A few days ago, NASA released striking satellite images of the Aral Sea in Central Asia. The Aral Sea was once the fourth largest lake on the planet, but over the past 50 years, the reservoir has almost completely dried up, including due to the short-sighted agricultural policy of the Soviet authorities, who tried to create efficient farms in the desert.
The Aral Sea, once a magnificent body of water, stretching for 26.3 thousand square miles, now seems almost completely dried up, reports the Discovery portal.
The shallowing of the lake began after Soviet engineers began diverting water from the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers, the region's main rivers, to irrigate desert farms created in the 1950s and 1960s. This is the first time in modern history when the eastern part of the basin of a reservoir dries up completely.
However, the Aral Sea is just one of a number of iconic inland water bodies that are now sharply shallower.
For example, Lake Poyang, the largest freshwater lake in China, is also gradually becoming shallower. This is due not only to drought, but also to the regular withdrawal of water for the Three Gorges Dam. Chinese experts note that as Poyang Lake becomes shallow, nearby swamps, where 87 species of birds winter, including 98% of the Siberian crane population, disappear.
Meanwhile, Iran's Lake Urmia, once one of the Earth's largest salt lakes, has shrunk by 80% over the past decade. The reason for this, along with climate change, is the expansion of irrigation systems for farms and an increase in the number of dams on rivers that supply water for these systems.
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Another prime example is the Dead Sea, located on the border of Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian Authority. More and more often, karst sinkholes are formed on the shores of the lake. According to experts, this is due to the derivation of the Jordan River, the water of which the locals use for drinking, and also due to the fact that chemical companies extract valuable minerals from the water. As a result, surface levels have retreated by 30-40% in recent years.
The United States also has examples of endangered lakes. For example, Lake Cachuma in California, the main source of fresh water for the inhabitants of Santa Barbara, is rapidly shrinking. The reason is the catastrophic drought, which the region is experiencing for the second year in a row, and the increased demand for water provoked by it.
Lake Wayo in Hawaii has mysteriously shallowed. In just five years, the water level in it dropped to 2% of the norm. Scientists cannot yet explain this anomaly.