In October 2014, NASA’s Earth Observatory claimed that Aral Sea, has dried and is at the verge of vanish.
As per NASA’s observatory, the sea is now just a vast toxic desert and its disappearance is also affecting the local climate.
Recently the Earth Observatory posted some images that show the extent of the lake’s recession over past 14 years. The released image of Aral Sea was taken by NASA’s Terra satellite in August 2014 and was released on 2 October 2014.
The damage was recorded the most in 2014, as the eastern lobe of the South Aral Sea that is the center of the original lake has dried completely. The researchers have predicted that Aral Sea will be vanished completely by 2020.
NASA reveled this by comparing pair of images taken from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Terra satellite.
This images shows that the sea without its eastern lobe taken on August 19, 2014 and compared to the approximate location of the shoreline in 1960 (black outline).
Image acquired on 24th August 2014
Image acquired on 25th August 2000.
About Aral Sea
The Aral Sea is an endorheic basin containing the remnants of a large lake lying between Kazakhstan in the north and Karakalpakstan, an autonomous region of Uzbekistan, in the south.
The name “Aral” translates as "Sea of Islands", referring to about 1,534 islands that once dotted its waters in Uzbek.
Formerly it was one of the four largest lakes in the world with an area of 68,000 km2; the Aral Sea has been steadily shrinking since the 1960s after the rivers that fed it were diverted by Soviet irrigation projects.
By 2007, the lake declined to 10 percent of its original size by splitting into four lakes, namely the North Aral Sea, the eastern and western basins of the once far larger South Aral Sea and one smaller lake between the North and South Aral Seas.
Further, by 2009, the southeastern lake had disappeared and the southwestern lake had retreated to a thin strip at the extreme west of the former southern sea.
Cause of its disappearance
Aral Sea is fed by two rivers, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, till 1960s.
These two rivers brought snowmelt from mountains to the southeast and local rainfall to the sea.
But in 1960s, the erstwhile Soviet Union diverted the water of the two rivers through canals and dams to supply agriculture of cotton and other agricultural products in the region, leading to stoppage of water into Aral Sea.
Impact of vanishing Aral on environment, economy, and public health
The ecosystems of the Aral Sea and the river deltas feeding into it have been nearly destroyed, not least because of the much higher salinity.
The receding sea has left huge plains covered with salt and toxic chemicals – the results of weapons testing, industrial projects, and pesticides and fertilizer runoff – which are picked up and carried away by the wind as toxic dust and spread to the surrounding area.
The land around the Aral Sea is heavily polluted, and the people living in the area are suffering from a lack of fresh water and health problems, including high rates of certain forms of cancer and lung diseases.
Respiratory illnesses, including tuberculosis (most of which is drug resistant) and cancer, digestive disorders, anaemia, and infectious diseases are common ailments in the region.
Liver, kidney, and eye problems can also be attributed to the toxic dust storms. Health concerns associated with the region are a cause for an unusually high fatality rate amongst vulnerable parts of the population.
The child mortality rate is 75 in every 1,000 newborns and maternity death is 12 in every 1,000 women.
Crops in the region are destroyed by salt being deposited onto the land. Vast salt plains exposed by the shrinking Aral have produced dust storms, making regional winters colder and summers hotter.
The Aral Sea fishing industry, which in its heyday had employed some 40,000 and reportedly produced one-sixth of the Soviet Union's entire fish catch, has been devastated, and former fishing towns along the original shores have become ship graveyards.
The town of Moynaq in Uzbekistan had a thriving harbor and fishing industry that employed about 30,000 people; now it lies miles from the shore.
Fishing boats lie scattered on the dry land that was once covered by water; many have been there for 20 years.
The only significant fishing company left in the area has its fish shipped from the Baltic Sea, thousands of kilometers away.
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