Introduction

The reason that we chose to do this as our project is because the shrinking of the Aral Sea has been so shocking and it is a prime example of the negative effects that humans can have on the environment. According to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, the Aral Sea crisis is "one of the planet's worst environmental disasters" (14).

Maps

The Aral Sea is a regional ecosystem, located in present day Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, formerly countries of the Soviet Union. Although the Aral Sea is located only in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, the Aral basin is shared by three additional countries: Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan (1, 4). Once one large lake, it has since split into four smaller lakes: the North Aral Sea (Little Aral), the west and east portions of the South Aral Sea (Big Aral), and a small lake in between the North and South Seas.

http://www.worldatlas.com/aatlas/infopage/aralsea.htm

http://nordpil.com/go/portfolio/mapsgraphics/central-asia-aral-sea-and-surrounding

Images

http://www.columbia.edu/~tmt2120/introduction.htm

Historical State

The Aral Sea was once the fourth largest inland lake in the world, measuring 66,100 km² in 1963 (1, 6).  Before this time, it was home to about twenty species of native fish and fishing was a predominant industry, providing thousands of people with employment (8, 10). There were over 70 different species of mammals and 319 species of birds that lived in the deltas of the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers (8). There were also vast expanses of tugay vegetation around the Aral Sea, over 100,000 hectares, where many of these species of birds and mammals made their habitats (8). There was also just the right amount salinity in the lake to support sufficient communities of zooplankton and plant communities (10).

A painting of the Aral Sea in 1877 (Source: http://www.karakalpak.com/stanaral.html)