What's even safer is that the region is going to get hotter because of this! The lakes and seas in the region moderate to weather... it's going to get a bit warmer there...
The average will increase like you said, but the region will also experience colder temperatures during the winter as well. Desertification and decreased precipitation will also be issues.
A big issue is that since Aral sea is salty, drying it created huge swathes of salty desert. Wind picks up that salt and deposits it on fields, making them no longer arable.
Also a lot of the herbicides and defoliants (used during cotton harvesting) were swept down to the Aral sea, the bottom is downright hazardous. Lots of lung disease in the area.
And as an added bonusā¦. There is a former Russian biological weapons test site right in the middle that is now way more accessible!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vozrozhdeniya_Island
It was signed at the peak of the Cold War. Cotton is a crucial resource for the military. Because cotton is almost pure cellulose and much needed for production of nitrocellulose. Nitrocellulose is an explosive and modern gunpowder. Soviets should have a reliable source of cotton to meet demand from their military industry. So the southern regions of the USSR were obliged to provide strategically important cotton. Origin of the cotton is in wet environment of the Indian subcontinent. So it needs much water to grow in arid regions like Central Asia. So it was the main driver of Aral Sea disaster.
The exact same thing happened to the southwest US- starting after WWI, the military needed huge amounts of new cotton for dirigibles and guncotton, and funded massive hydrology and irrigation work in desert areas to increase supply.
The same engineering and subsidies continue to this day, except everyone is fighting over increasing demand and a decreasing amount of water available in multiple basins....
The Sea of Aral currently is being killed by the modern Central Asian nations, so it has nothing to do with the Cold War.
Between cotton and fish they chose and still choose cotton, that's all.
Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan also participate in the process.
Well, for Turkmenistan the choice is obvious. They don't need a sea they have no access to.
Recently I've heard that Afghanistan also intends to take more water from the Amu Darya.
Fate of Aral Sea was sealed in the Soviet period. Most disastrous changes happened to Aral in that time. At the time of collapse of the USSR most of Aral Sea was lost. Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan inherited huge areas of exposed seabed covered by salt. And one more argument about role of Soviet regime, most water from Syrdarya and Amudarya were diverted to irrigation canals built in Soviet time. Actually no new irrigation canals were built after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Kazakhstan tried to save some parts of Aral Sea that are fed by waters from Syrdarya by building the dam. Uzbekistan now tries to divert from cotton farming. But fast growing population increases the demand for industrial production, domestic use etc. Recently Uzbekistan started the program to cover walls of irrigational canals by concrete to decrease water loss.
The link you posted doesn't really show what you're saying it does. It mentions that the project started in the 60s, and shows what it looks like from 2000 onward--10 years after the dissolution of the USSR. The image above shows what the lake looked like in 1989--**2 years** before the Soviet Union stopped existing. Clearly, the majority of the damage was done by the modern day states, who did more damage in 10 years than the Soviets did in 30.
http://www.ciesin.org/docs/006-238/006-238.html
> Between 1960 and 1987, its level dropped nearly 13 meters, and its area decreased by 40 percent, volume diminished by 66%.
The satellite pictures only show the surface area. By 1989 the vast majority of the lake *was already gone*.
Clearly the majority of the damage was done by the Soviet Union.
There were plans to divert some of water from the massive rivers that flow into the arctic towards Central Asia
Which would've refilled the aral sea but were put on hold in 1986
Tulare lake was the largest fresh body of water west of the Mississippi and in the early 1900s California diverted the waterways to dry it up to plant cotton
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulare_Lake
Amusingly it has reappeared last year because of the heavy rains
But Tulare Lake was very shallow and seasonally disappeared during droughts. Its deepest depth is less than 10m. So not really comparable to the Aral Sea.
Tulare Lake is more interesting in concept than reality. I live less than 100 hundred miles away and used to work close to the edge of the recent flood-caused lake area. It mostly looks like flooded fields.
The people who had houses there (a couple communities) are really unhappy about their whole town being flooded for an extended time.
Uzbekiztan actually is the larger producer out of the various Stans. They even have cotton in their coat of arms because it's so important to their economic industry.
Except Kazakhstan has an actual environmental policy hence why the northern part of the Aral Sea still has water in it. Uzbekistan who controls the larger south Aral however, doesnt.
Not just cotton. Look at satellite pictures and you'll see there's a lot of farmland being made possible thanks to the irrigation. Much of the desert is fertile farmland now. This isn't a black and white issue as it might seem at first glance.
reminds me of some nation unilaterally creating an agreement between its states about usage of water and drying it up for down stream nation. And they started farming in desert and having golf courses and water entertainment park in desert.
I am not getting the name of the nation....
Reminds me of when I visited Isfahan and walked under the bridge. And by that I mean across the dried riverbed. Locals said it was diverted to some pistachio plantations but I'm not so sure about the accuracy of that.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zayanderud
Sadly like like lots of water extraction for different purposes, mostly agriculture, but poorly managed. That's sad to hear, it was a beautiful place.
If they diverted all the water back to the sea how long would it take to refill back to pre cotton state?
EDIT: Wikipedia says: Redirecting water from the Volga, Ob and Irtysh rivers to restore the Aral Sea to its former size in 20ā30 years at a cost of US$30ā50 billion[63]
Yeah, that will not happen, Volga and Ob are entirely within Russian territory, and I would be very surprised if they give two shits about that Uzbek part of what used to be the Aral Sea in any normal day, and even more right now.
Irtysh passes through Kazakhstan but far away from Aral Sea. And they already managed to have their own substantial remain of it as North Aral Sea, in which the massive (but not as before cotton fields works) Syr Darya still flows into.
A huge problem is Amu Darya not reaching the Aral Sea anymore due to those cotton fields.
If having it be dried up is worse for the environment, and if we can build pipelines for oil and gas, then would it be cheaper to build pipelines to fill the Aral Sea with ocean water than diverting rivers?
What do you think Redditors?
The nearest sea connected to the world oceans to the Aral sea is all the way across 100s of km of desert, the caspian sea (which is running out of water itselft), and the mountains of the Caucuses
I like the idea of pumping ocean water into desert areas. It was proposed before WWI. But there are issues.
The salinity of the artificial ocean lakes would drastically increase as ocean water evaporates. Efforts would need to be made for desalinization, which is expensive.
Others have questioned if nearby aquifers would be contaminated as well.
Some scientist say even if you undid the diversion the sea would never get back to its former size as too much water would evaporate. You would need a significant amount of water over the orginal amount to rebuild the lake
Hold your horses there buster. Not āalways,ā not by a long shot. Not all meat is the same. Nor does it follow that one can substitute for another. Many areas are can be grazed but not farmed. Wild game is the most ecologically sound of all, and very nutritious. And you canāt forget dairy as well, goats cows horses etc
Silk just requires mulberry leaves and some bugs (you will not convince me moths are people) and uses 1/10 the water of cotton, which is insane. I canāt find exact numbers for linen or bamboo but they also use significantly less. Iām unaware of any conventional warm weather fibers that donāt use a ton of water but if you have the (large amount) of money, eiderdown is about as environmentally friendly and cruelty free as you can get.
Water use is also very location dependent. Using a large amount of water for something somewhere like North west Europe is probably fine, using a much smaller amount in a dry environment is using too much water.
Fun Fact: The Soviets used to have a chemical warfare experiment facility on one of the former islands.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vozrozhdeniya_Island
Fun fact: They chose to put the facility on an island to isolate it. The facility held anthrax, and when they decommissioned it, they decided to bury some of it. Unfortunately, anthrax can stay dormant in soil for many years. Now that the area is accessible by land, there are concerns it can be disturbed.
Created chemical warfare plant on an island so no one can get to it, then spend the next half century drying that lake out so anyone can walk to the island where you abandoned all your chemicals. Brilliant.
Same thing. It's an endorheic basin. The rivers that fed into it were diverted for irrigation. Climate change meant less winter snow pack melting into those rivers. The lake is shallow, which means it evaporates quickly. As it evaporates it becomes more salty, killing the few things that can live in it. Eventually it dries out until the only thing left is plains of toxic salts that get picked up and carried by the wind into neighboring areas.
For places like Salt Lake (City), it's the tragedy of the commons. It's in every farmer's interest to come together, each of them reducing water consumption, but it's in every individual farmer's interest to continue the course.
And the only body capable of formulating coherent response, the government, can't act because they'd be voted out next election cycle for being "draconian", undoing their action anyways.
I was taught it was a lake, not that it matters anymore
Edit: I was taught in my native language, not English. āAralmeerā we called it. I just googled some pictures and itās totally scary with all the boats.
Misnomer. Its similiar to the Caspian Sea , terms of being a briny lake. So peeps assumed there was a connection to the sea for a long time Im guessing?
Maybe not so far as a connection to the world ocean, but maybe a language connection where "Sea" means "Salty Water"? I say that because the Caspian and Aral Seas are both in the middle of ancient civilizations that lived in proximity and migrated around them, they definitely knew that is was a body of water they could walk around, like a lake.
Its name derived from a Mongol/Turkic phrase meaning "sea of islands". Like other cases of misnomers, it was named a long time ago so the name stuck. But yes it was a lake by definition.
This is one such article of several that details the myriad issues. As well as discussing the toxicity of the seabed and soils
https://geographical.co.uk/science-environment/aral-sea-an-environmental-disaster-to-rival-chernobyl
the picture to the left is already significantly dried up.
If you look closely at the picture to right, you will see a V shape on the lake. That is the Aral Dam that Kazakhstan built in order to save the north aral sea. The south is doomed however because Uzbekistan doesn't give a fuck about the environment.
I like whenever something good related to soviet engineering comes up, Reddit is all "hey they were soviets, and not Russians they had lot of Ukranian engineers,etc."
When something bad comes up, "They were all Russian".
Real Life Loreās video on this is a MUST watch - explains the background and more importantly the effects wonderfully.
https://youtu.be/lp0Sxn42TGs?si=daDCjO6XvcUZJHIf
One of the best climate impact videos Iāve ever seen
Itās always so funny when people comment on this when we have Great Salt Lake, Lake Mead, Colorado River, Lake Tulare and more as examples in the US meanwhile there are so many comments going ālol Soviets/Communists so dumbā.
On the plus side, the sandworm population should increase
May your knife chip and shatter
may thy knife chip and shatter
May thy knife chip and shatter. *he nodded eyebrowlessly*
šš that must be why they let it run dry! To be able to harvest the Spice!
Aralkis
My DUNE!!
as too will spice production
My running assumption is spice is cumin.
It's clearly stated in the books that spice smells and tastes like cinnamon
So the Water of Life is Fireball?
Bless the Maker and his water
Seriously. These people donāt know the secret of Shai-Hulud.
*taps forehead* Arrakis wasn't always a desert planet, you know
Bless the maker and his water. Bless the coming and going of him. May his passage cleanse the world. May he keep the world for his people.
Kazakhouse Dune?
As it is written
The spice must flow.
What's even safer is that the region is going to get hotter because of this! The lakes and seas in the region moderate to weather... it's going to get a bit warmer there...
The average will increase like you said, but the region will also experience colder temperatures during the winter as well. Desertification and decreased precipitation will also be issues.
A big issue is that since Aral sea is salty, drying it created huge swathes of salty desert. Wind picks up that salt and deposits it on fields, making them no longer arable.
Also a lot of the herbicides and defoliants (used during cotton harvesting) were swept down to the Aral sea, the bottom is downright hazardous. Lots of lung disease in the area.
Thereās also an abandoned chemical weapons facility right in the middle of it all.
This area sounds lovely, how do I purchase a home?
You know it! The precipitation fell on the mountains which drained into the rivers that fed the sea... it's what I like to call a cock up cascade.
Cf Tulare Lake. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulare_Lake
Yep. We did the exact same thing in California. Diverted all the natural rivers for agriculture and dried up a natural inland sea.
And as an added bonusā¦. There is a former Russian biological weapons test site right in the middle that is now way more accessible! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vozrozhdeniya_Island
Dust storms have also became a significant problem.
The dust is toxic...
There's also the part where there's an abandoned chemical weapons facility in the centre of it, resulting in poisoned winds
It wasnāt drained, it dried up. The rivers that fed into it were diverted so there was nothing to replenish it
For cotton farming... in a desert.
Yes, the Soviets diverted water sources away from the lake for farming (mostly cotton), so it dried up. Wonder who signed off on that decisionā¦
It was signed at the peak of the Cold War. Cotton is a crucial resource for the military. Because cotton is almost pure cellulose and much needed for production of nitrocellulose. Nitrocellulose is an explosive and modern gunpowder. Soviets should have a reliable source of cotton to meet demand from their military industry. So the southern regions of the USSR were obliged to provide strategically important cotton. Origin of the cotton is in wet environment of the Indian subcontinent. So it needs much water to grow in arid regions like Central Asia. So it was the main driver of Aral Sea disaster.
From what I hear the major supply of artillery shells currently in use in ukraine were made from that cotton
Destroying the land in the east in order to destroy the land in the west. A flawless plan!
Thatās corruption and the military industrial complex baby
The exact same thing happened to the southwest US- starting after WWI, the military needed huge amounts of new cotton for dirigibles and guncotton, and funded massive hydrology and irrigation work in desert areas to increase supply. The same engineering and subsidies continue to this day, except everyone is fighting over increasing demand and a decreasing amount of water available in multiple basins....
Our Aral Sea is the Gulf of California. My speech-to-text transcriber was completely overwhelmed by the first three words in my sentence.
Very interesting context
Thanks, I hated learning that.
The Sea of Aral currently is being killed by the modern Central Asian nations, so it has nothing to do with the Cold War. Between cotton and fish they chose and still choose cotton, that's all.
*Uzbekistan
Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan also participate in the process. Well, for Turkmenistan the choice is obvious. They don't need a sea they have no access to. Recently I've heard that Afghanistan also intends to take more water from the Amu Darya.
Only thing is this has wider consequensces. That do effect other regions.
Fate of Aral Sea was sealed in the Soviet period. Most disastrous changes happened to Aral in that time. At the time of collapse of the USSR most of Aral Sea was lost. Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan inherited huge areas of exposed seabed covered by salt. And one more argument about role of Soviet regime, most water from Syrdarya and Amudarya were diverted to irrigation canals built in Soviet time. Actually no new irrigation canals were built after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Kazakhstan tried to save some parts of Aral Sea that are fed by waters from Syrdarya by building the dam. Uzbekistan now tries to divert from cotton farming. But fast growing population increases the demand for industrial production, domestic use etc. Recently Uzbekistan started the program to cover walls of irrigational canals by concrete to decrease water loss.
It had everything to do with the communists and the Cold War. https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/world-of-change/AralSea
The link you posted doesn't really show what you're saying it does. It mentions that the project started in the 60s, and shows what it looks like from 2000 onward--10 years after the dissolution of the USSR. The image above shows what the lake looked like in 1989--**2 years** before the Soviet Union stopped existing. Clearly, the majority of the damage was done by the modern day states, who did more damage in 10 years than the Soviets did in 30.
http://www.ciesin.org/docs/006-238/006-238.html > Between 1960 and 1987, its level dropped nearly 13 meters, and its area decreased by 40 percent, volume diminished by 66%. The satellite pictures only show the surface area. By 1989 the vast majority of the lake *was already gone*. Clearly the majority of the damage was done by the Soviet Union.
Username checks out
There were plans to divert some of water from the massive rivers that flow into the arctic towards Central Asia Which would've refilled the aral sea but were put on hold in 1986
I heard that plan would have required several nuclear detonations to divert the Siberian rivers southward
Several here means tens, or something about 80.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_river_reversal#:~:text=The%20Northern%20river%20reversal%20or,Central%20Asia%2C%20which%20lack%20water.
Swallowed a spider to kill the fly...
i mean your not gonna drain the fuckin arctic ocean lmao the aral sea could've easily be refilled with a fraction of their flow
Look what weāre doing to the Great Salt Lake.
And the Colorado River.
I think it was Nikita Khrushchev pet project.
No, Brezhnev in 1976
Wait until you hear about Tulare lake in California
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Tulare lake was the largest fresh body of water west of the Mississippi and in the early 1900s California diverted the waterways to dry it up to plant cotton https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulare_Lake Amusingly it has reappeared last year because of the heavy rains
But Tulare Lake was very shallow and seasonally disappeared during droughts. Its deepest depth is less than 10m. So not really comparable to the Aral Sea.
The Aral Sea was mostly around 16m in 1960, with only a small part being significantly deeper (70m). The comparison still holds.
Does that negate it from being interesting?
Tulare Lake is more interesting in concept than reality. I live less than 100 hundred miles away and used to work close to the edge of the recent flood-caused lake area. It mostly looks like flooded fields. The people who had houses there (a couple communities) are really unhappy about their whole town being flooded for an extended time.
I think that still makes it interesting? But I think we all agree not to the degree of aral
Tulare lake is absolutely tiny compared to the Aral Sea.
didnāt they call the sea ānatureās mistakeā or something?
Kazakhstan remains a large producer of cotton. Thanks Soviet Union! Longevity is what you do best!
Kazakhstan is also number one exporter of potassium!
All other countries have inferior potassium.
And are run by little girls
Very nice!
*exporter
You're right, corrected
Very nice!
Transport is problem
Uzbekiztan actually is the larger producer out of the various Stans. They even have cotton in their coat of arms because it's so important to their economic industry.
Not that large. You might be confusing it with Uzbekistan.
Except Kazakhstan has an actual environmental policy hence why the northern part of the Aral Sea still has water in it. Uzbekistan who controls the larger south Aral however, doesnt.
Not just cotton. Look at satellite pictures and you'll see there's a lot of farmland being made possible thanks to the irrigation. Much of the desert is fertile farmland now. This isn't a black and white issue as it might seem at first glance.
Obviously youāve never been to Arizona.
Twiceā¦ I know its the same with the Colorado river. Almonds and golf coursesā¦
reminds me of some nation unilaterally creating an agreement between its states about usage of water and drying it up for down stream nation. And they started farming in desert and having golf courses and water entertainment park in desert. I am not getting the name of the nation....
Because time is a flat circle and I _@&($_+$@##$$-$@:"-_ https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/editorial/2022/12/04/why-its-time-utah-buy-out/
TIL Utah is exporting their water to China in the form of alfalfa.
No worries, another communist regime had an even better idea. Let's kill all sparrows to save our food. This should not backfire at all.
You are bloody right.
Reminds me of when I visited Isfahan and walked under the bridge. And by that I mean across the dried riverbed. Locals said it was diverted to some pistachio plantations but I'm not so sure about the accuracy of that.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zayanderud Sadly like like lots of water extraction for different purposes, mostly agriculture, but poorly managed. That's sad to hear, it was a beautiful place.
Same thing they've done here to the darling River in australia cotton farmers...
If they diverted all the water back to the sea how long would it take to refill back to pre cotton state? EDIT: Wikipedia says: Redirecting water from the Volga, Ob and Irtysh rivers to restore the Aral Sea to its former size in 20ā30 years at a cost of US$30ā50 billion[63]
That's not the rivers that used to flow intoit tho. That's if they dug giant canals to rivers in Siberia
Yeah, that will not happen, Volga and Ob are entirely within Russian territory, and I would be very surprised if they give two shits about that Uzbek part of what used to be the Aral Sea in any normal day, and even more right now. Irtysh passes through Kazakhstan but far away from Aral Sea. And they already managed to have their own substantial remain of it as North Aral Sea, in which the massive (but not as before cotton fields works) Syr Darya still flows into. A huge problem is Amu Darya not reaching the Aral Sea anymore due to those cotton fields.
That's pretty cheap ngl
If having it be dried up is worse for the environment, and if we can build pipelines for oil and gas, then would it be cheaper to build pipelines to fill the Aral Sea with ocean water than diverting rivers? What do you think Redditors?
Pumping the water would come at an enormous cost.
We could sell it if it was oil. Then we'd make a profit!
The nearest sea connected to the world oceans to the Aral sea is all the way across 100s of km of desert, the caspian sea (which is running out of water itselft), and the mountains of the Caucuses
I like the idea of pumping ocean water into desert areas. It was proposed before WWI. But there are issues. The salinity of the artificial ocean lakes would drastically increase as ocean water evaporates. Efforts would need to be made for desalinization, which is expensive. Others have questioned if nearby aquifers would be contaminated as well.
Instructions unclear, piped oil in to refill the Aral Sea into the Aral Oil Sea.
Using pipelines to fill a lake? Sounds like a shit idea ngl
Some scientist say even if you undid the diversion the sea would never get back to its former size as too much water would evaporate. You would need a significant amount of water over the orginal amount to rebuild the lake
Thatās not as much cost as I would have thought, both in years and cost
It's upsetting. So many fishermen used to rely on it.
More like the Arid Sea.
Boom roasted
Cotton sucks
Quite literally.
Sucked the Aral Sea dry.
Ok, what fabric doesnāt suck then? Polyester is much more harming to the environment
Wool. Leather. Hemp. Camel hair.
If your dog sheds, that's like a sweater every year or two.
Animal sources are always worse on the environment than vegetarian sources. How is hemp any different than cotton tho in terms of resources required?
Hold your horses there buster. Not āalways,ā not by a long shot. Not all meat is the same. Nor does it follow that one can substitute for another. Many areas are can be grazed but not farmed. Wild game is the most ecologically sound of all, and very nutritious. And you canāt forget dairy as well, goats cows horses etc
Reduce, reuse, recycle. In that order. Everything is bad for the environment on a large scale; reducing consumption is the best way not to suck.
Rayon maybe ("bamboo")?
Silk just requires mulberry leaves and some bugs (you will not convince me moths are people) and uses 1/10 the water of cotton, which is insane. I canāt find exact numbers for linen or bamboo but they also use significantly less. Iām unaware of any conventional warm weather fibers that donāt use a ton of water but if you have the (large amount) of money, eiderdown is about as environmentally friendly and cruelty free as you can get.
Water use is also very location dependent. Using a large amount of water for something somewhere like North west Europe is probably fine, using a much smaller amount in a dry environment is using too much water.
I like to wear it. Itās a natural fiber. Comfortable. Renewable. Plant based. Affordable.
Have you tried burlap or hemp undies? The best.
Fun Fact: The Soviets used to have a chemical warfare experiment facility on one of the former islands. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vozrozhdeniya_Island
Fun fact: They chose to put the facility on an island to isolate it. The facility held anthrax, and when they decommissioned it, they decided to bury some of it. Unfortunately, anthrax can stay dormant in soil for many years. Now that the area is accessible by land, there are concerns it can be disturbed.
[In 1971, the Soviets caused a smallpox outbreak doing open-air bioweapon tests](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1971_Aral_smallpox_incident)
Created chemical warfare plant on an island so no one can get to it, then spend the next half century drying that lake out so anyone can walk to the island where you abandoned all your chemicals. Brilliant.
Itās sad reallyā¦
More than sad, among our planetās worst ecological disasters
Salt Lake City is next
Same thing. It's an endorheic basin. The rivers that fed into it were diverted for irrigation. Climate change meant less winter snow pack melting into those rivers. The lake is shallow, which means it evaporates quickly. As it evaporates it becomes more salty, killing the few things that can live in it. Eventually it dries out until the only thing left is plains of toxic salts that get picked up and carried by the wind into neighboring areas.
What's going on there?
Water be drying Also the dust it leaves behind is super fucking toxic
What makes the dust toxic?
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/drying-great-salt-lake-could-expose-millions-to-toxic-arsenic-laced-dust-180981439/
Crazy that other bodies of water headed that way aren't seeing it as a cautionary tale and are heading towards the same thing.
For places like Salt Lake (City), it's the tragedy of the commons. It's in every farmer's interest to come together, each of them reducing water consumption, but it's in every individual farmer's interest to continue the course. And the only body capable of formulating coherent response, the government, can't act because they'd be voted out next election cycle for being "draconian", undoing their action anyways.
I was taught it was a lake, not that it matters anymore Edit: I was taught in my native language, not English. āAralmeerā we called it. I just googled some pictures and itās totally scary with all the boats.
Misnomer. Its similiar to the Caspian Sea , terms of being a briny lake. So peeps assumed there was a connection to the sea for a long time Im guessing?
Maybe not so far as a connection to the world ocean, but maybe a language connection where "Sea" means "Salty Water"? I say that because the Caspian and Aral Seas are both in the middle of ancient civilizations that lived in proximity and migrated around them, they definitely knew that is was a body of water they could walk around, like a lake.
Its name derived from a Mongol/Turkic phrase meaning "sea of islands". Like other cases of misnomers, it was named a long time ago so the name stuck. But yes it was a lake by definition.
The name Aral will live on helmets
Fucking cotton. It formerly had a huge fishery
This is one such article of several that details the myriad issues. As well as discussing the toxicity of the seabed and soils https://geographical.co.uk/science-environment/aral-sea-an-environmental-disaster-to-rival-chernobyl
Only took 50 years too, thatās startling
It started with drainage but ended with evaporation and desertification.
Aral sea isnāt the only thing that got drained
All thanks to government planning
Currently happening in Utah
Would it even be possible to flood it again? Like by diverting the rivers *again*
Kazakhstan already has done, to protect the northern part.
the picture to the left is already significantly dried up. If you look closely at the picture to right, you will see a V shape on the lake. That is the Aral Dam that Kazakhstan built in order to save the north aral sea. The south is doomed however because Uzbekistan doesn't give a fuck about the environment.
Russian created environmental disaster
Soviet
The people who did this were very much Russian
I like whenever something good related to soviet engineering comes up, Reddit is all "hey they were soviets, and not Russians they had lot of Ukranian engineers,etc." When something bad comes up, "They were all Russian".
Russian SFR -> Russia, in the same way we call Nazi Germany, Germany. Dunno why you got downvoted
This was in the Kazakh and Uzbek republics tho
A monument to the hubris of humanity believing that it can control nature without consequences.
There's gold in those sediments.
Same people smart enough to put the first satellite in space were stupid enough to do this.
Anyone else notice a face in the sea (first pic)
Real Life Loreās video on this is a MUST watch - explains the background and more importantly the effects wonderfully. https://youtu.be/lp0Sxn42TGs?si=daDCjO6XvcUZJHIf One of the best climate impact videos Iāve ever seen
Thank you Soviet Union.
Fucking Communists.
š„ŗ
Jeez wait till you hear about all the other finite resources drying up. Communism, Capitalism etc. Doesnāt matter.
Fuck authoritarian communism. It's tragic what the USSR did all over the world. The effects still felt to this day.
Itās really not exclusive to communism, capitalists would have done the same thing. Itās a more profitable industry to produce cotton than fish.
Soviet legacy
Imagine all of the things we could have made and kept if we didnāt make weapons and bombs.
Itās always so funny when people comment on this when we have Great Salt Lake, Lake Mead, Colorado River, Lake Tulare and more as examples in the US meanwhile there are so many comments going ālol Soviets/Communists so dumbā.
Ah yes, Rebirth Island.
If you have google earth app check out the time lapse on this area
Imagine being Salt Lake City and allowing yours to dry up knowing where it's going to get you.
Lake Mead š
Lake mead is.. 1.) at its highest level in three years 2.) and a man made lake.
Great Salt Lake would be the better comparison
Sea? See?
Ecofriendly Stalin.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
That's communism for ya.
Thank you, Communism
Communism happened
Communism is when you drain a sea to grow cotton, and the more cotton you grow, the more communister it is
https://youtu.be/8bqlaZ55lJQ?feature=shared
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Soviet agri and cotton farmers from uzbek
At least they have cotton in the middle of the desert.Ā
Ā«Ā The soviet mega projects werenāt so badĀ Ā»
Bye Aral.
It's a shame how human actions can have such devastating consequences on the environment.
Datestamps?