Talk:Lower Ili

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Discussion for: Lower Ili • View • Links • Related changes

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Page scope

Lower Ili is a Growing Area. It treats the wild hemp of the floodplain on the right bank of the Ili below the Kapchagai dam, as Kasymbekov and Faleev studied it in 2009–2013 and Childibayeva and colleagues recorded it, and the hemp police have destroyed in Balkhash District since 2023.

Data verification

Record source conflicts, dating problems and sources not used here. Keep narrative content on the article.

Discussion

Why the area is on the map

Kasymbekov and Faleev (2014) studied weedy hemp in seven plant communities of the right-bank floodplain of the lower Ili, near the Kerbulak tract, in 2009–2013; it was a constituent, a subdominant or the dominant in them.
Childibayeva and colleagues (2022) record Cannabis ruderalis in a floodplain community on the right bank below the Kapchagai station, near Malaysary.
In 2026 police mowed more than a tonne of wild hemp in Balkhash District, at a place shown them by a man stopped on the Bakanas–Topar road (24KZ).

Growing status

The status is Active: the floodplain study ran from 2009 to 2013, and wild hemp was mown in Balkhash District in 2026. No source says the wild growth has ended. Mowing and destruction are eradication, not an end of growth.

Name and border

"Lower Ili" is the plain name for the reach: Kasymbekov and Faleev write of the lower course of the Ili. None of the sources used here gives the tract a name of its own.
The border is drawn along the main channel of the Ili as mapped in OpenStreetMap (river relation 238679): from the Kapchagai dam (relation 14973975) to the point where the main stream ends and the delta arms divide (about 45.07° N, 75.44° E). It takes 10 km on the right bank, facing downstream, and 500 m round the channel; about 2,300 km² over 239 km of river.
Only the right bank is drawn because both studies name it. The left bank and the delta are left out: none of the sources used here describes hemp there.
The 10 km width is a proxy for the floodplain and the ground next to it; no source gives the width of the stands. The steppe where the hemp of 2026 was gathered is not placed more closely than the Bakanas–Topar road.
The rule that leaves out ground above 4,000 m does not touch the area, which lies far below that height; a drawn area takes no land-cover cut.
The point in the infobox is a point inside the border near its middle; the border is a long strip.

Why it is not part of the Ili Valley

Ili Valley is drawn on the Chinese part of the river, to the frontier. The Kapchagai reservoir, 160 to 180 km long, divides the Kazakh river, and none of the sources used here describes hemp between the reservoir and the frontier. Whether the two reaches belong to one area is not settled by the sources.

Accessions and news inside the border

The news items of 2023 and 2026 from Balkhash District are filed under the area. Their map point is the district seat, Bakanas, on the right bank; the reports give the district (2023) and the Bakanas–Topar road (2026), not the exact places.
The 2023 plantation was sown by a resident of Almaty with what the ministry called the "Indian" variety; it is recorded as news, not as evidence of a local population.
No accession lies inside the border. The herbarium sheet from Enbekshi on the Usek (1985) lies upstream of the reservoir; it is not filed here.

Sources

Kasymbekov and Faleev (2014). The study area and years (p. 282) and the floodplain communities (p. 283).
Childibayeva and colleagues (2022). The effects of the dam and the description of population 3.
24KZ (9 July 2026) and Kazinform (28 August 2023).

Other reports

iNaturalist observations of Cannabis sativa in the Kerbulak (2021) and Balkhash (2026) districts give places only and are not used.