The Aral Sea
Sandwiched between Kazakhstan to the north and Uzbekistan to the south, this is the dying Aral Sea. Wikipedia says:
Since the 1960s the Aral Sea has been shrinking, as the rivers that feed it (the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya) were diverted by the Soviet Union for irrigation.
In 1960, the Aral Sea was the world’s fourth-largest lake, but today it has lost 80% of its volume. You can clearly see how much the water has receeded recently by comparing the satellite image with Google’s own map view (there’s no high-resolution imagery, otherwise we might be able to see some abandoned ships), and even more so by comparing it to this satellite image taken in 1985.
To make matters even worse, the ecosystem of the Aral Sea has been nearly destroyed due to high levels of salinity, industrial projects and fertilizer runoff. Not to mention a biological weapons laboratory on the Vozrozhdeniya Island…
For more information on this fascinating environmental catastrophe, make sure you read the Wikipedia page.
Thanks to Daniel Pereira, Phil Gross and Pablo Bleyer.
The TV series “Going to Extremes” featured a journey to the abandoned biological weapons lab in the middle of the Aral sea. Well worth seeing, if you can find it. It seems to air on the National Geographic channel from time to time.
For another example of this, check out the Dead Sea which, ironically, is dying.
map view
Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth
and satellite view
Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth
The death of this ancient sea diminishes us all.
ohhhhh…..what is the aral sea again? zzzzzzzz…
It’s been a mistake of us being humans,diluting natural resources for our own social use,hardly ever concerned of the ecology…it’s thus our responsibility to make it correct…time & again,mankind needs to rectify its mistakes in the past…
You can see some shipwreks near the city of Mo’ynoq.
Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth