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Irrigation Disasters - Aral SeaBoat in the Aral Sea

        The Aral Sea, located in between Uzbekistan and Kazakstan,  was once the fourth biggest freshwater inland sea in the world.  It was a bustling resource providing a healthy livelihood for several hundred thousand people.  In the 1960's the Soviet Union had a plan to use agricultural crops to boost governmental revenues.  The plan called for replacing food crops with fiber crops which required more water.  The plan called for damming two major rivers which supplied water to the Aral Sea.   This is seen in a United Nations Environmental Programme diagram below.  Over the past 30 years, the Aral Sea has drained to less than half of its original size, a quantity of water similar to that of Lake Erie and Ontario combined. Source of rusting boat image, Time.com. 

 

Diagram of the Aral Sea Irrigation Project

 

The first picture is the Aral Sea in 1985.  The island in the center is Vozrozhdeniye Island, where according to the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California, a former Soviet biological weapons testing facility was located.

Aral Sea - 1985

The second image is the Aral Sea in 2001.  

Now Vozroshedeniye island is a part of the mainland.  There are potential consequences from past dumping.  Another graphic below shows the change over a 14 year period. 

 

Effect on soils and agriculture

        The discharge of salt is impacting agricultural productivity and reducing pasture capacity.  Further, storms are causing salt to get extended into previously productive areas.  Further desertification is taking place, increasing the dust and toxicity content in the air from wind blowing over further exposed seabed.  Yet, driven by the need for income, and their dependence on an export economy, regional officials have not acted to change the irrigation policies and the Aral continues to shrink.  

 

Poor example of human capacity to change

        The Aral Sea is not an example of a success in water resource management.  In fact, it is a classic example of what can happen if we don't start to take action before a crisis begins.  Still, the Aral Sea is very instructive sustainability case study, as it demonstrates how few environmental problems are not international in scope.   The world is getting increasingly smaller and the problems require multinational solutions.  

 

 

 

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