NASA has published these two imagesof the Aral Sea , which used to be the fourth biggest lake in the world before the Soviet Union plug into the river that fed it to irrigate monumental agricultural areas . The photo on the right was taken in 2000 . On the leftfield you may see its current state .
In the 1960s , the Soviet Union undertook a major water system diversion project on the arid plains of Kazakhstan , Uzbekistan , and Turkmenistan . The area ’s two major river , feed by snowmelt and hurriedness in far-off great deal , were used to transform the desert into farms for cotton plant and other crops . Before the project , the Syr Darya and the Amu Darya river flowed down from the heap , cut northwest through the Kyzylkum Desert , and finally pooled together in the gloomy part of the washbowl . The lake they made , the Aral Sea , was once the fourth largest in the globe .
Although irrigation made the desert blossom , it scourge the Aral Sea . This series of images from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer ( MODIS ) on NASA ’s Terra orbiter documents the changes . At the commencement of the series in 2000 , the lake was already a fraction of its 1960 extent ( grim line ) . The Northern Aral Sea ( sometimes called the Small Aral Sea ) had separate from the Southern ( gravid ) Aral Sea . The Southern Aral Sea had split into eastern and western lobe that remained tenuously link up at both ends .
Here ’s the lake prior to the Russian stupidity :
You canread more about this environmental crime here .
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