Aral Sea

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Aral Sea
Map: lake boundaries c. 1960 with present-day political boundaries. Countries with any land draining into the lake are in yellow.
Location	Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan (Central Asia)
Coordinates	45° N 60° ECoordinates: 45° N 60° E
Lake type	endorheic
Primary sources	Amu Darya, Syr Darya
Basin countries	Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan
Surface area	17,160 km² (2004), 28,687 km² (1998), 68,000 km² (1960)
Settlements	(Aral)

The Aral Sea (Kazakh: Арал Теңізі, Aral Tengizi, Uzbek: Orol dengizi, Russian: Аральскοе мοре, Tajik/Persian: Daryocha-i Khorazm, Lake Khwarazm) is a landlocked endorheic basin in Central Asia; it lies between Kazakhstan in the north and Karakalpakstan, an autonomous region of Uzbekistan, in the south. The name roughly translates as "Sea of Islands", referring to more than 1,500 islands of one hectare or more that dotted its waters.

Since the 1960s the Aral Sea has been shrinking in area, since the rivers that feed it (the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya) were diverted by the Soviet Union for irrigation. By 2004, the sea had shrunk to 25% of its original surface area, and a nearly fivefold increase in salinity had killed most of its natural flora and fauna. The Aral Sea is also heavily polluted, largely as the result of weapons testing, industrial projects, and fertilizer runoff. There is now an ongoing effort in Kazakhstan to save the northern part of the Aral Sea.

Contents 1 Ecological problems 1.1 History 1.2 Current situation 2 Bioweapons facility on the Vozrozhdeniya Island 3 Development of the Aral Sea 4 Notes 5 Further reading 6 External links

[edit] Ecological problems

The major ecological problem is that diversion of the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers for irrigation has shrunk the Aral Sea dramatically; the Aral Sea has been drying up for about 50 years. This has brought about a number of ecological and economic problems for the sea and the area. One of the greatest misuses of the Aral is that for the past forty years it has been a dumping ground for raw human sewage discharge, resulting in the extinction or extermination of many native fish.

[edit] History

In 1918, the Russian government decided that the two rivers that fed the Aral Sea, the Amu Darya in the south and the Syr Darya in the northeast, would be diverted to irrigate the desert, in order to attempt to grow rice, melons, cereals, and cotton. This was part of the Soviet plan for cotton, or "white gold", to become a major export. (This did eventually end up becoming the case, and today Uzbekistan is one of the world's largest exporters of cotton.^[1])

The irrigation canals began to be built on a large scale in the 1940s. Many of the irrigation canals were poorly built, letting water leak out or evaporate; from the Qaraqum Canal, the largest in Central Asia, perhaps 30–75% of the water went to waste. Today only 12% of Uzbekistan's irrigation canal length is waterproofed.

By 1960, somewhere between 20 and 60 cubic kilometers of water were going each year to the land instead of the sea. Thus, most of the sea's water supply had been diverted, and in the 1960s the Aral Sea began to shrink. From 1961 to 1970, the Aral's sea level fell at an average of 20 cm a year; in the 1970s, the average rate nearly tripled to 50–60 cm per year, and by the 1980s it continued to drop, now with a mean of 80–90 cm each year. After seeing this, the rate of water usage for irrigation continued to increase: the amount of water taken from the rivers doubled between 1960 and 2000; cotton production nearly doubled in the same period.

The Aral Sea fishing industry, which in its heyday had employed some 40,000 workers and reportedly produced one-sixth of the USSR's entire fish catch, pretty much disappeared; so did the muskrat trapping in the deltas of Amu Darya and Syr Darya, which used to yield as much as 500,000 muskrat pelts a year.^[2]

The disappearance of the lake was no surprise to the Soviets; they expected it to happen long before. As early as in 1964, Aleksandr Asarin at the Hydroproject Institute pointed out that the lake was doomed. "It was part of the five-year plans, approved by the council of ministers and the Politburo. Nobody on a lower level would dare to say a word contradicting those plans, even if it was the fate of the Aral Sea", he commented to the New York Times many years later.^[2]

The reaction to the predictions varied. Some Soviet experts apparently considered the Aral to be "nature's error", and a Soviet engineer said in 1968 that "it is obvious to everyone that the evaporation of the Aral Sea is inevitable".^[3] On the other hand, starting in the 1960s, a large scale project was contemplated to redirect part of the flow of the rivers of the Ob basin to Central Asia over a gigantic canal system. Refilling of the Aral Sea was considered as one of the project's main goals. However, due to its staggering costs and the negative public opinion in Russia proper, the federal authorities abandoned the project by 1986.^[4]

[edit] Current situation

The sea's surface area shrank by approximately 60%, and its volume by 80%. In 1960, the Aral Sea was the world's fourth-largest lake, with an area of approximately 68,000 km² and a volume of 1100 km³; by 1998, it had dropped to 28,687 km², and eighth-largest. The amount of water it has lost is the equivalent of completely draining Lakes Erie and Ontario. Over the same time period its salinity has increased from about 10 g/l to about 45 g/l. As of 2004, the Aral Sea's surface area was only 17,160 km², 25% of its original size, and still contracting.^{[citation needed]}

Even the recently discovered inflow of submarine groundwater discharge into the Aral Sea will not in itself be able to stop the desiccation. This inflow of about 4 billion cubic meters per year is larger than previously estimated. This groundwater originates in the Pamirs and Tian Shan mountains and seeks its way through geological layers to a fracture zone at the bottom of the Aral Sea.

In 1987, the continuing shrinkage split the lake into two separate bodies of water, the North Aral Sea (the Lesser Sea, or Small Aral Sea) and the South Aral Sea (the Greater Sea, or Large Aral Sea); an artificial channel was dug to connect them, but that connection was gone by 1999 as the two seas continued to shrink. In 2003, the South Aral further divided into eastern and western basins; the loss of the North Aral has since been partially reversed (see below).

Work is being done to restore in part the North Aral Sea. Irrigation works on the Syr Darya have been repaired and improved to increase its water flow, and in October 2003, the Kazakh government announced a plan to build a concrete dam (Dike Kokaral) separating the two halves of the Aral Sea. Work on this dam was completed in August 2005; since then the water level of the North Aral has risen, and its salinity has decreased. As of 2006, some recovery of sea level has been recorded, sooner than expected.^[5] "The dam has caused the small Aral's sea level to rise swiftly to 38 m (125 ft), from a low of less than 30 m (98 ft), with 42 m (138 ft) considered the level of viability."^[6] Economically significant stocks of fish have returned, and observers who had written off the North Aral Sea as an environmental catastrophe were surprised by unexpected reports that in 2006 its returning waters were already partly reviving the fishing industry and producing catches for export as far as Ukraine. The restoration reportedly gave rise to long absent rain clouds and possible microclimate changes, bringing tentative hope to an agricultural sector swallowed by a regional dustbowl, and some expansion of the shrunken sea.^[7] "The sea, which had receded almost 100 km south of the port-city of Aral, is now a mere 25 km away." There are plans to build a new canal to reconnect Aralsk with the sea. Construction is scheduled to begin in 2009, by which time it is hoped the distance to be covered will be only 6 km. A new dam is to be built based on a World Bank loan to Kazakhstan, with the start of construction also slated for 2009.^[8]

The South Aral Sea, which lies largely in poorer Uzbekistan, was largely abandoned to its fate. Projects in the North Aral at first seemed to bring glimmers of hope to the South as well: "In addition to restoring water levels in the Northern Sea, a sluice in the dike is periodically opened, allowing excess water to flow into the largely dried-up Southern Aral Sea."^[9] Discussions had been held on recreating a channel between the somewhat improved North and the desiccated South,^[5] along with uncertain wetland restoration plans throughout the region, but political will is lacking. Uzbekistan shows no interest in abandoning the Amu Darya river as an abundant source of cotton irrigation, and instead is moving toward oil exploration in the drying South Aral seabed.^[10] Vast salt plains^[11][12] exposed with the shrinking of the Aral have produced dust storms,^[13] making regional winters colder and summers hotter.^[14] Attempts to mitigate these effects include planting vegetation in the newly exposed seabed. In the Northern Aral, recently higher sea levels have slightly moderated these effects in some areas, and the spring season now sees long-missing rainfall.^[10]

In January 1994, the countries of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan signed a deal to pledge 1% of their budgets to helping the sea recover. By 2006, the World Bank's restoration projects especially in the North Aral were giving rise to some unexpected, tentative relief in what had been an extremely pessimistic picture.^[15]

[edit] Bioweapons facility on the Vozrozhdeniya Island

Main article: Vozrozhdeniya Island

In 1948, a top-secret Soviet bioweapons laboratory was established on the island in the middle of the Aral Sea (now disputed territory between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan). The exact history, functions and current status of this facility have not yet been disclosed. The base was abandoned in 1992 following the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Scientific expeditions proved that this had been a site for production, testing and later dumping of pathogenic weapons. In 2002, through a project organized by the United States and with Uzbekistan assistance, 10 anthrax burial sites were decontaminated. According to the Kazakh Scientific Center for Quarantine and Zoonotic Infections, all burial sites of anthrax were decontaminated.^[16]

[edit] Development of the Aral Sea

Ergash Shaismatov, the Deputy Prime Minister of Uzbekistan, announced on August 30, 2006, that the Uzbek government and an international consortium consisting of state-run Uzbekneftegaz, LUKoil Overseas, Petronas, Korea National Oil Corporation, and China National Petroleum Corporation signed a production sharing agreement to explore and develop oil and gas fields in the Aral Sea, saying, “The Aral Sea is largely unknown, but it holds a lot of promise in terms of finding oil and gas. There is risk, of course, but we believe in the success of this unique project." The consortium was created in September 2005.^[17]

[edit] Notes

[edit] Further reading

Please add ISBNs for the books listed in this article or section. Listing ISBNs makes it easier to conduct research. Improve the article or discuss this issue on the talk page.This article has been tagged since February 2008.

• Micklin, Philip. The Aral Sea Disaster. Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences. 2007. Volume 35, pp. 47--72. http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev.earth.35.031306.140120
• Bissell, Tom. "Eternal Winter: Lessons of the Aral Sea Disaster". Harper's, April 2002, pp. 41–56.
• Bissell, Tom. "Chasing The Sea: Lost Among the Ghosts of Empire in Central Asia". Vintage Departures, October 2004.
• Ellis, William S. "A Soviet Sea Lies Dying". National Geographic, February 1990, pp. 73–93.
• Ferguson, Rob. "The Devil and the Disappearing Sea". Vancouver, Canada: Raincoast Books,2003.
• Glazovsky, Nikita F. 1995. "The Aral Sea Basin" in Kasperson, Jeanne, Roger Kasperson, and B.L. Turner, ed. Regions at Risk: Comparisons of Threatened Environments (New York: United Nations University Press, 1995) p. 92.
• Bendhun F. and Renard Ph. (2004). Indirect estimation of groundwater inflows into the Aral sea via a coupled water and salt mass balance model. Journal of Marine Systems 47: 35-50.  Abstract on line

[edit] External links

The external links in this article may not follow Wikipedia's content policies or guidelines. Please improve this article by removing excessive or inappropriate external links.

• Maps and Data of the Aral Sea Basin
• Kazakhstan Government and World Bank Project for Saving Aral Sea, 14 December 2006*
• BBC article by David Shukman on a study that finds high levels of DNA damage that could explain the region's abnormally high cancer rate; Muynak, Uzbekistan, 29 June 2004
• New Scientist article, 21 July 2003
• BBC article on planned dam, 29 October 2003
• BBC article on approved loan from World Bank, 09 April 2007
• EcoWorld article "Arctic to Aral", 6 November 2005
• Satellite images of the Aral Sea on NASA's Visible Earth website
• Earth Observatory: Rebirth island joins the mainland
• www.american.edu: Aral Sea Loss and Cotton
• Earthshots: Satellite Images of Environmental Change - U.S. Geological Survey
• Anthrax 'time bomb' ticking in Aral Sea, researchers say - CNN's report on bioweapons dump on Vozrozhdeniya Island
• Atlas of Our Changing Environment - United Nations Environment Programme.
• aral2006
• http://www.kazakhstanlive.com - Information Centre for Kazakhstan with Infos on Aral Sea