Kherson, south of Berishan

Still cleaning up the house after Christmas, so again its only one section today:

I may or may not have mentioned this, but part of the process is guessing what the map would have looked like in 1650, hundreds of years ago.  Thus, when I see something odd on the map, I feel inclined to investigate to see exactly what it is.

Look at this bit from GoogleEarth.  That's clearly a dry lake, adjacent to the Ukrainian town of Ahaimany; the link is to the Ukrainian wikipedia, so you'll have to translate.  There's no link on English wikipedia.  The site calls the place "Ahaiman;" Russian wikipedia calls it "Agaiman."  My 1952 encyclopedia calls it "Agayman" ... and this last is in keeping with the kind of spelling used in Turkey.  Thus, although the name's funny (a gay man), I have lots of funny foreign names that sound odd in English.

You'll notice the lake is not mentioned ... but I did a little searching and found this, a "Syntaxonomy of steppe depression vegetation of Ukraine."  In this document, the village of Ahaimany is mentioned by name, with the depression being called "Ahaimansky."  On GoogleEarth, the depression appears about 26 ft. deep compared to the surrounding flatland.  It's 8.37 miles from top to bottom.

Quote:

"Steppe depressions (pody in Ukrainian) are large closed depressions, up to 16,000 ha in area, elliptical or round in shape with gentle slopes and flat bottoms, periodically flooded by meltwater and characterised by Planosol soils and peculiar ephemeral mesic to wet grassland phytocenoses.  These depressions accumulate natural runoff in poorly drained steppe plains within the periglacial area of the Quatenary glaciation.

"Depressions in lowland steppes are represented by two structural and genetic forms – steppe saucers and pody. Steppe saucers are small, with depth up to 0.5 m and diameter 2–150 (up to 600) m ... Depressions with a depth of 3–5 (sometimes 10– 15) m and a total area of more than 1 ha (up to 16,000 ha), with erosive slopes, catchment basins and flat bottoms represent the second group of depressions – pody. In the interfluve of the Dnieper and Molochna rivers, small depressions with a diameter of up to 1000 m and a depth of about 0.5–3 m are common. Most of depressions are plowed due to their easy accessibility."

Winding the clock back 350 years, with less intensified farming, I feel certain that these basins would likely have been seasonally filled with water in the early spring, only to dry out again by fall.  So I'm introducing a change in the lake graphic, making the lake boundary 1/2 pixel wide instead of 1, and adjusting the fill to 40% transparency.  This indicates there's a "lake" there that won't always be a lake.  We have many such places in Alberta.

Again, it offers a slight opportunity for adventure.  Several wet years cause the basin to remain partly full through the dry season, enabling large frogs to begin using it to lay eggs.  Without any competitors, the village of Agayman is assaulted for two seasons by dozens of large frogs, eating children, destroying crops, threatening the village itself.  The party must prepare for the third season emergence, slaughter all the frogs they can find, then search for a means to ensure there won't be another infestation the year after that.

50, 80, 130 frogs, anyone?

Here's the adjusted map: