ARAL SEA'S NEAR DEATH

On April 4, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon visited the Aral Sea, one of the world's worst environmental disasters. National Geographic (April 2010) reports that after 50 years of shrinking, the Aral Sea may be on its way to a partial but slow recovery.

The Aral Sea is a body of salt water in the midst of the Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan deserts. The Amu Darya, one of the rivers that feeds the Aral Sea, is Central Asia's longest river. It originates as snow melt from the Hindu Kush mountain range and twists 1,500 miles (2,414 km) to the Aral Sea. The Syr Darya also feeds the Aral Sea, which is land-locked and has no outlet to the ocean.

The two rivers have supplied the Aral Sea with freshwater for 10,000 years. Until 1960, the Aral Sea was, at 26,000 square miles (67,300 sq. km), the fourth-largest lake in the world in terms of surface area. Over the last 50 years, however, the Aral Sea has been shrinking.

Attempts to turn the desert around the Aral Sea into farmland are to blame. The Soviet Virgin and Idle Lands Program specified tapping the two rivers feeding the Aral Sea to irrigate new mega-farms on the arid lands. The Soviets particularly hoped to become self-sufficient wheat and cotton production. Cotton is among earth's thirstiest crops. Initial success led to population increases near the lake, as more and more of the desert was irrigated.

As water use from the two rivers increased, less freshwater reached the Aral Sea, until finally the streams contributed nothing to the Aral during dry seasons. In fact, for the Amu Darya alone, the flow declined over the years, from 28,000 cubic feet per second (793 cubic meters) to just 5,500 cubic feet (156 cubic meters).

By 2007, the Aral Sea was just 10 percent of its original size and held only one-tenth of its original volume of water. It had split into three lakes, the North Aral Sea and the eastern and western basins of the South Aral Sea. By 2009, the southeastern lake had totally disappeared and the southwestern lake had retreated becoming a narrow strip at the far western edge of the former southern lake.

While the Aral Sea's volume dropped and its salinity more than doubled, raw sewage and increased runoff of fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides killed the sea's fish. The fishery collapsed as the industry that once supported 60,000 jobs and an annual production of 40,000 tons (36,287 metric tons) of fish closed.

The towns of Aralsk and Muynak, once thriving ports on the Aral Sea, now bake in the sun miles from the water. Most people have moved away and the area around the sea is famous for its ghostly landscapes, with rusting ships lying on sand dunes.

Residents of the Aral region have lost more than their livelihood. Since 1960, their incidence of throat cancer has risen to seven times that elsewhere in the former Soviet Union. Cases of kidney disease, gallstones and gastritis are also uncommonly high. The area just south of the Aral Sea has one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world and fully 80 percent of the population has blood disorders. These medical problems are blamed on salt, sand and chemicals blown by huge storms carrying the contaminants as far as the Arctic.

There now may be some hope, however, for the Aral Sea. Researchers are reporting that the North Aral Sea may be recovering. A collaborative effort by the Kazakh government, the World Bank and scientists helped build a dam in 2005 that has raised water levels, decreased salinity and enlarged the North Aral Sea's size by 20 percent.

The North Aral Sea's ecology is recovering also. Formerly suppressed by increased salinity, native plants not seen for years are sprouting around the sea. Migrating birds like pelicans, flamingos and ducks are also returning to the lake. Fish are once again living in the North Aral Sea and locals hope that the fishing industry could experience a rebirth. Unfortunately, the South Aral Sea is still an environmental mess.

Many lessons can be learned from the disaster of the Aral Sea. In many instances, the Earth may be able to recover from all but the worst abuses, given time and a helping hand from science and engineering. Nevertheless, the real key is to keep the environmental disasters from happening in the first place.