>

Ecological impact

The Kulunda Main Canal runs roughly in a NE/SW direction only to the east of lake Gorkoye, a long salt lake. The building of the canal disrupted the Gorkoye ecosystem by increasing the salinity of the lake and some fish species died out.Тюменцевский район
/ref>

References

External links

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International scientific and practical conference "AgroSMART - Smart solutions for agriculture" (AgroSMART 2018)The current state of the Kulunda Main Canal. Altai State Agrarian University, 656049 Barnaul
(in Russian) {{Authority control Ob Plateau Canals in Russia Canals opened in 1983 Irrigation canals