Morphological diversity and regionalisation of kites in the Middle East and Central Asia

In the last few years, the number of inventoried kites has increased fivefold, and the known distribution zone has been greatly extended across the Near East, Arabia, the Caucasus and Central Asia. High‐resolution satellite images provide substantial amounts of data that can be subjected to geomatics analysis. The resulting spatial data is used to identify regional differences. We present here a study of these kite structures at the global, regional and local scales, carried out by means of GIS. The recognition of a number of morphological characteristics, without any subjective attribute, leads to a geographically referenced inventory that clearly distinguishes five main regions. This paper suggests a method to define the morphology of the kites, which will be further augmented with cross‐variables including the surrounding environment, settlement distribution, animal exploitation and ethology, providing a base for future studies.