ARAL SEA

Hundreds of years ago, the northwestern part of Uzbekistan and southern Kazakhstan were
covered by a massive inland sea. When the waters receded, they left a broad plain of highly
saline soil. One of the remnants of the ancient sea was the Aral Sea.
The Aral is an inland salt-water sea with no outlet. It is fed by two rivers, the Amu Darya
and Syr Darya. The fresh water from these two rivers held the Aral's water and salt levels
in perfect balance
In 1960, the Aral Sea had been the world's fourth-largest lake, with an area of
approximately 68,000 square kilometres (26,000 sq mi) and a volume of 1,100 cubic
kilometres (260 cu mi);

IMPORTANCE

Water from these two rivers has been used by settlements and civilizations in and around
the region for a variety of life-sustaining purposes.

The Sea has also been used for navigation, transportation and for commercial fishing
purposes.

The deltas of the Amudarya and the Syrdarya Rivers supported flora and fauna of
commercial value

THE MISTAKE

In the early 1960s, the Soviet government had been examinging the two rivers that fed the Aral
Sea, the Amu Darya in the south and the Syr Darya in the northeast. They finally came up with
an idea.

The Soviet scheme was based on the construction of a series of dams on the two rivers to create
reservoirs from which 40.000 km of canals would eventually be dug to divert water to the fields.
The fields were partially in the desert areas. This was part of the Soviet plan for cotton, or "white
gold", to become a major export. This did eventually end up becoming the case, and today
Uzbekistan is one of the world's largest exporters of cotton.

The fields flourished but with such vast areas of monoculture, farmers had to use massive
amounts of chemical pesticides. And with irrigation, salt was drawn to the surface of the soil and
accumulated. When the Tahaitash Dam was built on the Amu Darya near the city of Nukus, there
was no water left in the riverbed to flow to the Aral Sea,
The construction of irrigation canals began on a large scale in the 1940s. Many of the canals
were poorly built, allowing water to leak or evaporate. From the Qaraqum Canal, the largest in
Central Asia, perhaps 30 to 75% of the water went to waste. Today only 12% of Uzbekistan's
irrigation canal length is waterproofed.
No account was taken of the scientific warnings of the indirect effects that changes in the
level of the Sea would have on regional climate conditions, on vegetation, and especially on
the rivers’ productive deltas.

EFFECTS

1. Division of the river

As its water levels dropped, the lake began splitting into smaller pieces: the Northern (Small)
Aral Sea and the Southern (Large) Aral Sea. The Southern Aral Sea further split into eastern and
western lobes. The Earth Observatory’s World of Change: Evaporation of the Aral Sea feature
tracks this process over the past decade.

In 1987, the continuing shrinkage split the lake into two separate bodies of water, the North Aral
Sea (the Lesser Sea, or Small Aral Sea) and the South Aral Sea (the Greater Sea, or Large Aral
Sea).

2. Fishing Industry

The Aral Sea was a rich source of fish and hence fishing was dominant in this region as the source of
income.
The Aral Sea fishing industry had employed more than40,000 and reportedly produced one-sixth
of the Soviet Union's entire fish catch.
As a result of the shrinking of the Aral sea, the region's once prosperous fishing industry has
been virtually destroyed, bringing unemployment and economic hardship.
Former fishing towns along the original shores have become ship graveyards. The only
significant fishing company left in the area has its fish shipped from the Baltic Sea, thousands of
kilometers away

From 1961 to 1970, the Aral's sea level fell at an average of 20 cm (7.9 in) a year; in the
1970s, the average rate nearly tripled to 50–60 centimetres (20–24 in) per year, and by the
1980s it continued to drop, now with a mean of 80–90 centimetres (31–35 in) each year
by 1998, it had dropped to 28,687 square kilometres (11,076 sq mi), and eighth-largest.
The amount of water it has lost[when?] is the equivalent of completely draining Lake Erie and
Lake Ontario. Over the same time period its salinity increased from about 10 g/L to about
45 g/L.

.The Aral Sea region is also heavily polluted, with consequent serious public health
problems. The retreat of the sea has reportedly also caused local climate change, with
summers becoming hotter and drier, and winters colder and longer.

By 2007 it had declined to 10% of its original size, splitting into four lakes – the North Aral
Sea and the eastern and western basins of the once far larger South Aral Sea and one
smaller lake between North and South Aral Sea.[3] By 2009, the south-eastern lake had
disappeared and the south-western lake retreated to a thin strip at the extreme west of the
former southern sea.[4] The maximum depth of the North Aral Sea is 42 m (138 ft) (as of
2008).[1]