Aral Sea

Aral Sea (Russian, Aralskoye More), salt lake or inland sea, Central Asia, in south-western Kazakhstan and north-western Uzbekistan, near the Caspian Sea. The sea contains numerous islands, of which Ostrov Vozrozhdeniya is the largest; these give it the Turkic name Aral-Denghis (Island Sea). In early 1990 the area of the Large Aral (see below) was about 33,500 sq km (12,934 sq mi), and the area of the Small Aral was about 3,000 sq km (1,158 sq mi). Since then the combined area of the two lakes had dropped to about 31,220 sq km (12,050 sq mi).

The Aral sea was formerly the fourth largest lake in the world. The sea’s tributary streams are the Syr Darya in the north and Amu Darya in the south, which have been heavily tapped for irrigation in recent decades. It has no outlet.

During the 1980s, several years passed in which little or no water reached the Aral Sea from these rivers. As a result, the Aral's volume has dropped nearly 70 per cent since 1960, causing the lake to split in 1988 into two sections: the southern Large Aral Sea (Russian, Bolshoye Aralskoye More), which receives water from the Amu Darya, and the northern Small Aral Sea (Russian, Maloye Aralskoye More), which is fed by the Syr Darya.

The shrinkage of the Aral Sea is perhaps the greatest human-made environmental catastrophe ever recorded. The salinity of the lake's waters has increased approximately threefold, adversely affecting plant and animal life here. The fishing industry has declined precipitously, and the waters are no longer transparent or filled with sturgeon, carp, and herring. The shores are barren and uninhabited, although several villages and large towns, such as Aralsk and Muynak, were located on its shore before 1960, and are now several miles from the water.

As the lake has shrunk, various types of salts have precipitated on its former bed. Because most of these salts are subject to wind erosion, the exposed bed of the Aral has become the chief source of salt and dust storms in the former Soviet Union. The toxic chemicals and other pollutants exposed by the shrinkage have contaminated water supplies and soil, which has had an enormously detrimental effect on the health of inhabitants of the region. Many diseases, including cancers and liver and kidney diseases, are thought to have greatly increased. Even the climate has been affected—both summer and winter temperatures have become more extreme. In 1994 Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan agreed to work towards restoring the Aral Sea. Each country pledged 1 per cent of its annual budget towards this effort and some countries agreed, in principle, to decrease the amount of water diverted for irrigation.