aral sea
The Aral Sea is in the Middle East situated in Central Asia between Northern Uzbekistan and the southern part of Kazakhstan. The two rivers that lead into the fourth largest saline lake are the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers.
The Aral Sea area is characterised by a desert-continental climate with a wide range of temperatures, cold winters, sparse rainfall and hot summers. The Soviet government decided in the 1960s to divert those rivers - this is so that they could irrigate the desert region surrounding the Sea in order to benefit the agricultural industry in the area also to help supply the Aral Sea basin. By establishing a program to promote agriculture, also especially cotton, the Soviet government in the 1950s deliberately deprived the Aral Sea of its two main sources of water income - this almost immediately led to less water coming into the sea. The majority of the water was soaked up by the desert and wasted. The water level in the Aral Sea has drastically decreased from the 1960s to the present day. The decreasing sea level has many impacts on people and the environment: On people - There is less drinking water and general usage of the Sea which means that water, as a natural resource isn't available as a basic resource for people - this reduces the local people's quality of life and makes day to day life more difficult. On environment - Agriculture is a key part of this area - if water supplies are limited then the soil will be less fertile meaning that crops and plants will find it difficult to grow and flourish. Also, if there's less rainfall as it has a changeable climate then crops and plants will find it difficult to grow. There are limited positives but if water dries up then there will be more land available for agriculture, but the problem with this is that there's less water. In addition, another problem is the Uzbek soil isn't good for growing cotton crops. Huge numbers of pesticides have been used on the fields and the runoff went into the rivers. This affected people living along the rivers. |