The North Aral Sea owes its rebirth to the Kok-Aral Dam, an $85.8 million project bolstered by a loan from the World Bank. The dam separates the North Aral Sea from its saltier and more polluted southern half. In early 2006, the Embassy of the Republic of Kazakhstan announced that the Aral Sea had shown dramatic recovery in just months, rather than the five to ten years originally predicted.
Published May 4, 2007
In the first half of the twentieth century, it was the world’s fourth-largest lake. By August 2009, virtually nothing remained of the largest lobe.
Published Aug 27, 2009
A Soviet-era plan to turn the arid plains of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan into fertile cropland resulted in the near-total diversion of the water that once fed the Aral Sea. Prior to the scheme, two rivers—the Amudar’ya in the south and the Syrdar’ya in the north—flowed out of distant mountains and pooled in a desert basin in what is now southern Kazakhstan and northern Uzbekistan. The irrigation project began in the mid-1900s, and by 1960, the sea had already begun to dry out.
Published Aug 26, 2008
The sequence of images shows the dramatic changes to the Aral Sea between 1973 and 2000.
Published May 5, 2001
Once part of the fourth-largest lake in the world, the eastern lobe of the southern Aral has dried up for the first time in modern history.
Published Sep 26, 2014
This true-color image shows a dust storm blowing over the desiccated Southern Aral Sea in late June 2009. Dust blows over southern Kazakhstan and across Uzbekistan.
Published Jun 30, 2009
In 1964, it was the world's fourth largest lake. Thanks to irrigation projects, now it is mostly gone.
Published Feb 24, 2012
large dust storm blew westward from the Aral Sea in late April 2008. Dry lake bed sediments provide plentiful material to be blown by dust storms, and such sediments surround the Aral Sea.
Published Apr 29, 2008
