Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article.The shallow Aral Sea was once the world’s fourth largest body of inland water. Many of those islands subsequently became joined to the mainland with the shrinking size of the sea. The water level had dropped to 125 feet (36 metres) above sea level, and the water volume was reduced by three-fourths of what it had been in 1960. The water level had dropped to 125 feet (36 metres) above sea level, and the water volume was reduced by three-fourths of what it had been in 1960. Almost no water from the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya ever reached the Aral Sea anymore.
Croplands had to be flushed with larger and larger volumes of river water. Vozrozhdeniye, translated as “renaissance” or “rebirth” island, was the home of biological …
Get 30% your subscription today. The Aral Sea has been slowly disappearing ever since.An Argon reconnaissance satellite acquired this image of the Aral Sea on August 22, 1964, before the drop in water levels altered the shoreline and devastated surrounding communities.
By 2001, the southern connection had been severed, and the shallower eastern part retreated rapidly over the next several years. The sequence of images shows the dramatic changes to the Aral Sea between 1973 and 2000. Vozrozhdeniye, translated as “renaissance” or “rebirth” island, was the home of biological weapons lab in 1966. The governments of the states surrounding the Aral Sea tried to institute policies to encourage less water-intensive agricultural practices in the regions south and east of the lake, thus freeing more of the waters of the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya to flow into the lake and to stabilize its water level. A satellite image of the northern portion of the Aral Sea in 1977, when it was largely still its original size.A satellite image of the northern portion of the Aral Sea in 2000; the lighter-coloured areas represent sections of the seabed that have been exposed since 1960.A satellite image of the Aral Sea in 2010. The rate of precipitation—an annual average of 4 inches (100 mm) in all, occurring mainly in the spring and autumn—is only a tiny fraction of the lake’s traditional rate of evaporation. Some estimates suggest that the lake is just 10 percent of its original size.iPad users can view more images of the Aral Sea by downloading the free Though the Aral Sea has been steadily shrinking over the past decade, this true-color image from August 2010 shows slight growth in the southern sea as water flowed into it from the Amu Darya for the first time since 2008. The Aral Sea derived its name from the Kyrgyz word Aral-denghiz, “Sea of Islands”—an apt designation, as there were more than 1,000 islands of a size of 2.5 acres (1 hectare) or more strewn across its waters. The loss of the moderating influence of the Aral Sea made winters colder and summers hotter and drier.Fifty years after its water sources were diverted, the Aral Sea is virtually gone. The dams, canals, and other water works were built in order to transform the desert into agricultural fields for cotton and other crops. Virtually any topic for the virtual learner.
The increasingly salty water became polluted with fertilizer and pesticides. Northwesterly winds prevail in autumn and winter, and westerly and southwesterly winds are common in spring and summer.Until the 1960s the most-significant factors affecting the water balance of the Aral Sea were the rates of river inflow and water loss through evaporation, which formerly took out each year about the same amount of water that the rivers brought in.
Now barely 10% of it is left.
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Once part of the fourth-largest lake in the world, the eastern lobe of the southern Aral has dried up for the first time in modern history. As the lake dried up, fisheries and the communities that depended on them collapsed.