The Aral Sea: global problems

Even before the beginning of the sixties of the 20th century, the Aral Sea Was the world's fourth largest lake. It all began with intensive water abstraction for irrigation of cotton and rice fields from the rivers feeding the Aral-Amu Darya and Syr-Darya, which reduced the filling of the sea to a critical level. And then, in the early sixties, the irreversible drying process was started ... Since that time the problems of the Aral Sea began.

In 1989 the Aral fell into two isolated reservoirs - the Great Aral Sea, which belongs to Uzbekistan and the Small Aral Sea to Kazakhstan. By 1996, it had lost ¾ of its water volume, and most of the population had to leave the area. By 2003 - the water volume was only about 10%, and the surface area - about a quarter of the original. The coastline has moved 100-150 km, the salinity of the water has increased two and a half times. The sandy-solonchak desert formed on the site of a once-deep sea, with an area of 38,000 km2, was named Aralkum.

After the retreating sea, there was a dry sea bottom covered with salt and deposits of agricultural pesticides and pesticides washed away from local fields in due time. Frequent dust storms, characteristic of the desert, lift it all into the air and carry it to vast territories. Dust sometimes spreads to distances of up to 700-800 km and reaches such Russian regions as the Chelyabinsk and Orenburg regions. The inhalation of such poisonous dust undermines the health of people, reduces immunity, leads to allergic reactions and many other dangerous diseases. The local population, as medical experts testify, suffers from widespread respiratory diseases, digestive disorders, esophageal and throat cancer, anemia. Cases of kidney, liver and eye diseases became more frequent.

Aral was once the richest supplier of seafood. Now the level of salinity in it is so great that many species of fish died. The most widespread inhabitant in recent years left here the Black Sea flounder introduced in the 70s, which is the most adapted to life in salty sea waters, but by 2003 it disappeared: the salinity of water in 2-4 times exceeded the usual for it sea Wednesday. In the tissues of fish that are now caught, it is often found that the level of pesticides is too high, and this, naturally, also affects the health of the Aral Sea region. The fishing and processing industry is dying out, and the population is left without work ...

Ecological problems of the Aral Sea affected not only the Aral Sea area. More than 100 thousand tons of salt and fine dust with an admixture of various poisons and chemicals are carried from the dried surface annually, exerting a pernicious influence on all living things around. The fact that the Aral Sea is located on the path of a strong jet stream of air that facilitates the transfer of dust to the high layers of the atmosphere contributes to the intensification of the pollution effect , so it is not surprising that traces of salt streams are observed in Europe and even (who would have thought!) The Arctic Ocean .

With the lowering of the water level in the Aral, the level of groundwater also decreased, accelerating the process of desertification of the surrounding area. Since the mid-1990s, instead of lush green shrubs, trees and grasses, only rare bunches of plants (halophytes and xerophytes) are seen here, adapted to dry and saline soils. Mammals and birds, at the same time, not more than half of the local species are preserved. The climate within the 100 km zone from the original coastline has changed: it has become colder in winter, hotter in the summer, the humidity level has decreased, which naturally affected the amount of atmospheric precipitation, droughts became more frequent and the duration of the vegetation period decreased.

Destroy the natural environment can be very quickly, and its restoration is a long and difficult process. A complete restoration of the Aral Sea, alas, is no longer possible, but attempts are being made (and not without success) to restore the northern one - the Small Aral. The Government of Kazakhstan, with the assistance of the World Bank, is taking measures to increase the level of water in it and, thereby, to reduce its salinity.