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Once considered one of the largest lakes in the world, with an area of 68 km², the Aral Sea is facing an environmental disaster. Find out how this gigantic lake turned into a desert in just a few decades!
The Aral Sea, located in Central Asia between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, was once considered the fourth largest lake in the world in terms of area. However, the region has undergone drastic transformation over the past few decades, resulting in a process of almost complete desertification. According to the UN and NASA, the reduction of the Aral Sea has been driven mainly by the diversion of rivers for agricultural irrigation since the 1960s, causing one of the greatest environmental disasters in history. Learn more about the trajectory of the lake that became a desert.
Millions of people affected by Aral Sea drought
The lake that became a desert covered 68 square kilometers, but it has been drying up. Now, ten years later, a report suggests that only 8 square kilometers of water remain in the lake, about 10%. The rest of the space, which was once part of one of the largest lakes in the world, is the Aralkum Desert.
Some scientists are already investigating the consequences and impacts of the reduction of water in the Ara Sea. Studies have found that the sandification of the area almost doubled the atmospheric dust in the region between 1984 and 2015. From 14 million metric tons of dust, the numbers rose to 27 million.
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Second Ibrahim Thiaw, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, last year, is certainly one of the greatest environmental disasters ever seen on Earth. The lake that became a desert is an endorheic basin, that is, it has no outlet to the sea.
Two rivers flowed from the mountains into the Aral Sea, called Amu Darya and Syr Darya, which supplied 38,6 million and 14,6 million cubic km of water, respectively, per year to the lake.
Rivers were used for irrigation and have an impact on the Aral Sea
The two rivers of one of the world's largest lakes were redirected to irrigate some 7 million hectares of cotton plantations in the Soviet Union. Large-scale irrigation continued from the 1960s to the 1990s. This rapidly reduced the volume of water in the lake, which eventually split in two and connected hundreds of islands to the surrounding shores.
The salinity concentration in the remaining water exceeded the level of oceano, destroying most of the native life and impacting the local ecosystem.
Today, more than half of the 300 plant species, 70 animal species and 319 bird species that once existed in the desert-turned-lake have either migrated or gone extinct altogether. This has destroyed the local economy and the livelihoods of local residents, such as fishing.
New desert generates millions in losses every year
Furthermore, the exposure of the ancient lake bed has reduced air quality in cities up to 800 km away from the sea, thus contributing to the glacial melting of the Pamir Mountains. Nearby crops have also been impacted, as rainfall has spread salt in the soil there.
The sand in the desert, which was once one of the largest lakes in the world, is also toxic and is the result of runoff from chemical weapons tests in the USSR and pesticides from agricultural practices that dried up the Aral Sea.
