ISS015-E-7874 Click the photo number to access all resolutions available and the database record.
Dust storms have occurred over the Aral Sea region for thousands of years, but the half-century of drastic shrinking of the sea brought an important change in dust composition. By the time this photograph was taken, the dust included fertilizer and pesticide washed into the inland sea from the extensive cotton fields of the Amu Dary’a floodplain. Years of liberal application of agricultural chemicals resulted in concentration of these pollutants on the seabed, now exposed to the wind and transported hundreds of kilometers in a generally easterly direction. Research suggests that the remobilized chemicals are the cause of high rates of many diseases in the populations along the north, east, and southern margins of the Aral Sea.
Negative health effects were only one of the unexpected consequences of the shrinking of the sea, whose retreat made international news for many years due to the loss of the fishing industry and other significant ecological problems. Another negative consequence was the loss of the stabilizing influence of a large body of water on the region’s continental climate (cold winters combined with hot, dry summers). Large bodies of water cool down and heat up more gradually than land surfaces, so they moderate both extreme cold and extreme heat. Since the decline of the Aral Sea, summers have become shorter and hotter, and winters are longer; overall, the climate is drier. Frosts occur later in the spring and earlier in the fall, shortening the growing season.
Restoration efforts are underway for the North Aral Sea, which has been cut off from the South Aral Sea by a dam. In spring 2007, scientists announced that the North Aral Sea was refilling more rapidly than they originally expected.
References
Micklin, P.
(1998). Desiccation of the Aral Sea: A water management disaster in
the Soviet Union. Science, 241, 1170-1176.
doi:10.1126/science.241.4870.1170
