The photos are really amazing, and sad. Definitely a case of officials disregarding any kind potentially negative environmental impact.
The destruction of the Aral Sea is one of the great engineering disasters of the 20th century, a mistake on a scale so vast that photographs from space are needed to capture it.
When Soviet officials decided to divert its rivers, turning Kazakhstan’s western deserts into fragile cotton farms, the Aral Sea was the world’s fourth-largest lake, covering an area the size of Ireland. Now it’s less than a tenth of that size. Left behind are 15,000 square miles of salty, toxin-laden lake bed. Sandstorms toss 150,000 tons of it into the region’s air every year, and are linked to intensified regional climate extremes and increased rates of cancer and lung disease.
On Friday, the European Space Agency released before-and-after satellite photographs of the Aral Sea in 2006 and 2009. Earlier satellite images were taken by the United States Geological Survey in 1999, 1987 and 1973, shortly after the sea started to shrink. The photos are shown oldest to newest below. (I actually flipped them, I think it's more striking to see what the sea looked like before the diverting took place.) Thanks to a World Bank-funded dam project, the sea’s northern tip will be preserved. The rest, however, is expected to vanish by 2020.
Derek Lam
Barbour
Tommy Hilfiger
Wow. Mankind, we're our own worst enemy. Thanks for bringing this over blue
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1Life is short. Enjoy it while you can.
Yeah that is really sad. I am not sure they have photos, but here where I live there used to be a big lake called Tulare Lake. Which was drained a long time ago, on purpose no less. It is really crazy to think that there could have been a lake here where many towns and farms now are. There are no pictures like this satellite image though. I wish there was.
here is an exerpt from Wiki
2"In the wake of the Civil War, the bordering marshes were drained, and in the twentieth century the lake was drained; it is now a shallow basin of fertile earth within the most productive agricultural region of the United States.
The land was reclaimed from the lake over a few decades as the Kaweah, Kern, Kings and Tule rivers were diverted upstream and canals were built to drain the lake. In fact, aggressive groundwater pumping since the draining of the lake has resulted in a significant lowering of the water table, causing subsidence of the land."
"Once touted as the largest freshwater lake west of the Great Lakes, in 1849, the lake measured 1,476 km2 (570 sq mi), and in 1879, 1,780 km2 (690 sq mi), as its size fluctuated due to varying levels of rainfall and snowfall. However, by the end of the nineteenth century the lake all but completely disappeared. Because the lake's basin remains, the lake occasionally reappears during floods following unusually high levels of precipitation, as it did in 1997."
That's what I thought of when I read this Hain. I remember seeing a show about Tulare Lake and it just blew my mind.
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4Reminds of of Owens Lake in Ca. now all Salt Flats very sad. I just hope I'm not around any more when the world figures out they've turned one to many lakes into one to many salt flats. You all thought Wars over oil was bad ha just wait till we smack down over one of life's real necessities.
5Wow, this is so sad. I have to concur with Myst - we are our own worst enemies sometimes!!
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