Soil development along two altitudinal transects from north-west to south-east of the Issyk-Kul Lake (Northern and Central Tjan-Šan, Kazakhstan-Kyrgyzstan)

In this work two altitudinal sequences, located in the northern and central mountain chain of Tjan-Šan, have been compared. The described areas are partially in Kazakhstan and partially in Kyrgyzstan. The main purpose of the surveys was to study the relations among soils, geomorphology, lithology and vegetation cover, to identify modern and past soil formation processes. For this reason, 12 soil sites among the most representative pedoenvironments recognized have been described, analysed and interpreted. The survey showed that, even at very high elevations, pedological processes, similar to those responsible for the development of steppe chernozems, proved to be active. This is probably due also to the presence of aeolian silt covers, deposited in recent and in the past. Moreover, even over the most acidic substrata and under the coniferous forest, we noticed the weakness of podzolization features. The process is retarded by abundance of bases within the parent material, and by their abundant release from vegetation.