The Aral Sea: global problems

Even before the early sixties of the twentieth century, the Aral Sea It was the world's fourth largest lake. It all began with an intensive water intake for irrigating cotton and rice fields from the rivers that feed the Aral - Amudarya and Syrdarya, which reduced the filling of the sea to a critical point. And then, at the beginning of the sixties, the already drying process was reversible ... The problems of the Aral Sea began from this time.

In 1989, the Aral broke up into 2 isolatedreservoir - Big Aral Sea, belonging to Uzbekistan and Small Aral Sea - to Kazakhstan. By 1996, it had lost of its water volume, and the majority of residents had to leave the area. By 2003 - the volume of water was only about 10%, and its surface area was about a quarter of the original. The coastline is 100-150km away, the salinity of water has increased two and a half times. The sandy-salt-marsh desert formed on the site of the once-deep sea, with an area of ​​38,000 km2, was named Aralkum.

Dry sea remained after the retreating seathe bottom covered with salt and sediments of agricultural pesticides and pesticides, which were washed away from local fields. Frequent dusty storms characteristic of the desert lift it all up into the air and spread it over vast territories. Dust sometimes spreads over distances up to 700-800 km and reaches such Russian regions as the Chelyabinsk and Orenburg regions. Inhalation of such toxic dust undermines people's health, lowers immunity, leads to allergic reactions and many other dangerous diseases. The local population, as evidenced by medical experts, suffers from widespread respiratory diseases, digestive disorders, cancer of the esophagus and throat, and anemia. There are more cases of kidney, liver and eye diseases.

Aral was once the richest supplierseafood. Now the level of salinity in it is so high that many species of fish have died. The most common inhabitant in recent years has remained the Black Sea flounder, introduced in the 70s, which is most adapted to life in saline sea waters, but by 2003 it had also disappeared: the salinity of the water 2-4 times began to exceed its usual marine Wednesday Too high levels of pesticides are often found in the tissues of the fish caught today, and this, naturally, also affects the health of the Aral Sea people. The fishing and processing industry is dying out, and the population remains without work ...

Environmental problems of the Aral Sea affectednot only Priaralie. More than 100 thousand tons of salt and fine dust mixed with various poisons and chemicals are spread annually from the dried surface, exerting a detrimental effect on all life around. The effect of pollution is facilitated by the fact that the Aral Sea is located on the path of a strong jet of air that contributes to the removal of dust in the high layers of the atmosphere, so it is not surprising that traces of salt flows are observed in Europe and even in (who would have thought!) The Arctic Ocean .

With a decrease in the water level in the Aral Sea decreasedlevel and groundwater, accelerated the process of desertification of the surrounding area. Since the mid-1990s, instead of the lush greenery of shrubs, trees and grasses, only rare tufts of plants (halophytes and xerophytes) adapted to dry and saline soils can be seen here. Mammals and birds, while not more than half of the native species survived. The climate within the 100-km zone from the original shoreline has changed: it became colder in winter, hotter in summer, the level of air humidity decreased, which naturally affected the amount of precipitation, droughts became more frequent and the vegetation period decreased.

You can destroy the natural environment very quickly, andrestoring it is a long and difficult process. The full restoration of the Aral Sea, alas, is no longer possible, but attempts are being made (and not without success) to restore the northern - Small Aral. The Government of Kazakhstan, with the assistance of the World Bank, is taking measures to increase the water level in it and, thus, reduce its salinity.