Farmlands, or agricultural landscapes, captures the interest of a number of researchers based at the Department of Human Geography, Stockholm University. On this blog we share information about research findings, activities, events and comments related to our work.

Our interest in farmlands has three roots: farming, landscape and society.
Farming as a practice, including farmers knowledge and labour investments
Landscape as society-nature relations, congealed history, and as space and place
Society as a short form for institutions, gender relations, political economy and scientific relevance

Most Welcome to FarmLandS!

Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Shutting off Crimea's Water Supply?

According to various sources, Crimea had had its water supply cut-off (See this and this). Crimea receives 80% of its water (drinking and irrigation water) from the Northern Crimean Canal which, despite its name, begins in Kherson Oblast on the Ukrainian mainland. The source of the water is the Dnipro river. The Ukrainian authorities appear to have either completely cut off the water or significantly reduced the flow -- sources are somewhat contradictory here. 

Former Prime Minister and current presidential candidate Julia Timoshenko herself said in March that, if Kyiv wants to consider Crimea a part of Ukraine, Kyiv should not shut off their water and electricity, which also comes from the Ukrainian mainland. I wonder then if cutting off water is a small indication that Kyiv sees Crimea as lost. In either case, I'm not sure this is a good idea. 


Anyway, I have produced a quick map of the canals in southern Ukraine based on information from openstreetmap.org, which is an open source mapping site. You can see how Crimea is connected in terms of water to the Ukrainian mainland. Note that, as openstreetsmap relies on volunteers to upload their local maps, the accuracy cannot be guaranteed. However, in my experience with openstreetmap, the accuracy is pretty good, and as good as or better than a lot of other map layers available out there. 


1 comment:

  1. Your information about water supply is really useful. Thanks for sharing this informative article.
    Water suppliers in Chennai

    ReplyDelete