ARAL GONE AWRY

The Aral Sea, located in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan in central Asia. Left: 2000. Middle: 2004. Right: 2009. Once one of the largest inland bodies of salty reservoirs in the world and the second largest sea in Asia, the Aral Sea has shrunk dramatically over the last 30 years. One of the main reasons why is crop irrigation: water has been drawn off by upstream feeder streams. As the sea diminishes, noticeable changes in climate conditions and increasing sandstorms are affecting the area.

Images taken by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite. Credit: NASA.