East View Cartographic is proud to announce the publication of the first in a series of books called Terrain Analysis of Afghanistan, which will eventually be followed by similar geographic analysis books for additional countries such as Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, China, and others. The contents of this 390 page volume are derived from detailed ground level survey work of Afghanistan performed during the 1980’s by the Soviet military mapping agency VTU (Military-Topographic Directorate).
Published in English for the first time, this book provides sub-province local terrain analysis with detailed reports for 128 local regions, each of which corresponds to a specific region of Afghanistan defined by Soviet/Russian topographic maps at 1:200,000 scale. An individual map quadrangle covers an area measuring approximately 74 by 92 kilometers (40 minutes lat. by 60 minutes long.), with the name of each area based on the
English translation of the largest population center appearing on the map. The narrative information contained in this volume overwhelmingly comes from terrain analysis studies appearing on the verso side of the above-mentioned maps.
As it is anticipated that many users of these volumes will have more intensive geospatial requirements, the appendix contains Russian and American topographic map indices at various scales, all of which are available in paper or digital formats. The overview copy of the Russian 200k topographic map sheet shows the location by page number of the chapter coverage for the individual map sheets. Additionally, the individual 200k map sheets contain thousands of geographic place names translated into English in accordance with the U.S. Board on Geographic Names (BGN) standards. Multi-color soil maps are also provided for each region indicating by color if the local soil condition is clay, sand, loam, stone, boulder or other.
Given the total lack of this type of information from other sources, this book represents an invaluable reference source for the many companies, governmental agencies, NGO’s, individuals and others who will be involved in helping the government of Hamid Karzai in the rebuilding of Afghanistan.
