The Aral Sea, located in Uzbekistan and Kazakstan
(both countries were
part of the former Soviet Union), is historically
a saline lake. It
is in the center of a large, flat
desert basin. The Aral Sea is a prime example of an dynamic environment.
In 1960 it was the world's fourth largest lake, the size of the entirety
of Southern California (at 26,250 square miles, approximately two hundred
times larger than the Salton Sea).
This south looking image (STS51F-0036-0059) of the Aral region was taken from the Space Shuttle
on August 6, 1985. It also appears in the article on the Aral Sea
that can be found in the February 1990 issue of National Geographic.
In the past few decades, the Aral Sea's volume has
decreased by 75 percent ,
the equivalent of draining Lakes Erie and Ontario,
and its surface area by 50 percent. The shoreline has
receeded up to 120 km from its former shore.
Sea level has fallen by more than 16 meters in this already
shallow sea. This is a drastic change,
but, in the far distant past,
the Aral Sea has completely dried up.
It has also been much larger than it was in 1960. The controversy about the Aral Sea Region
arises because the change is human induced,
maybe even on purpose,
not the natural cycle of environmental
change. During natural cycles, changes occur fairly slowly, over hundreds of
years. Human induced environmental changes occur more rapidly.
Click on different places on the image and
see close ups of the region or learn more about the Aral and it's people.
This is an image of the Aral Sea and its surrounding region taken sometime after 1987,
when the Aral split in two parts, the Big Aral and the Little Aral.
The smaller lake at the bottom left is Sarykamysh.
The region at the bottom of the image that appears red is
the area of intense agriculture.
