The Death of the Aral Sea
Source: NASA Earth Observatory
In the slide set on water footprints we used last session, there was a photo of fishing boats stranded in a desert, at the bottom of what was once a large saline lake, the Aral Sea. Similar to the Great Salt Lake in Utah or the Dead Sea, the Aral sea filled the lowest part of an interior basin with not outlets to the world ocean, but it was far less salty than those two inland seas because it received a much larger annual input of fresh water. Prior to the mid 1970s, it was an important supplier of fish to nearby areas and to the larger Soviet Union. As the lake has dried, the remaining water has become more saline, and many fish species that once flourished have been extinguished, unable to survive in the Aral Sea's remaining and increasingly briny waters.
During the Soviet era there was a huge push to increase crop production in the Central Asian republics, and in particular the production of cotton. The streams flowing from the Hindu Kush mountain range far to the south and east, in particular the exotic rivers the Amy Darya and the Syr Darya, were diverted to irrigate cotton fields.Most of that water has been lost to evapotranspiration, and the rivers now bring virtually no additional fresh water into the Aral Sea. The pictures above show the desiccation of the Sea, almost entirely due to diversion of streams feeding into it. The USGS has a good website describing the desiccation along with some additional photos.
Source: Wordpress.com
