The Aral Sea

2 ANSWERS

1. Guest16895018
   

   actually...the info above is fairly acurate. but it has been being drained since the mid fifties, not he sixties.

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2. Ali Abdullah
   

   Hi, The Aral Sea (Kazakh: Арал Теңізі Aral Teñizi; Uzbek: Orol Dengizi; Russian: Аральскοе Мοре Aral'skoye More; Tajik: Баҳри Арал Bahri Aral; Persian: دریاچه خوارزم Daryocha-i Khorazm) is an endorheic basin in Central Asia; it lies between Kazakhstan (Aktobe and Kyzylorda provinces) in the north and Karakalpakstan, an autonomous region of Uzbekistan, in the south. The name roughly translates as "Sea of Islands", referring to more than 1,500 islands of one hectare or more that once dotted its waters. The maximum depth of the sea is 102 feet (31 m). Once the world's fourth-largest inland saline body of water,[citation needed] with an area of 68,000 km2, the Aral Sea has been steadily shrinking since the 1960s[1] after the rivers that fed it were diverted by Soviet Union irrigation projects. By 2007 it had declined to 10% of its original size, splitting into three lakes– the North Aral Sea and the eastern and western basins of the once far larger South Aral Sea. 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. The region's once prosperous fishing industry has been virtually destroyed, bringing unemployment and economic hardship. 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. There is now an ongoing effort in Kazakhstan to save and replenish the North Aral Sea. A dam project completed in 2005 has raised the water level of this lake by two metres.Salinity has dropped, and fish are again found in sufficient numbers for some fishing to be viable. The outlook for the remnants of the South Aral Sea remains bleak.

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