Uzbekistan low temperature is around −23 °C . Uzbekistan has a rich and diverse natural environment. However, decades of questionable Soviet policies in pursuit of greater cotton production have resulted in a catastrophic scenario with the agricultural industry being the main contributor to the pollution and devastation of both air and water in the country. The Aral Sea used to be the fourth-largest inland sea on Earth, acting as an influencing factor in the air moisture and arid land use. Since the 1960s, the decade when the overuse of the Aral Sea water began, it has shrunk to less than 50%
Science and technology in Uzbekistan field of science and gender, 2013 or closest year Source: "UNESCO Science Report: towards 2030" (2015), Table 14.1 Since 2012, Uzbekistan has ceded its lead to Kazakhstan for the number of published scientific articles, according to Thomson Reuters’ Web of Science, Science Citation Index Expanded. Even taking population into account, Kazakhstan’s output is now much higher than that of its neighbour, with 36 articles per million inhabitants, compared to 11 for Uzbekistan. The majority of scientific papers focus on physics (35%) and chemistry (21%), a pattern also found in Kazakhstan. Since 2006, the rate of international collaboration has remained steady,