Eco-economic assessment of the Syr Darya basin with the usage of geoinformation technologies

The article presents the possible ways of using geoinformation technologies for environmental management in the Syr Darya basin (one of the most important Central Asian river). The ecological and economic role of this river increased when the North Aral Sea was split from the Big Aral one by the Kokaral dam. It is necessary to regulate water consumption by all the countries of the basin - Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan republics. Based on the statistics data of CAWater-IS (the “Regional Information System on the Use of Water and Land Resources in the Aral Sea Basin”) some thematic layers for the geoinformation system of the Syr Darya basin have been developed. Attributive information contains data about the structure of land use in different administrative units of the republics of the basin - the share and areas of irrigated land, the amounts of water abstraction for various needs, landscape differentiation into types and subtypes of landscapes, the area of saline lands and the degree of salinity, areas under different crops and etc. The main consumer of water in the basin above the Shar Darya reservoir is Uzbekistan (up to 80 %), the largest areas of saline lands are located in Kazakhstan, and the main cultivated crops are cotton and cereals.