Karakum Desert

The Karakum Desert, also spelled Kara-Kum and Gara-Gum (Garagum, ɡɑɾɑˈɡʊm; Karakumy), is a desert in Central Asia. Its name in Turkic languages means "black sand": "kum" means sand; "kara" is a contraction of garaňky: "dark" or may pre-date that (be a derivation from a likely broader meaning which the word for black bore: gara) in this language family. This refers to the shale-rich sand generally beneath the sand of much of the desert. It occupies about 70 percent, , of Turkmenistan. The population is sparse, with an average of one person per . Rainfall is also rare, ranging from per year. The desert covers roughly seventy percent of Turkmenistan, a long east–west swath. It sits east of the Caspian Sea which has a steep east bank. It adjoins, to the north, the long delta feeding the South Aral Sea further north, another endorheic lake, about higher than the Caspian Sea. The delta is that of the Amu Darya river to the northeast, demarcating the long border with the Kyzylkum Desert of Uzbekistan. The desert is divided into three regions, the elevated northern Trans-Unguz Karakum, the low-lying Central Karakum, and the southeastern Karakum, home to a chain of salt marshes. Since the early 1980s, the relatively small desert extension, the Aralkum, has come to occupy most of the former seabed of the Aral Sea, about . The sea has fluctuated over millennia, but its majority loss during the Soviet Union's existence coincided with great irrigation projects. The North Aral Sea was partly restored, but the South Aral Sea ebbed to a small-size stasis at its river mouth, which itself dried up by 2014, leaving only fragments of the former sea behind, such as Barsakelmes Lake. Within the north-west edge of the desert used to be a river. In the late Pleistocene, the Amu Darya used to flow beyond the Aral Basin to Sarykamysh Lake then to the Caspian Sea. Sedimentation and floods during a pluvial period led to overflow to the Zeravshan River valley to the east.