Where is the Aral Sea located?

The Aral Sea stands at the boundary between Kazakhstan to the north and
Uzbekistan to the south. It was once a large saltwater lake of Central Asia and
the world’s fourth largest body of inland water.

Why has the Aral Sea been shrinking?

The primary cause behind the shrinking of the Aral Sea is the diversion (for
purposes of irrigation) of the main sources of inflowing water, the riverine
waters of the Syr Darya (ancient Jaxartes River) in the north and the Amu Darya
(ancient Oxus River) in the south, which historically discharged into the Aral
Sea.

How deep was the Aral Sea?

The average depth of the Aral Sea was a relatively shallow 53 feet (16 meters)
or so. It descended to a maximum of 226 feet (69 meters) off the western shore.

How big was the Aral Sea originally?

In 1960 the surface of the Aral Sea lay 175 feet (53 meters) above sea level and
covered an area of some 26,300 square miles (68,000 square km). Its greatest
extent from north to south was almost 270 miles (435 km), while from east to
west, it was just over 180 miles (290 km).
The diminishing sea

Physiographic changes

Aral Sea
In 1960 the surface of the Aral Sea lay 175 feet (53 metres) above sea level and
covered an area of some 26,300 square miles (68,000 square km). The Aral
Sea’s greatest extent from north to south was almost 270 miles (435 km), while
from east to west it was just over 180 miles (290 km). Although the average
depth was a relatively shallow 53 feet (16 metres) or so, it descended to a
maximum of 226 feet (69 metres) off the western shore. The sea’s northern
shore—high in some places, low in others—was indented by several large bays.
The low-lying and irregular eastern shores were interrupted in the north by the
huge delta of the Syr Darya and were bordered in the south by a wide tract of
shallow water. The equally vast Amu Darya delta lay on the lake’s southern
shore, and along the lake’s western periphery extended the almost unbroken
eastern edge of the 820-foot- (250-metre-) high Ustyurt Plateau

Beginning about 1960, the Aral Sea’s water level was systematically and
drastically reduced, because of the diversion of water from the Amu Darya and
Syr Darya rivers for purposes of agricultural irrigation. As the Soviet
government converted large acreages of pastures or untilled lands in what are
now Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and elsewhere in Central Asia into
irrigated farmlands by using the waters of the Amu Darya, Syr Darya, and their
tributaries, the amount of water from those rivers that reached the Aral Sea
dropped accordingly. By the 1980s, during the summer months, the two great
rivers virtually dried up before they reached the lake. The Aral Sea began to
quickly shrink because of the evaporation of its now unreplenished waters.
Aral Sea
By 1989 the Aral Sea had receded to form two separate parts, the “Greater Sea”
in the south and the “Lesser Sea” in the north, each of which had a salinity
almost triple that of the sea in the 1950s. By 1992 the total area of the two parts
of the Aral Sea had been reduced to approximately 13,000 square miles (33,800
square km), and the mean surface level had dropped by about 50 feet (15
metres). The governments of the states surrounding the Aral Sea tried to institute
policies to encourage less water-intensive agricultural practices in the regions
south and east of the lake, thus freeing more of the waters of the Amu Darya and
the Syr Darya to flow into the lake and to stabilize its water level. Those policies
succeeded in reducing water usage somewhat but not to the level necessary to
have a significant impact on the amount of water reaching the Aral Sea. In 1994
those same states—Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, with the
addition of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan—established a joint committee to
coordinate efforts to save the Aral Sea. The difficulty of coordinating any plan
between those competing states, however, hampered progress.

Kok-Aral Dam
By the end of the century the Aral Sea had receded into three separate lakes: the
Greater Sea had divided into a long, narrow, western lake and a larger, broader,
eastern lake, with the remains of the Lesser Sea to the north. The water level had
dropped to 125 feet (36 metres) above sea level, and the water volume was
reduced by three-fourths of what it had been in 1960. Almost no water from the
Amu Darya and the Syr Darya ever reached the Aral Sea anymore. In the early
21st century the eastern portion of the Aral Sea suffered the most drastic and
immediate decline—diminishing by some four-fifths between 2006 and 2009.
The World Bank funded the construction of the Kok-Aral Dam (completed
2005) and projects along the Syr Darya that appeared to be preserving the
northern portion of the sea. However, the southern portion—both the eastern and
western lobes but most notably the eastern—continued to shrink, despite some
inflow of water from the north. For periods of time after 2010, the eastern lobe
dried up altogether.

Environmental consequences

Aral Sea
The rapid shrinkage of the Aral Sea led to numerous environmental problems in
the region. By the late 1980s the lake had lost more than half the volume of its
pre-1960 water. The salt and mineral content of the lake rose drastically because
of that, making the water unfit for drinking purposes and killing off the once-
abundant supplies of sturgeon, carp, barbel, roach, and other fishes in the lake.
The fishing industry along the Aral Sea was thus virtually destroyed. The ports
of Aral in the northeast and Mŭynoq in the south were now far from the lake’s
shore. A partial depopulation of the areas along the lake’s former shoreline
ensued. The contraction of the Aral Sea also made the local climate noticeably
harsher, with more-extreme winter and summer temperatures.

Aral Sea
In the late 1990s an island in the Aral Sea, Vozrozhdenya, became the centre of
environmental concern. The Aral Sea derived its name from
the Kyrgyz word Aral-denghiz, “Sea of Islands”—an apt designation, as there
were more than 1,000 islands of a size of 2.5 acres (1 hectare) or more strewn
across its waters. Many of those islands subsequently became joined to the
mainland with the shrinking size of the sea. By the early 21st century the sea had
receded to a level where Vozrozhdenya Island had become a peninsula of the
mainland. The increasing accessibility of the island from the mainland was of
special concern because Vozrozhdenya had been a secret testing ground for
Soviet biological weapons during the Cold War. In addition to
experiments done there on such agents as tularemia and bubonic plague,
hundreds of tons of live anthrax bacteria were buried on the island in the 1980s.
In 1999 still-living anthrax spores were discovered on the site, and in 2002 a
team of workers from the United States cleaned up the burial sites.

Aral Sea: dust storm

The health costs to people living in the area began to emerge soon after water
levels had dropped enough to uncover portions of the seabed. Hardest hit were
the Karakalpaks, who live in the southern portion of the region. Winds blowing
across the exposed seabed produced dust storms that buffeted the region with a
toxic dust contaminated with salt, fertilizer, and pesticides. As a result, the
areas’s inhabitants have suffered health problems at unusually high rates—from
throat cancers to anemia and kidney diseases—and infant mortality in the region
has been among the highest in the world.
 LESSON PLAN

Teacher: Costache Georgian Lucian

School: “Al. I. Cuza” Technological High School
Class:9 th grade
Date: March, 30th
Level: Intermediate
Lesson Topic: The story of Aral Sea
Time: 50 min
Basic Skills: Speaking, Reading, Writing.
Learning Objective: To understand the significance of lakes
Lesson aims: by the end of the lesson the students should be able to :
1. To understand where the Aral Sea is located
2. To identify the positive and negative effects that people had on the world’s
fourth largest body of inland water (Aral Sea)
3. To complete extra activities using vocabulary related to the topic
Materials: handouts, laptop, poster, videos, geography map
Methods: conversation, explanation, example, group work

Thinking activity:
Learners watched a video material about physiographic changes- the
diminishing Aral Sea between 1960-2014. They also read about environmental
consequences for that area (The Aral Sea began to shrink because of evaporation
and agricultural irrigation; the water level had dropped to 36 meters above sea
level; the fishing industry was destroyed; wind blowing across the exposed
seabed produced dust storms)
A glosary of terms related to the topic were explained both in English and
Romanian on the whiteboard.
Writing activity:
They were asked:
-Where is the Aral Sea located?
-Why has the Aral Sea been shrinking?
-How deep was it?
-How big was it?
Learners solved some reading comprehension and extra activities task.
Instruments for assessment:
-Teacher monitors group and individual activities
-Learners’interaction with a partner
-Learners’participation in all tasks and activities
-Learners complete information gaps
-Learners complete a self-assessment sheet