This edition: Changes in the Aral Sea, to the good and the bad

The Aral Sea as of 2003 (black hairline is boundary between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan

A map can take one on a jouney of sometimes stunning discovery. Case in point: the Aral Sea.

The Aral is one of the worlds largest landlocked bodies of water. Located in the central Asian plateau areas on what is today the border between the republics of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. It is the destination of two great rivers running through that region, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya. Maps appearing in books as late as the 1990s show a large lake, about 150-200 miles across, bearing some resemblance to a human heart.

The current reality is quite far from even that; indeed, the limits of the sea as depicted then are entirely generous. The sea has shrunk so much that it has split into two parts, North and South, and the peninsula as seen on the left above was once an island. Its current expanse is only about 30% of the original limits (which date from about 1960). The depiction frequently found in even recent maps is closer to the image to the right, which was taken in 1985.

Aral Sea, 1985 (NASA)

The root of the problem stems from a country that doesn’t even exist anymore; the Soviet Union. Back in the 1960s, the Soviet government hit upon the bright idea to turn the arid central regions into an agricultural powerhouse, espeically producing cotton. That dream has come to a sort of fruition; Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are now amongst the world’s foremost cotton-producing areas. The solution to the problem was to take water from where they had it–the Amu and Syr Darya rivers (the Aral, being landlocked, is salt water) and putting it where they needed it. The solution was poorly executed, to be generous; the amount of water taken from the rivers (via inefficient and badly-designed canals) was so great that the sea began to evaporate.

The New Toxic Desert

The sea has been in a steady retreat since the 1960s, until its present day parched state. Being the low point of its basin, however, the Aral has had to take in all the runoff products–agricultural, industrial, and defense activity–which ended up on the bottom of the sea. Once revealed, however, the dry seabed became toxic dust blowing throughout the region. The island in the sea which became a peninsula was home to a top-secret Soviet defense laboratory where various nasty weapons were being researched as well. No longer isolated, there are concerns about such hazards as anthrax spreading from there.

The Return of the Water

Latterly, however, hope has returned to the region. A Kazakh scheme to flush excess salt from the North Aral has begun something of a turnaround, according to this article in the New York Times
. Involving a new dam, a repair of an old dam, and construction of new and modern channels, sea levels have begun to rise; the return of the water has been a bit more rapid than before. Fishermen are now going out from villages that haven’t seen water traffic in decades.

As can be seen by the photos, the damage of 40 years of abuse won’t be healed in a couple of years. But any improvement holds up hope for the future.

A compelling story, and all one had to do was check out the map.