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Global warming is causing glaciers in the Caucasus Mountains and around the world to lose mass at an accelerated pace. As a result of this rapid retreat, significant parts of the glacierized surface area can be covered with debris deposits, often making them indistinguishable from the surrounding land surface by optical remote-sensing systems. Here, we present the DebCovG-carto toolbox to delineate debris-covered and debris-free glacier surfaces from non-glacierized regions. The algorithm uses synthetic aperture radar-derived coherence images and the normalized difference snow index applied to optical satellite data. Validating the remotely-sensed boundaries of Ushba and Chalaati glaciers using field GPS data demonstrates that the use of pairs of Sentinel-1 images (2019) from identical ascending and descending orbits can substantially improve debris-covered glacier surface detection. The DebCovG-carto toolbox leverages multiple orbits to automate the mapping of debris-covered glacier surfaces. This new automatic method offers the possibility of quickly correcting glacier mapping errors caused by the presence of debris and makes automatic mapping of glacierized surfaces considerably faster than the use of other subjective methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Steppe and forest-steppe areas of the Povolzhye area (Caucasus and central Asia) bear much interest for the Neolithic in connection with the productive economy of the region at the time. Recent data have allowed correction of the region's chronology. A number of 14C dates denote the existence of the Neolithic in this territory as early as the 5th to 6th millennium BP. However, some questions are still under debate and require further data to clarify. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shrines fill the Eurasian land mass. They can be found from Turkey in the west to China in the east, from the Arctic Circle in the north to Afghanistan in the south. Between town and country, they can consist of full-scale architectural complexes, or they may compose no more than an open field, a pile of stones, a tree, or a small mausoleum. They have been at the centers and peripheries of almost every major religious tradition of the region: Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism. Yet in the formerly socialist world, these places of pilgrimage have something even more in common: they were often cast as the last bastions of religious observance when churches, mosques, temples, and synagogues were sent crashing to the ground in rapid succession across the twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents an exploration into the perceptions of the Caucuses and the Circassian people within the political imagination of Great Britain during the early 19th century. Discussion is given highlighting the opposing idealized views of the Circassians by the Russians and the British, both projecting their political ideals onto the social structures of the region. The diplomatic work and ethnographic observations of the British ambassadors J. A. Longworth and James Stanislaus Bell in the 1830s are particularly discussed relating to their championing of liberalism.