FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Tech

Ninety Percent of the World's Fourth-Largest Lake Has Gone Dry

California may soon learn that the water doesn't always come back.

Just as Detroit was once the fourth-largest city in the United States until people began fleeing it, these days, the Aral Sea—what was once the fourth-largest lake in the world—is a pale, arid imitation of its former self.

As the American West faces a tremendous drought, it's also an environmental disaster horror story about how not to manage water.

According to NASA, the salt-water lake on the border of Kazakhstan and the autonomous Republic of Karakalpakstan in Uzbekistan just passed a dubious landmark: For "the first time in modern history, the eastern basin of the South Aral Sea has completely dried."

Advertisement

While glacier shrinkage on nearby mountains has the potential to exacerbate the problem in the future, the drying of the Aral Sea is the result of mismanaged resources. For now, it's also a cautionary tale of what happens when the water runs out.

Image: USGS/NASA

In the 1960s, the Soviet Union diverted two major rivers that feed the Aral Sea to boost cotton and rice production on the arid plains. Nearby cotton production grew, as did the population in the lake basin. The only thing that shrank was the Aral Sea itself.

Receiving 10 times less water than it used to, the lake's size and volume shrank, which raised the salt concentration in the remaining water. By 1969, the average salinity rose to 10 grams per liter; by 1989, it was up to 30 grams per liter, spelling the end of the once thriving fishing industry.

By the end of the 1980s, the Aral had become two different lakes and a man-made desert—the North Aral Sea, the South Aral Sea, and the growing Aral-kum. A series of dams were constructed to preserve some of the North Aral Sea, but at the expense of the South Aral, which split into east and west lobes, and continued to cede territory to the Aral-kum. This summer yet another unfortunate milestone was passed.

"This is the first time the eastern basin has completely dried in modern times," Philip Micklin, geographer emeritus from Western Michigan University and Aral Sea expert, told NASA. "And it is likely the first time it has completely dried in 600 years, since Medieval desiccation associated with diversion of Amu Darya to the Caspian Sea."

Advertisement

In addition to the end of the fishing industry, the shrinking lake left behind highly-salted sand comprising up the 60,000 square kilometer desert. According to a UN report, each year, high winds kick up 15 million to 75 million tons of sand and dust each year that have been contaminated by fertilizer and pesticides.

Nearby drinking water was compromised, health problems arose nearby, and a vicious cycle commenced. "The blowing dust from the exposed lakebed, contaminated with agricultural chemicals, became a public health hazard. The salty dust blew off the lakebed and settled onto fields, degrading the soil. Croplands had to be flushed with larger and larger volumes of river water."

From one standpoint, the death of the Aral Sea was for a good cause; Uzbekistan is now one of the top cotton producers in the world. Last year, the country harvested just over 3.35 million tonnes of cotton to become the world's fifth-largest cotton exporter, with US $1 billion annually in exports. For the local communities, the biodiversity in the area, and other economies in the region, the cause isn't so good, which is why people of authority no less notable than Ban-Ki Moon call it "one of the worst disasters, environmental disasters of the world."

While the Aral's demise isn't traced directly to climate change, as water resources become more scare, it could be a pattern that becomes more familiar in time, like the sight of fishing boats in the middle of a growing desert.

As drought-stricken Californians face fines for watering their lawns, it helps to have a reminder that there are worse things in the world than brown grass.