For local people the results have been disastrous. The Aral Sea's retreating shoreline has left ports landlocked and boats stranded on dry sand. Commercial fishing was forced to halt twenty years ago. The few remaining fishermen commute by car to the water's edge. The waters that remain grow increasingly saline so only salt-resistant fish imported from elsewhere can endure them. Wildlife habitats have been destroyed and communities find themselves without clean water supplies.
The retreat of the waters has also altered the regional microclimate. Winters are colder and the summers hotter. Each year violent sandstorms pick up at least 150,000 tonnes of salt and sand from the dried-up lakebed and transport it across hundreds of kilometres.
The sandstorms are tainted with pesticide residue and have been linked to high regional rates of respiratory illnesses and certain types of cancer. The salty dust does harm to livestock pastures and has even been linked with melting glaciers up in the distant Pamir Mountains, on the Afghanistan border.
Back in the days of the USSR, planners spoke casually of diverting Siberian rivers to save the Aral Sea. Today that certainly will not happen. Instead Central Asian governments have come together to establish the International Fund for Saving the Aral Sea. But their economies are too dependent on cotton exports to end all irrigation.
The Small Aral Sea is still thought to be saveable, and several dikes have been constructed to cut it off from the Large Aral Sea preventing water loss and salt contamination - but shifting water levels have so far defeated these efforts. The channel connecting the two should soon dry up anyway, preserving the Small Aral Sea at least. Meanwhile researchers are studying the salty Aralkum Desert effectively the newest l
'"/>
Contact: Frederic Le Gall
frederic.le.gall@esa.int
39-06-941-80-757
European Space Agency
28-Jul-2003