Overnight tours can be organized from Khiva and Nukus. Over the course of four decades, the basin decreased to a tenth of its original size, ultimately almost splitting into a northern section on the Kazakh side and a southern section on the Uzbek side. Aralsk can also be reached by train from Aktau in the west. How can these efforts be sustained to increase ecosystem health and livelihoods of the surrounding populations?The Aral Sea has gone through many changes over the past 50 years, including a significant increase in the population of the Aral Sea basin, doubled area of irrigated land and an unsustainable decline in water runoff to the sea (Table 1). The new plans to boost Soviet agriculture established that, rather than feeding the lake, the water sources should be diverted to form the irrigation system necessary to sustain the growing cotton industry. This further decreased surface area and volume and prevented runoff from the rivers to reach the Aral Sea from 1974 to 1987 (Bortnik, 1996). (2012) report that groundwater levels have risen as much as 2.5 metres in some areas, including in parts of Turkmenistan, which can lead to further soil salinisation. Tugai forests and reed beds once covered more than 500,000 ha and now only about 10 per cent remains, having been replaced with irrigated cropland or having disappeared because of lack of water regeneration (UNEP et al., 2011).Transboundary co-operation is needed to address the future use of water resources between upstream (Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan) and downstream countries (Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan) in the Aral Sea basin (Eshchanov et al., 2011), but conflicts of interest can inhibit co-operation (EC-IFAS, 2013). The production of water-intensive cotton has depleted much of the Uzbek territory of its topsoil, causing land to dry up as a result of the unsustainable monoculture.But hope survives in the Northern Aral Sea, where efforts to save what is left of the basin have shown positive results in recent years.

Located on the border of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, the Aral Sea was once the fourth largest lake in the world. We use cookies to understand how you use our site and to improve your experience. Gaybullaev et al. What might the future hold for the Aral Sea and its immediate environs? The fishing village of Moynak, south of the Aral Sea, once a town of over 30,000 people, has witnessed over half of its population leave as the lakeshore shrunk further and further away. (2012) estimated total volume of the Aral Sea in 2010 at 98.1 km3 (NAS: 22.6 km3; SAS: 75.5 km3) and predicts that the quantity will decrease to 75.4 km3 by 2031 based upon measurements from precipitation, evaporation and river runoff trends. From the village located, you will have to join a tour to reach the shoreline, the sea bed, or any of the villages that once surrounded the lake. Transboundary co-operation between upstream and downstream countries, collaborative water management and development of water resources are central to meeting the needs of water, energy, food and environmental security in the future (Granit et al., 2012). As a result, shocking visible changes have occurred to the sea (Figure 2) in addition to environmental, economic and social impacts. However, any and all benefits have come at a cost to local populations and the environment.The Aral-kum is nearly 60,000 km2 of sandy, salty soil, most of which is contaminated with fertilisers remnant from the agricultural lands, that is fuel for dust storms (Low et al., 2013; Breckle and Geldyeva, 2012; Spivak et al., 2012). Other than that, encounters with other humans should not be expected — the area is just one huge expanse of emptiness surveyed by eagles on the hunt for prey hiding among the low vegetation.From the Uzbek capital of Tashkent, travel time is not much shorter, with Moynak, one of the few settlements left in the region, over 800 miles away. Photo by The impact of this human-caused ecological disaster continues to be felt by the local communities that try to survive in fragile conditions. A deeper integration of the critical issues at hand into institutional frameworks is needed to encourage co-operation (Granit et al., 2012). By the end of the 1980s, the Aral Sea had split into the NAS and the SAS (Figure 2b).At present, seasonal fluctuations, variations in wet and dry years and annual fluctuations in the flow of the Amu Darya (NASA, 2013) dictate water levels of the two lobes of the SAS as demonstrated by the satellite image time series in Figure 4. In the summer of 2014, a satellite image from NASA’s Terra Satellite showed that, for the first time in modern history, the eastern lobe of the Southern Aral Sea had completely dried up. The tiny settlement of Akespe, where only nine families live today, emerges among the sand dunes of this environment. Springer, Berlin Heidelberg, pp. Under the presidency of Islam Karimov, who took power in Uzbekistan after independence and governed until his death in 2016, the cotton industry stayed within the control of the state, which pushed to keep its status as one of the leading producers without considering either the human or environmental cost. The Aral Sea has gone through many changes over the past 50 years, including a significant increase in the population of the Aral Sea basin, doubled area of irrigated land and an unsustainable decline in water runoff to the sea (Table 1). Figure 4 shows how much the eastern lobe of the SAS can fluctuate, including nearly disappearing in 2012 but rebounding to more than 10,000 km2 by 2013 (Figure 3). The sea supported a major fishery and functioned as a key regional transportation route. The Aral Sea is divided by Kazakhstan and the autonomous Republic of Karakalpakstan in Uzbekistan.The significant decrease in the size and volume of the sea has contributed to the collapse of its fishing industry, compromised drinking water, soil salinisation and the proliferation of dust storms due to the formation of a man-made desert, the Aral-kum. While on the Kazakh side most abandoned ships have been dismantled, the town of Moynak, in Uzbekistan, relies heavily on tourism and is, therefore, protecting these impressive sights. Its increase in size has also contributed to a more arid local climate with hotter summers and colder winters (Gaybullaev et al., 2012).Increased agriculture has been accompanied by an increase in use of fertilizers and pesticides, which has compromised the quality of ground and surface water, contaminated seabed sediment and led to rising groundwater levels (UNEP et al., 2011; Granit et al., 2012).

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