Kayrakkum Reservoir (Tajik: Обанбори Қайроққум; Russian: Кайраккумское водохранилище), also spelled variously as Qayroqqum, Qayraqqum, Kayrakum or Kairakum, is a large artificial lake in Ghafurov District of Sughd Province, in northwestern Tajikistan.
At the other end, the head of the reservoir is silted up for a distance of 10–15 km (6.2–9.3 mi), a consequence of the construction of the Toktogul hydroelectric power station upstream on the Naryn River in Kyrgyzstan.
[4] Silted areas are characterised by multiple small lakes and shallows, with tugay vegetation of tamarisk, oleaster, poplar thickets and reed beds, supporting many thousands of wintering waterfowl, waders and birds of prey.
[7] A 1,150 km2 (440 sq mi) tract of land encompassing the reservoir and its surrounds has been identified as an Important Bird Area (IBA) by BirdLife International because it supports significant numbers of the populations of various bird species, either as residents, or as overwintering, breeding or passage migrants.
These include mallards, pygmy cormorants, saker falcons, cinereous vultures, great bustards, houbara bustards, common cranes, pale-backed pigeons, pallid scops-owls, Egyptian nightjars, European rollers, white-winged woodpeckers, great tits, desert larks, streaked scrub-warblers, Sykes's warblers, Asian desert warblers, saxaul sparrows and desert finches.