Arabel valley

Arabel Valley is an ancient peneplain, raised to a height of over 4,000 m above sea level during the Alpine folding. The Arabel valley contains hundreds of glaciers. Along the glaciers one can find arcs of moraines marking the former extent of the glaciers. 

Due to glacier retreat since the Little Ice Age, and accelerated glacier melt during the past 40 years due to Climate Change, many glacier lakes have formed and many will form in the not so distant future. 

Arabel valley contains a unique type of glacier for Tien Shan and Pamir mountains – Gregoriev Ice cap. It covers the mountain like a cap, and descents through several valleys. The Ice core drilled through the Gregoriev Ice cap revealed that approximately 8000 years ago, when the climate was much warmer than present, there were likely no glaciers at all in the Arabel valley.

Arabel valley preserved its three-story geological structure. The Arabel valley contains the layers of sediments from the Neogene to modern times. The Neogene, informally Upper Tertiary or Late Tertiary, is a geologic period and system that spans 20.45 million years from the end of the Paleogene Period 23.03 million years ago to the beginning of the present Quaternary Period 2.58 Mya. 

The Arabel valley was elevated in the Oligocene (34-23 Mya) without significant tectonic deformations of its Paleozoic basement and the overlaying Meso-Cenozoic cover, which is a rare occurrence for landforms in Eurasia at large. 

Thus, the Arabel valley is a "geological archive" of the peneplain formation era, which is an interesting period in the Earth's history. Nowadays, Arabel is a popular tourist destination as a representative mountain landscape. Yet, there is a great potential for promoting and conserving the Arabel valley as a unique geological heritage.