The drought of the Aral Sea

The Aral Sea was once a large lake between the borders of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. But thanks to global climate change, the lake is ostensibly gone. As we mentioned, Vozrozhdeniya Island used to be an island in the Aral Sea but isn’t any longer due to the huge loss of water that has left the entire area an arid wasteland.

The lake is only 10 percent of its original size, and much of the loss has occurred in the past 30 years. The sea began shrinking due to a Soviet plan in the 1960s to reroute several of the rivers feeding it. But most of the water has evaporated thanks to the increase in global temperatures.

Aral Sea from space, August 1985

The shrinking of the Aral Sea has been called “one of the planet’s worst environmental disasters.” Although the area was once a prosperous fishing location that helped boost the economies of both border nations, it is now a dead zone.

The ruins of fishing vessels litter the desert landscape in an area that is now heavily polluted and a public health concern. Numerous towns vanished from the face of the Earth, and the eastern basin of the Aral Sea is now known as the Aralkum Desert.