But since the 1960s, it has been catastrophically shrinking. Even though the irrigation wasn't very efficient and a lot of water leaked or evaporated in the process, the system of canals, rivers, and the Aral Sea were fairly stable until the 1960s. These hand-dug, irrigation canals moved water from the Anu Darya and Syr Darya rivers, the same rivers that fed the freshwater into the Aral Sea. This series of images from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer The South Aral Sea had split into eastern and western lobes that remained tenuously connected at both ends. In 2014, the eastern lobe of the South Aral Sea completely disappeared.
Those irrigation passages have taken a lot of the water from the rivers. The Main Cause—Soviet Canals The answer is both simple and complex. In the 1990s, after gaining independence, Uzbekistan changed their way of exploiting the land, but their new cotton policy contributed to the further shrinkage of the Aral Sea. It is considered to be the basis for positive actions that would lead to securing "a bright and sustainable future" for the Aral Sea region. Its purpose was to improve the overall agriculture of the country. Before the project, the Syr Darya and the Amu Darya rivers flowed down from the mountains, cut northwest through the Kyzylkum Desert, and finally pooled together in the lowest part of the basin. However, with the damming of the northern lake in 2005, the fate of the southern two lakes was nearly sealed and the autonomous northern Uzbek region of Karakalpakstan will continue to suffer as the western lake continues to vanish. Croplands had to be flushed with larger and larger volumes of river water. How can the fourth largest lake in the world disappear down into almost nothing? The rapid shrinkage of the Aral Sea led to numerous environmental problems in the region. The increasingly salty water became polluted with fertilizer and pesticides. And today, instead of supplying food to the region, the shores have become ship graveyards, a curiosity for occasional travelers. Predictions are that thanks to those two major innovations, the northern lake of the Aral Sea could produce 10,000 to 12,000 tons a fish a year. used to irrigate fruit and cotton farming, accelerated shrinki… where. The Soviet Union was aware of some of the threats their economic decision posed to the Aral Sea and its region, but they regarded the cotton crops as far more valuable than the area's fishing economy. The blowing dust from the exposed lakebed, contaminated with agricultural chemicals, became a public health hazard. the shrinking Aral Sea - human causes for deficit. Matt Rosenberg is an award-winning geographer and the author of "The Handy Geography Answer Book" and "The Geography Bee Complete Preparation Handbook." what was water removed. By 2001, the southern connection had been severed, and the shallower eastern part retreated rapidly over the next several years. The dried remnants of the lake contain not only salt and minerals but also pesticides like DDT that were once used in huge quantities by the Soviet Union (ironically, to make up for the lack of water).
Besides the sad fact that the Aral Sea has been disappearing, its huge, dried-up lakebed is also a source of disease-causing dust that blows throughout the region. Prior to the evaporation of the lake, the Aral Sea produced about 20,000 to 40,000 tons of fish a year. But since the 1960s, it has been catastrophically shrinking.