Aral Lake is shrinking rapidly
Aral used to be the fourth largest lake in the world, but it quickly shrunk over the last 50 years since water supply rivers were converted to irrigation projects for agriculture.
The new images from the Envisat satellite show the rapid shrinking of Aral Lake in the period of 2006 - 2009. Aral used to be the fourth largest lake in the world, but it quickly 'shrink' within. 50 years since water supply rivers have been converted to irrigation projects for agriculture.
In the late 1980s, the Lake Aral Sea split into two parts: a small lake (in the north) of Kazakhstan, and a large horseshoe-shaped lake (in the south) of both Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.
By 2000, the Great Lake Aral split into two different eastern-western parts. As can be seen on the photo, the eastern part has narrowed rapidly between 2006 and 2009. It has lost 80% of its water since 2006, when its size was 150 x 70 km.
All the large lakes in the south are expected to dry up completely by 2020, but now people are making every effort to keep the small lake in the north.
Kok-Aral Dyke, a joint project between the World Bank and the Kazakhstan government, has been erected between the northern and southern parts of the lake to prevent water from flowing from the north to the southern lake. Since this dike was completed in 2005, the water level in the north lake has increased by 4 meters.
The consequence of the drying up of the Aral Sea is the Aral Karakum Desert - a dry area of white salt of up to 40,000 km2. Each year, 150,000 tons of desert salt and sand are brutally sandstorms taken hundreds of kilometers, attacking villages and fields, causing serious health problems for local residents and causing winter in the area becomes colder while summer is hotter. In an effort to limit these effects, the plants grow well in dry, salty conditions grown in dry seabed areas.
In 2007, the Kazakh government obtained a loan from the World Bank to take the next step, including building another dam to try to change this artificial environmental disaster.
The Envisat satellite captured these photos on July 1, 2006 and July 1, 2009 using a Medium Resolution Imaging Analyzer (MERIS).
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