Talk:Central Tuvan Basin

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Discussion for: Central Tuvan Basin • View • Links • Related changes

Use this page for verification notes, disputes, and action items. Keep narrative content on the article.

Page scope

Central Tuvan Basin is a Growing Area: a named tract that sits below a growing region. No growing region above it has been drawn yet. It covers the districts of Tuva on the Yenisei and Khemchik side of the Tannu-Ola range, with Kyzyl and Ak-Dovurak. The rest of Tuva, Buryatia and Mongolia lie outside it.

Data verification

Check the main page for the sources behind each statement. Discuss the boundary, the districts the area takes in, and the accessions and news items that belong to it here.

Discussion

Why the area is on the map

M. M. Ondar (2022), a monitoring study by Tuvan State University, says that the large patches of weedy hemp in Tuva lie mainly in the Central Tuvan basin, near settlements, livestock farms, herders' camps and abandoned fields, and prints the agriculture ministry's hectares by district and village for 2021.
Oorzhak and Dubrovsky (2012) describe hemp fallows as one of the native communities of the weedy stage on the abandoned fields of Central Tuva.
Reports of the agriculture ministry and the anti-drug commission, read on Tuva-Online and the official portal, name the districts year by year from 2001 to 2026; the latest republic-wide figure is about 2,460 hectares in 2024.
Earlier: Shreter's sheet of 1946 from Ulug-Khem District, a sheet of 1975 from a fallow in the Erbek valley, and hemp among the crops of the Russian village of Turan around 1910.
No source read describes licensed hemp grown in Tuva.

The name

Центрально-Тувинская котловина (Central Tuvan basin) is the name Ondar (2022) uses for the tract where the large patches lie; Oorzhak and Dubrovsky (2012) write of Central Tuva. Tuva was not used because it is the name of the republic, which has its own page to come.

Growing status

The status is Active. The agriculture ministry, the anti-drug commission and the police report wild-growing hemp in the area every year from 2001 to 2026. Destruction campaigns are not read as an end to its growth; the figures rise and fall from year to year.

How the border is drawn

The border is a proxy built from whole administrative units, with OpenStreetMap relation numbers: Ulug-Khem (190748), Chaa-Khol (190751), Chedi-Khol (190752), Dzun-Khemchik (190559), Barun-Khemchik (190558), Bai-Taiga (190555), Sut-Khol (190576), Tandinsky (190738), Kyzylsky (1547276), Kaa-Khem (190356) and Pii-Khem (190766) kozhuuns, the city of Kyzyl (1551182) and the town of Ak-Dovurak (1550547).
These are the districts north of the Tannu-Ola that the sources name for wild-growing hemp: the ministry's table of 2021 names all eleven and Kyzyl; the police named Ak-Dovurak in 2021. Kaa-Khem and Pii-Khem reach far into the mountains to the east and north, so the shape is much larger than the floor of the basin.
Tes-Khem District is named in the table of 2021 (75 hectares at Bert-Dag) and in the report of 2017 for its experience in destroying the plant, but it lies south of the Tannu-Ola, in the basin of Lake Uvs, and is left out. Todzha, Tere-Khol, Erzin, Ovyur and Mongun-Taiga are named by no source read and are left out.
The union is about 86,500 km², the figure in the infobox. The infobox point (51.47, 93.65) is the centre of the shape.
The border is not drawn from accession or news points.

Accessions

Shreter 2312 (Ulug-Khem District, 1946), classed as feral, is attached to the area.
The sheet MW0062826 (Erbek valley, 1975) has no page on the wiki.

Where the sources disagree

Ondar (2022) records the view that hemp came to Tuva in 1956 with the virgin-land campaign, citing a paper on the history of fallow research. Shreter's sheet from Ulug-Khem District is dated 1946, and Russian settlers at Turan sowed hemp around 1910. The page gives the 1956 view as Ondar's report of it.
Ondar's table is headed as the ministry's data of 1 September 2021, but one column is headed "as of 22.06.2020". The page follows the text of the article and calls the figures 2021.
For 2001 the district figures (13,820 hectares in Dzun-Khemchik, 7,023 in Kaa-Khem, 2,200 in Ulug-Khem) add up to more than the republic total given in the same report (16,737 hectares). The page gives the total and the order of the districts, not the district figures.
Republic-wide totals vary with the year and the counting: at least 30,000 hectares in 2009 (Ivanov) and about 30,000 fifteen years before 2020 (the head of the republic), 29,000 in 2009 (the agriculture ministry), 11,462 in 2011, 5,060 in May 2012, 2,177 to 2,178 in 2020–2021, 2,128 in 2022 and about 2,460 in 2024.

Sources

Botany: Ondar (2022) and Oorzhak and Dubrovsky (2012), read on CyberLeninka.
Government and press reports: Tuva-Online (12 September 2001; 3 August 2004; 19 August 2004; 21 March 2009; 27 June 2012; 16 November 2017; 11 December 2020; 1 July 2021; 23 September 2022; 18 June 2026); the official portal of the Republic of Tuva (24 March 2025); Ivanov (2009); Amitel (30 May 2007).
History: Ryazantsev and Smirnov (2022), who cite V. M. Rodevich's account of the Uryankhai Krai (1910), p. 53.
Herbarium sheets: the Moscow Digital Herbarium records of MW0062827 and MW0062826.

Not used

A report of January 2004 that put 84,000 square kilometres of Tuva under wild hemp, from satellite images: the figure is far above every other count and is probably an error in the report.
A newspaper report of 2005 on the harvest of wild hemp and the local name for its drug.
Shaulo, Zykova and Shmakov (2023), the list of the adventive plants of Tuva, does not list cannabis.
No source read describes Tuvan names or uses of the plant before the 20th century, or hemp grown under the Tuvan People's Republic.