Physiographic changes

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.

Aral Sea A satellite image of the northern portion of the Aral Sea in 2000; the lighter-coloured areas represent sections of the seabed that have been exposed since 1960. U.S. Geological Survey

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.

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.

Aral Sea A satellite image of the Aral Sea in 2010. The black line imposed on the image represents the Aral Sea's approximate shoreline in 1960. NASA

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.