Cold Winter Deserts of Turan

Deserts are usually imagined hot, but across the Turan lowlands winters plunge far below freezing while summers scorch. The fourteen protected areas of this transnational World Heritage Site, inscribed in 2023, stretch more than 1,500 kilometres between the Caspian Sea and Central Asia's high mountains, sampling the region's full spectrum of desert ecosystems. Their plants and animals have evolved remarkable adaptations to the double extreme, and Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan share stewardship of the series.