The shrinking Aral Sea is one of the largest effects of environmental alteration by humans. The sea went from an area of 68,000 square miles in the 1960s to ten percent of that size by 2007. It first began to shrink after Soviet irrigation projects rerouted the rivers that fed into it for irrigation purposes. The huge population depending on the sea for shipping and fishing lost their jobs when the waters receded. Efforts to bring water back to the sea have shown some improvement since 2007 but will continue to be a very long and expensive project.
December 1973
December 1986
December 1999
September 2010
You can find it yourself on Google Earth using these coords: 45°00'19.22"N 59°42'00.23"E
Check back next week to see a busy bay of big boats!
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