Images show Aral Sea vanishing before our eyes
Meteorologist
Thursday, December 13, 2018, 4:26 PM - Canada is home to five of the top ten largest lakes in the world, but that wasn't always the case.
Once the fourth-largest lake in the world, the Aral Sea has been slowly vanishing for the past 50 years thanks to changing changing land use, and it's now considered one of the world's worst environmental disasters. The body of water, which once spanned 68,000 km2 was subject to water diversion projects undertaken by the Soviet Union, beginning in the 1960s. With the water feeding the lake cut off, the basin began to shrink, dropping to just 10 per cent of its former size by 1997. By 2014, the eastern basin of the Aral had completely dried up, becoming a region now known as Aralkum Desert.
(See also: Why every day should be World Water Day)
Conservation efforts have helped to replenish one section of the basin, now known as the North Aral Sea. A dam project completed by Kazakhstan in 2005 has led to some increase in the water levels of the basin, and helped to restore some of the devastated fishing industry in the region. Unfortunately, the dam has also further limited flow into the South Aral, as shown in the video above.
Source: NASA Earth Observatory |
