Lake
Aral Sea
Once the fourth largest lake in the world, now largely gone. The Aral Sea is the most complete environmental collapse ever caused by water diversion, and the standing warning against irrigation expansion without a water balance.
Key facts
- Original surface area (1960)
- approximately 68,000 km²
- Remaining area
- a small fraction of the original
- Cause
- diversion of the Amu Darya and Syr Darya for cotton irrigation
- Salinity increase
- from around 10 to over 100 g/l in remaining basins
Why it matters
Soviet-era irrigation expansion from the 1960s diverted the two rivers feeding the Aral Sea almost entirely to cotton and rice. The sea shrank, split into separate basins, and its salinity rose past the tolerance of its fishery, which collapsed entirely. The exposed seabed became a source of salt and pesticide-laden dust. The northern basin has been partially restored by the Kok-Aral dam, demonstrating that partial recovery is possible when inflow is restored — and how little of the original system that recovers.
Relationships
- Located in: Uzbekistan
Related intelligence
Sources
- World Wildlife Fund / McGill University — HydroSHEDS / HydroRIVERS / HydroLAKES / HydroBASINS. Open — attribution required · CC BY 4.0
- Global Water System Project — Global Reservoir and Dam Database. Open — attribution required · CC BY 4.0
- Peer-reviewed scientific literature — Open-access hydrology, water chemistry and water use research. Public but restricted · Publisher terms — public access, reuse not clearly granted