who is responsible for what is happened to the aral sea disaster

Reproduced, with permission, from: Micklin, P. P. 1988. Dessication of the Aral Sea: A h2o management disaster in the Soviet Union. Scientific discipline 241: 1170-76.

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Desiccation of the Aral Sea: A H2o Management Disaster in the Soviet Union

PHILIP P. MICKIN[one]

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The Aral Ocean in the Soviet Wedlock, formerly the earth's 4th largest lake in area, is disappearing. Between 1960 and 1987, its level dropped near 13 meters, and its surface area decreased by 40 percentage. Recession has resulted from reduced inflow caused primarily by withdrawals of water for irrigation. Severe environmental problems accept resulted. The sea could dry to a remainder brine lake. Local water use is being improved and schemes to salvage parts of the ocean have been proposed. Nevertheless, preservation of the Aral may require implementation of the controversial projection to divert water from western Siberia into the Aral Sea basin.

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The Aral Bounding main is a huge, shallow, saline body of water located in the deserts of the south-central Soviet Union (Figs. 1 and 2). A last lake (having no outflow), its secular level is adamant past the balance between river and basis-water inflow and precipitation on its surface on the one hand and evaporation from the sea on the other.

The Aral low has repeatedly been flooded and desiccated since the Pliocene (1; ii, pp. 277-297). The nigh recent filling began in the late Pleistocene, around 140,000 years ago, when the Syr Dar'ya flowed into the lowest part of the hollow. The lake did non accomplish great size until the beginning of the Holocene (Recent) Epoch when arrival was increased some threefold by capture of the Amu Dar'ya. Marine fossils, relict shore terraces, archeological sites, and historical records point to repeated major recessions and advances of the sea during the past x,000 years. Until the nowadays century, fluctuations in its surface level were at least twenty 1000 and peradventure more than than 40 thousand (i, 3). Meaning cyclical variations of sea level during this period resulted from major changes in river discharge into it caused by climatic alteration, past natural diversions of the Amu Dar'ya away from the Aral, and during the past 3000 years by man. Human impacts included sizable withdrawals for irrigation from the Amu Dar'ya and diversions of this river westward into lower lying channels and hollows because of the devastation of dikes, dams, and irrigation systems during wars (1, 4).

From the heart 18th century until 1960, body of water level varied 4 to iv.5 m (one, 5). Showtime in 1910, when accurate and regular level observations began, to 1960, the lake was in a "high" phase with level changes of less than 1 m (vi). Nonetheless, during the past 28 years the bounding main'south surface has dropped precipitously. In 1960, body of water level was 53.4 one thousand, area 68,000 km2, volume 1090 km3, average depth 16 1000, and average salinity near 10 m/liter (7, eight). The Aral was the world's fourth largest lake in area, backside the Caspian Bounding main, Lake Superior, and Lake Victoria. By the beginning of 1987, body of water level had fallen 12.nine k, area decreased by 40%, book macerated past 66%, average depth dropped to 9 m, and average salinity risen to 27 g/liter (Fig. 3). The sea had dropped to sixth in area among the earth's lakes.

The contempo recession has been the most rapid and pronounced in 1300 years (1). Human actions accept been the primary cause. Desiccation continues at a rapid footstep and if unchecked will compress the body of water to a briny remnant in the next century. Severe and widespread ecological, economical, and social consequences that are progressively worsening have resulted from the Aral's recession. The scale of impacts on this large a torso of h2o for such a curt period is unprecedented. Soviet commentators in recent years have referred to the Aral state of affairs every bit "ane of the very greatest ecological problems of our century" (9), an "impending disaster" (x), and as "a dangerous experiment with nature" (11).

Water Balance Changes

Equally in the past, the crusade of the modern recession of the Aral is a marked diminution of inflow from the Syr Dar'ya and Amu Dar'ya, the body of water'south sole sources of surface water inflow, that has increasingly shifted the h2o residue toward the negative side (Table 1). The trend of river discharge has been steadily downward since 1960 (Fig. four).

A shrinking body of water is dominantly a negative feedback machinery, that is, one that resists change and promotes stability. Evaporative losses significantly diminish as surface area decreases, pushing the water balance arrangement toward equilibrium. Hence, in the future, bold some level of surface- and ground-water inflow, the Aral should stabilize. All the same, this is not likely to occur for decades. The primary determinant of level change, the difference betwixt inflow and net evaporation, is currently large and negative. It will only decrease slowly as the sea shrinks to a much smaller size.

The causes of reduced arrival since 1960 are both climatic and anthropogenic. A series of dry years in the 1970s, particularly 1974-75, lowered discharge from the zones of flow formation of the Amu Dar'ya and Syr Dar'ya around 30 km3 per year (27%) compared to the boilerplate during the preceding 45 years (8; 12, p. 227). The 1982 to 1986 period has as well suffered low flows (12-14). Nevertheless, the about important factor reducing river catamenia has been big consumptive withdrawals (that is, water withdrawn from rivers that is non returned to them), overwhelmingly for irrigation. Average almanac river catamenia in the zones of formation of these rivers (high mountains to the southeast of the Aral Sea) averaged 111 km3 from 1926 to 1970 (12) . Under "natural" atmospheric condition merely about one-half of this would reach the Aral considering of losses to evaporation, transpiration, and filtration as these rivers cross the deserts and flow through their deltas (12).

Irrigation has been skillful in the lower reaches of the Amu Dar'ya and Syr Dar'ya for several millennia (4). In 1900 more than 3 million hectares were under irrigation in the Aral Sea basin, growing to 5 million by 1960 when consumptive withdrawals for information technology reached an estimated xl km3 (1, fifteen). Nevertheless, irrigation withdrawals before the 1960s did not measurably reduce arrival to the Aral. These artificial losses were compensated past correspondingly large reductions of natural evaporation, transpiration, and filtration, specially in the deltas of the Syr Dar'ya and Amu Dar'ya where truncated spring floods diminished floodplain inundation, the surface area of deltaic lakes, and the surface area of phreatophytes (12, xv, 16). Likewise, the installation of drainage networks increased irrigation return flows to these rivers.

Past 1980, the irrigated expanse in the Aral Ocean basin had grown to nearly half dozen.v 1000000 hectares (17; 18, pp. 226-230). Withdrawals from the Amu Dar'ya and Syr Dar'ya for all purposes were 132 km3 with consumptive use, including evaporation from reservoirs, of 85 km3 (18, pp. 212-215). Irrigation accounted for 120 km3 of withdrawals (91%) and for 80 km3 of consumptive utilise (94%). Extrapolation, from data on surface area and rates of growth of irrigation for administrative units in the Aral Body of water basin for the flow 1980 to 1984 and 1980 to 1986, indicates that in 1987 about vii.6 million hectares were irrigated (17). Betwixt 1980 and 1987, in that location was a major comeback in irrigation efficiency in the Aral Sea basin which lowered average withdrawals from xviii,500 to thirteen,700 m3/ha (19). Thus a 17% larger expanse was irrigated with considerably less water (104 km3). Information on consumptive utilize in 1987 is not available simply it probably remained near the 1980 figure because of the efficiency gains (that is, a college percent of withdrawn water was used by crops and a lower per centum was render flows).

Factors that compensated the earlier growth of consumptive withdrawals reached their limits in the 1960s (2, 12, fifteen, 16). Hence, as irrigation expanded during the past three decades, the increase in water use has not been balanced by commensurate reductions in natural losses. Furthermore, the irrigation of huge new areas such as the Golodnaya (Hungary) Steppe forth the Syr Dar'ya consumed huge volumes of water to make full soil pore spaces (20), newly created giant reservoirs required filling and heightened evaporative losses, increased flushing of soils to annul secondary salinization raised water use, and new irrigation systems discharged their drainage h2o into the desert or large hollows where information technology evaporated.

The Karakum Canal has been the single nigh important factor contributing to the diminution of arrival to the Aral in recent decades. The largest and longest irrigation culvert in the Soviet Union, it stretches 1300 km w from the Amu Dar'ya into the Kara-Kum Desert (Fig. 1). Between 1956 and 1986, 225 km3 were diverted into it equally annual withdrawals rose from less than 1 km3 to more 14 km3 (21). All of the water sent forth the Karakum Culvert is lost to the Aral.

Environmental Impacts

During planning for a major expansion of irrigation in the Aral Sea basin, conducted in the 1950s and 1960s, it was predicted that this would reduce inflow to the sea and substantially reduce its size. At the time, a number of experts saw this as a worthwhile tradeoff: a cubic meter of river water used for irrigation would bring far more value than the same cubic meter delivered to the Aral Ocean (6, 22-25). They based this adding on a unproblematic comparing of economic gains from irrigated agriculture against tangible economic benefits from the sea. Indeed, the ultimate shrinkage of the Aral to a residue brine lake as all its inflow was devoted to agriculture and other economic needs was viewed as both desirable and inevitable.

These experts largely dismissed the possibility of significant adverse environmental consequences accompanying recession. For case, some scientists claimed the bounding main had little or no impact on the climate of adjacent territory and, therefore, its shrinkage would not perceptibly alter meteorological conditions beyond the immediate shore zone (six). They also foresaw little threat of large quantities of salt blowing from the dried bottom and damaging agronomics in side by side areas (22). This theory rested, in the beginning identify, on the assumption that during the initial phases of the Aral's drying simply calcium carbonate and calcium sulfate would be deposited on the onetime lesser. Although friable and bailiwick to deflation, these salts have low found toxicity. Second, it was causeless that the more harmful compounds, chiefly sodium sulfate and sodium chloride, which would be deposited as the sea continued to shrink and salinize, would not exist diddled off because of the formation of a durable crust of sodium chloride. Some optimists even suggested the dried bottom would be suitable for farming (22).

Although a minor number of scientists warned of serious negative effects from the sea'southward desiccation, they were not heeded (fourteen, 24). Time has proved the more than cautious scientists not only correct but conservative in their predictions. A brief discussion of the about pronounced impacts follows.

Bottom exposure and salt and dust storms. The Aral contained an estimated 10 billion metric tons of salt in 1960, with sodium chloride (56%), magnesium sulfate (26%), and calcium sulfate (fifteen%) the dominant compounds (22). As the sea shrank, enormous quantities of salts accumulated on its former bottom. This results from capillary uplift and subsequent evaporation of heavily mineralized footing h2o along the shore, seasonal level variations that promote evaporative deposition, and to wintertime storms that throw precipitated sulfates on the beaches (25-27).

Much of the 27,000 km2 of bottom exposed between 1960 and 1987 is salt-covered. In contrast to earlier predictions that were based on a faulty understanding of the geochemistry of a shrinking and salinizing Aral, not merely have calcium sulfate and calcium carbonate deposited merely sodium chloride, sodium sulfate, and magnesium chloride have every bit well (24). Because of the concentration of toxic salts in the upper layer, a friable and mobile surface, and lack of nutrients and fresh water, the former bottom is proving extremely resistant to natural and artificial revegetation (26, 28).

However, the most serious trouble is the blowing of common salt and grit from the dried bottom. There is as notwithstanding no evidence of the formation of a sodium chloride crust that would retard or prevent deflation (24). The largest plumes arise from the upwardly to 100-km-wide stale stripe along the sea's northeastern and eastern coast and extend for 500 km (Fig. two) (11, 25). Recent reports state traces of Aral salt have been found l000 km to the southeast of the sea in the fertile Fergana Valley, in Georgia on the Black Sea declension, and fifty-fifty along the arctic shore of the Soviet Wedlock (29, 30).

Soviet scientists report major storms as beginning in 1975 when they were start detected on satellite imagery. Between 1975 and 1981, scientists confirmed 29 large storms from analysis of Meteor (a high-resolution conditions satellite) images (11). During this period, up to ten major storms occurred in 1 twelvemonth. Recent observations by Soviet cosmonauts betoken the frequency and magnitude of the storms is growing equally the Aral recedes (31). Sixty percent of the observed storms moved in a southwest direction which carried them over the delta of the Amu Dar'ya, a region with major ecological and agricultural importance (11). Twenty-five percent traveled w and passed over the Ust-Yurt plateau, which is used for livestock pasturing.

An estimated 43 million metric tons of salt annually are carried from the sea'southward dried bottom into adjacent areas and deposited as aerosols by rain and dew over 150,000 to 200,000 km2 (11, 13, 32). The dominant compound in the plumes is calcium sulfate but they also incorporate significant amounts of sodium chloride, sodium sulfate, magnesium sulfate, and calcium bicarbonate (33). Sodium chloride and sodium sulfate are peculiarly toxic to plants, specially during flowering. In spite of the expected increment in the surface area of sometime lesser, salt export is predicted to diminish slightly to 39 million metric tons per year by the year 2000 every bit a outcome of the exhaustion of deflatable materials, the leaching of salt into deeper layers, and through the process of diagenesis of the older surface (32).

Loss of biological productivity. Every bit the sea has shallowed, shrunk, ant salinized, biological productivity has steeply declined. By the early 1980s, 20 of 24 native fish species disappeared and the commercial catch (48,000 metric tons in 1957) fell to aught (2, pp. 507-524; thirteen, 26). Major fish canneries at Aral'sk and Muynak, formerly ports but now some altitude from the shore, take slashed their work strength and barely survive on the processing of high price fish brought from as far away as the Atlantic, Pacific, and Arctic oceans (29, 30, 34, 35). Both plants in 1988 will be switched to khozraschet (economic principles of management) and may be forced to close (30). Residual commercial fishing continues in lakes such every bit Sudoch'ye in the Amu Dar'ya Delta and in the 2 largest irrigation drainage water lakes that have formed (Sarykamysh and Aydarkul'). However, levels of pesticides and herbicides, from cottom field runoff, in fish taken from Sarykamysh and Aydarkul' are dangerously high, prompting a halt to commercial fishing in the former in 1987 (14, 29).

Employment directly and indirectly related to the Aral fishery, reportedly 60,000 in the 1950s, has disappeared (36). The demise of commercial fishing and other adverse consequences of the sea's drying has led to an exodus from Aral'sk and Muynak whereas many former angling villages have been completely abandoned (30, 34). During recent years, more than 40,000 accept left the districts of Kzyl-Orda Oblast that adjoin the Aral on the e and northeast (thirty).

Deterioration of deltaic ecosystems. The shrinking of the Aral forth with the profoundly diminished period of the Syr Dar'ya and Amu Dar'ya has had particularly devastating effects on these rivers' deltas (11, 13, xiv, 26, 37). Prior to 1960, these oases surrounded past desert not only possessed dandy ecological value considering of the richness of their flora and fauna but provided a natural feed base for livestock, spawning grounds for commercial fish, reeds harvested for industry, and opportunities for commercial hunting and trapping. Deltaic environments deteriorated as river period macerated and body of water level fell, leading to the drying or entrenchment of distributary and even main channels, the cessation of spring inundation of floodplains, and the shrinking or disappearance of lakes. Between 1960 and 1974, the expanse of natural lakes in the Syr Dar'ya Delta decreased from 500 km2 to several tens of square kilometers, whereas in the Amu Dar'ya Delta from the 1960s until 1980, 11 of the 25 largest lakes disappeared and all but 4 of the residue significantly receded (38, 39).

Native plant communities have degraded and disappeared. Tugay forests, composed of dense stands of phreatophytes mixed with shrubs and tall grasses fringing delta artillery and channels to a depth of several kilometers, have particularly suffered. The expanse of Tugay in the Amu Dar'ya Delta, estimated at 13,000 km2 in the l950s, had been halved by 1980 (37). The major crusade of deltaic vegetation impoverishment has been the 3 to 8 thou drop of ground water forth with the end of floodplain inundation.

Degradation of vegetational complexes and drops in the h2o table accept initiated desertification in both deltas. Satellite imagery and photography from manned spacecraft point that desert is spreading quickly (11) . Livestock raising has also suffered considerable impairment because of a pass up in yields and a reduction of suitable areas. In the Amu Dar'ya Delta betwixt 1960 and 1980 the surface area of hayfields and pastures decreased by 81% and yields cruel by more than 50% (26).

Habitat deterioration has harmed delta fauna, which once included muskrat, wild boar, deer, jackal, many kinds of birds, and even a few tigers. At one fourth dimension 173 brute species lived around the Aral, mainly in the deltas; 38 accept survived (26, thirty). Commercial hunting and trapping have largely disappeared. The harvest of muskrat skins in the Amu Dar'ya Delta has fallen to 2,500 per yr from 650,000 in 1960 (14)

Climate changes. Earlier claims to the contrary nonetheless, enquiry over the past two decades has established that the Aral affects temperature and moisture conditions in an adjacent stripe estimated to be 50 to fourscore km broad on its northward, east, and west shores and 200 to 300 km wide to the due south and southwest (13, 26, forty). With contraction, the bounding main's influence on climate has substantially diminished. Summers have become warmer, winters cooler, spring frosts later, and fall frosts earlier, the growing flavour has shortened, humidity has lowered, and there has been an overall tendency toward greater continentality. The most noticeable changes accept occurred in the Amu Dar'ya Delta. At Kungrad, at present located virtually 100 km s of the Aral, comparing of the period 1935 to 1960 with that of 1960 to 1981 indicates that relative humidity diminished substantially, the average May temperature rose 3 to three.2 degrees Celsius, and the average October temperature decreased 0.vii to 1.five degrees Celsius (l3). The growing season in the northern Amu Dar'ya Delta has been reduced an average of 10 days, forcing cotton wool plantations to switch to rice growing (14, 26).

Ground-water depression. The drib in the level of the Aral has been accompanied by a reduction of the pressure and menstruum of artesian wells and a decline of the h2o table all effectually the sea (xiii). Soviet scientists accept estimated that a 15-m sea level drop, likely by the early on 1990s, could reduce footing-water levels by seven to 12 1000 in the coastal zone and affect the h2o table 80 to 170 km inland (41). The sinking h2o table has had significant agin impacts outside the Amu Dar'ya and Syr Dar'ya deltas, drying wells and springs and degrading natural plant communities, pastures, and hayfields.

Water supply and wellness concerns. The reduction of river period, salinization and pollution of what is left, and lowering of groundwater levels has caused drinking water supply issues for communities around the sea. Problems are especially acute in the more heavily populated deltas (xiii, 26). To provide a reliable, safe h2o supply to Nukus (1987 population of 152,000) in the Amu Dar'ya Delta, a 200-km pipeline costing 200 million rubles (officially a ruble is about $ane.threescore) is under structure from the upstream Tyuyamuyun Reservoir. The declining quality of drinking water is cited every bit the chief factor increasing intestinal illnesses, particularly amidst children, and pharynx cancer incidence in the lower reaches of the Amu Dar'ya and Syr Dar'ya (26, 34, 35). There is fear of epidemics because of the deterioration of the quality of the h2o supply and the increasing rodent population (8, 35). Desert animals who use the Aral Sea equally a drinking source have died from its profoundly increased mineral content (26).

Economic losses. There are no accurate figures on amercement associated with the Aral's recession. Soviet scientists and economists have attempted to approximate the costs of the more tangible consequences. A 1979 written report concluded that aggregate damages inside the Uzbek Republic, which has suffered the greatest harm, totaled 5.iv to 5.7 billion rubles (42). A 1983 evaluation concluded that annual damages in the lower form of the Amu Dar'ya were 92.6 million rubles with the following distribution: agriculture, 42%; fisheries, 31%; hunting and trapping, thirteen%; river and sea transport, 8%; and living and working conditions, 6% (26). A contempo pop article listed, without elaborating, a figure of 1.five to 2 billion rubles as the annual losses for the entire Aral Body of water region (14).

The Fate of the Aral

What does the future agree for the Aral Sea? If surface inflow remains at the low levels of recent years, it averaged only 5.2 km3/ year between 1981 and 1985, and was reportedly near zippo in 1986 (7, 14, 43), shrinkage will go on into the side by side century. By the year 2000, the sea could consist of a principal torso in the due south with the salinity of the open sea and several small brine lakes in the n (Fig. 3). Afterward, assuming a residual inflow of irrigation drainage water and ground water totaling around 10 km3, the southern body of water will separate into two parts with an aggregate area around 12,000 km2, 8% of the Aral's size in 1960 (44). Salinity would rise to 140 chiliad/liter.

This scenario is not inevitable. The bounding main's recession could exist halted if considerably more than h2o reached it. Water balance calculations bespeak that to maintain the 1987 size (41,000 km2) would require river inflow around 30 km3/year (27, table 2). This discharge is possible if consumptive irrigation withdrawals from the Amu Dar'ya and Syr Dar'ya were to be markedly reduced. However, irrigation is the economic mainstay of the Aral Sea basin where over 90% of the harvest comes from irrigated lands (45). Although plans for irrigation expansion in the Aral Ocean basin have been somewhat scaled back under the Gorbachev regime in light of the region's ecological problems and strained water residue, many water direction experts meet continued growth of this sector a necessity (45, 46).

There is a national campaign to better irrigation h2o employ. Reclamation agencies are implementing, among other measures, reconstruction of one-time irrigation systems, automation and remote control of water allocation and delivery systems for unabridged river basins, apply of more than efficient water application techniques (for example, sprinklers, drip and subsurface), and "programming" of harvests, involving the utilise of simulation-optimization models to minimize inputs and maximize outputs given a set of production objectives and constraints (45, 47).

The average efficiency of irrigation systems (ratio of h2o used productively at the fields to headworks withdrawals) was around 60% in the Aral Sea basin in the early 1980s, the lowest of any region in the Soviet Marriage (48). On the basis of 1980 irrigation withdrawals of 120 km3, raising average arrangement efficiency from sixty% to betwixt 74 and eighty%, the goal (49, 50) would allow irrigation of the same area with 23 to 30 km3 lower annual withdrawals. However, the cyberspace addition to river flow would be less because of the diminution of render flows from irrigated areas associated with the increase in efficiency. Furthermore, a water apply limitation program, introduced for the region in 1982 considering of the increasingly dire water supply situation, mandated lower ingather application rates and may already have raised boilerplate efficiencies to nearly 70% (xix). Using 1987 withdrawals (104 km3) and assuming an efficiency of 70%, the improvement to 74 to eighty% would just save six to 13 km3/yr. The virtually knowledgeable Soviet experts guess realistic hereafter water savings from renovation of irrigation systems in the Aral Sea bowl at 10 to 22 km3/yr (43, 46, 49, 50).

Modernization of irrigation in the Aral bowl is necessary not simply to save h2o but to improve yields, prevent secondary salinization, and cope with waterlogging. Still, it is an expensive and time-consuming process. Price of a comprehensive program could achieve 95 billion rubles (51). Furthermore, most of the "freed" water will be needed to gargle new lands to provide more food for the region's rapidly expanding population, growing around 2.vii% annually, as well as to run into increasing municipal and industrial water needs (46, 47, 50).

Basis water could make a larger contribution to regional water supplies. Subsurface storage is huge only fiddling used (47). However, much of the reserve lies at swell depth or is heavily mineralized. Up to 17 km3/year of ground water could exist consumed in the Aral Ocean basin without adversely affecting river flow (18, pp. 182-183).

Some other ways of supplementing the Aral's water balance would exist to aqueduct irrigation drainage water to it. Soviet experts estimate that 34 km3 of drainage were generated annually in the Aral basin in the early on 1980s (12). Approximately 21 km3 returned to rivers, leaving 13 km3 to evaporate from the desert or accumulate in depressions (12). The lakes formed in the latter concord around 40 km3 (fifty). Mayhap 10 to 12 km3 of drainage water annually could exist sent to the Aral by collectors running parallel to the Amu Dar'ya and Syr Dar'ya (ix). However, drainage water is saline, often above 3 g/liter, and is pesticide- and herbicide-laden; drainage should be purified and demineralized before discharge to the sea (27, 29, 52). Indeed, the need to proceed this flow out of the ii rivers stimulates interest in such a scheme as much equally the need to provide more than water to the Aral. Work on an enormous project to collect drainage water forth 1500 km of the right banking company of the Amu Dar'ya for delivery to the Aral has started (53). At the aforementioned time, the plan to meliorate irrigation efficiency volition significantly reduce the amount of drainage h2o available for commitment to the Aral.

Channeling irrigation drainage water to the sea volition dry the two largest lakes supported from this source, Aydarkul' and Sarykamysh, with areas in backlog of 2000 km2 each (Fig. one). Since their origins in the 1960s, each has developed considerable wildlife, fishery, and recreation importance (47).

Schemes to Preserve the Aral

Delivery of 12 km3 of irrigation drainage water plus four km3 of internet ground-h2o inflow to the Aral would support a body of water of only xx,000 km2 whose salinity would be high (forty to 50 k/liter) and ecological value and economic uses minimal (27, 43). Hence, additional measures will be necessary if the Aral is to exist preserved every bit a greatly shrunken merely viable body of water and to reduce the adverse impacts of its recession. One approach, beginning suggested in the 1970s, is to partition the bounding main with dikes to preserve low salinity conditions in a portion of it while allowing the balance to dry or get a remainder brine lake receiving outflow from the freshened part (5, 27, 41). Well-nigh of the designs are obsolete since they would crave considerably more surface inflow (25 to xxx km3/yr) than realistically will be available. A scheme put forward in 1986 to preserve a 12,000-km2 sea with a salinity of viii 1000/liter in the Eastern Basin (Fig. two) shows some hope as it needs arrival of only 8 to ix km3/year (44).

A recent proposal, which assumes meager future inflow to the sea, focuses on restoring and preserving the deltas of the Amu Dar'ya and Syr Dar'ya because of their great ecological and economic value (13). The plan for the former would involve constructing a 225-km dike in front of the delta to create a system of polders with a surface elevation 8 chiliad above electric current ocean level but 5 m below that of 1960. This would enhance ground- and surface-water levels in the delta. Depression globe dams and regulating reservoirs would exist built in the delta to provide further h2o control

A mixture of fresh river water and saline irrigation drainage water would be delivered to the polders. The dried seabed in forepart of the delta would be stabilized to prevent the inroad of sand dunes and the blowing of salt and dust. Boosted efforts would be undertaken to restore plant and brute communities as well as amend irrigation, livestock raising, fisheries, and trapping. The scheme would require drainage h2o and fresh menses totaling 8 to 9 km3/yr. The estimated cost is 406 meg rubles. A similar program for the Syr Dar'ya Delta would require 7 km3/yr.

Regardless of what, if any, scheme is implemented to preserve a remainder Aral Bounding main, it is essential to stabilize the exposed bottom to reduce the blowing of salt and dust. There has been some success in establishing common salt-tolerant xerophytic shrubs (for example, black saksaul--Haloxylon aphullum). But this program is so far express to relatively small areas with the almost favorable weather condition and the survival rate is depression (52, 54). Scientists are besides investigating the feasibility of using mechanical and chemic means of binding the loose surface (13, 28).

The Aral'southward h2o balance could also be improved past importing water from more boiling regions. Such a project was formulated in the 1970s and early 1980s by the National Water Direction Design Institute (Soyuzgiprovodkhoz), a subagency of the Ministry of Reclamation and Water Management (55). Providing more h2o for irrigation was the plan'south main purpose but it would have helped the Aral as well. Primal Asian party and regime officials enthusiastically supported the scheme. Part of the catamenia from the chill draining Ob' and Irtysh rivers, situated to the north in Western Siberia, would be transferred south. Water would be sent 2500 km to the Amu Dar'ya by a system of low dams, pumping stations, and a huge canal (popularly named "Sibaral," Siberian to the Aral Bounding main Canal) (Fig. 1). The project's offset stage (27 km3/year) was undergoing final technology design in 1985 and was scheduled for implementation by the late 1980s or early 1990s.

Following Gorbachev'due south rise to Soviet leadership in March 1985, the fortunes of the Siberian scheme, every bit well equally a companion project for the European part of the country, waned. He and his directorate see north-south water transfer projects as a poor investment of scarce resources and believe less plush, more effective local means of solving water supply problems in the arid regions of the Soviet Spousal relationship are available. The diversion schemes had been periodically attacked during the 1970s and early 1980s by some scientists and a group of Russian national writers who foresaw severe ecological, economic, and cultural damage occurring in northern regions of water export. In a dramatic policy reversal, the Communist Party and Soviet government, in Baronial 1986, ordered a cessation of construction and design piece of work on these projects (56). Withal, the prescript directed that research on the scientific bug associated with water diversions, stressing ecological and economic concerns, keep.

In spite of the interruption of work on water transfers, critics accept remained on the offensive. They have bitterly denounced in the pop Soviet media those directly or indirectly involved with project planning or evaluation (57). Evidently, they fright that the projects could be revived. The most vociferous opponents have engaged in personal attacks as well every bit exaggeration and misrepresention (59).

Conclusions

The modern recession of the Aral Sea, the well-nigh astringent in 1300 years, has resulted from excessive consumptive employ of river inflow to body of water. Processes of potential ecological change were not carefully evaluated nor clearly understood when the water direction decisions leading to the drop in the sea's level were fabricated. Water direction planners ignored warnings of dire consequences from some scientists. The time to come is non bright. River inflow past the mid-1980s was about zero, and the sea continues to rapidly shrink and salinize. The Aral could go several residual, lifeless, alkali lakes early in the next century. Already substantial ecological damages and economical losses will grow worse.

Scientific study of the "Aral trouble" and its amelioration has been a national try since 1976 under the aegis of the State Commission on Science and Engineering (25, 52). The August 1986 decree ordering the abeyance of work on water diversion projects directed that Soviet scientific and planning agencies devise a comprehensive programme for the development of Central Asia to the yr 2010, because the demographic, water management, and agricultural situation (56). Considering of worsening conditions, a special authorities committee was appointed in Dec 1986 to report ecological problems around the Aral (46). Its 1987 study recommended several measures to improve drinking water supplies and health conditions for people living near the sea. The commission as well supported a programme to preserve the delta of the Amu Dar'ya.

In spite of all the studies and recommendations, other than starting construction on a h2o collector to carry irrigation drainage from the Amu Dar'ya basin to the sea, a project that will take years to consummate, the government has taken no physical measures to meliorate the status of the Aral. Help may come besides late: some say that the body of water may be beyond rescue (60).

Still, local inhabitants are far from accepting this grim fate. Although party and authorities officials from the 2 republics adjacent to the Aral (Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan) accept been silent for the last several years, scientists, writers, and journalists from the region continue to plead angrily and sometimes eloquently, in the regional likewise as national press, for activity to relieve the Aral (ix, 10, 29, 30, 34, 35).

Every bit the situation worsens, those living around the sea will put great pressure on the national government to resurrect the Siberian diversion plan in order to provide minimum inflow to the Aral while maintaining irrigation. The campaign has already begun. In March 1988, the president of the Uzbek Academy of Sciences forth with a well-known skillful on the Aral Sea problem publicly stated that the ecological and social and economical difficulties of the Aral region could not be solved without diversion of water from Siberian rivers (46). The Moscow contributor of the Manchester Guardian reported that Gorbachev, during his April 1988 visit to Tashkent, capital of the Uzbek Republic, after pleas from local officials, agreed to a new feasibility study of the projection (59).

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The author is a professor in the Department of Geography, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI 49008

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REFERENCES AND NOTES

1. A. S. Kes', Izv. Akad. Nauk SSSR Ser. Geogr. 4, 8 (1978).

2. Fifty. A. Zenkevich, Biologiya Morey SSSR (Akademiya Nauk SSSR, Moscow, 1963).

3. O. V. Zuyeva, Probl. Osvoyeniya Pustyn' 3, 40 (1987).

4. M. S. Lunezheva, A. G. Kiyatkin, Five. P. Polishchuk, Gidrotekh. Melior. ten, 65 (1987).

5. Thousand. I. L'vovich and I. D. Tsigel'naya, Izv. Akad. Nauk SSSR Ser. Geogr. one, 42 (1978).

half dozen. V. N. Kunin, Priroda 1, 36 (1967).

7. Almanac data on the Aral Bounding main water rest, 1926 to 1985, were compiled past A. Asarin and Five. Bortnik and provided past the Institute of Water Problems, USSR University of Sciences, and the Hydro Facilities Blueprint Insistute (Gidroproyekt), Dec 1987.

8. D. Ya. Ratkovich, 5. I. Kuksa, L. V. Ivanova, Vodn. Resur. vi, 42 (1987).

nine. Due east. Yusopov, Pravda Vostoka, 10 September 1987, p. iii.

10. T. Kaipbergenov, Literaturnaya Gazeta, 6 May 1987, p. half dozen.

11. Al. A. Grigor'yev, Probl. Osvoyeniya Pustyn' 1, 2 (1987).

12. I. A. Shiklomanov, Anthropogenyy Izmeneniya Vodnosti Rek (Gidrometeoizdat, Leningrad, 1979) pp. 225-240.

13. 5. A. Dukhovnyy, P. M. Razakov, I. B. Ruziyev, Grand. A. Kosnazarov, Probl. Osvoyeniya Pustyn' 6, iii (1984).

14. V. Kovalev, Zvezda Vostoka, 12, 3 (1986).

15. Goskomgidromet and Gosudarstvennyy Gidrologicheskiy Institut, Mezhzonal'noye pereraspredeleniye vodnykh resursov, A. A. Sokolov and I. A. Shiklomanov, Eds. (Gidrometeoizdat, Leningrad, 1980), pp. 312-322.

16. I. B. Vol'ftsun, Chelovek i stikhiya '84 (Gidrometeoizdat, Leningrad, 1983), pp. 96-98.

17. Narodnoye kheozyaytsvo SSSR za 70 permit (Finansy i statistika, Moscow, 1987), p. 245; Naradnoye khezyaystvo Kazakhstana v. 1984g. (Republic of kazakhstan, Alma-Ata, 1985) pp. 97-98.

18. G. V. Voropayev et. al., Ekonomiko-Geograficheskiye Aspekty Formirovaniya Territorial'nykh Edinits 5 Vodnom Khozyaystve Strany (Nauka, Moscow, 1987).

19. K. Lapin, O. Lebedev, Five. Dukhovnyy, Pravda Vostoka, 29 June 1988, p. eight.

xx. Due north. T. Kuznetsov and T. P. Gryaznova, Probl. Osvoyeniya Pustyn' one, 10 (1987).

21. I. Bogdanov, Soviet Life (September 1987), pp. 35-36; B. T. Kirsta, Probl. Osvoyeniya Pustyn' one, 19 (1988); too reported at a meeting with officials of "Karakumstroy," Ashkhabad, Soviet Marriage, 19 October 1987.

22. Institut Geografii, Problema Aral'skogo Morya, S. Yu. Geller, Ed. (Nauka, Moscow, 1969), pp. 5-25.

23. B. Fedorovich, Deserts Given Water (Strange Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1958), pp. 85-96.

24. 5. One thousand. Borovskiy, Izv. Akas. Nauk SSSR, Ser. Geogr. 5, 35 (1978).

25. V. . Kotlyakov et al., Obshchestv. Nauki Uzb. 10, 23 (1987).

26. I. P. Gerasiov et al., Probl. Osvoyeniya Pustyn' 6, 22 (1983).

27. I. M. Chernenko, ibid. 1, 3 (1986).

28. Due south. K. Kabulov and Kh. Sheripov, ibid. ii, 21 (1983); S. M. Kabulov, ibid. 3, 16 (1984); Thou. Sh. Kshankulov, Geogr. Prirodnyye Resur. ii, 45 (1985).

29. A. Kudryashov, Pravda Vostoka, 10 Jan 1988, p. ii.

30. A. Lapin, Sobesednik 13, 6 (March 1988).

31. I. Lein, Pravda Vostoka, 17 November 1987, p. 4.

32. I. Five. Rubanov and N. M. Bogdanova, Probl. Osvoyeniya Pustyn' 3, 9 (1987).

33. Yard. Ye. Bel'gibayev, ibid., Probl. Osvoyeniya Pustyn' ane, 72 (1984).

34. A. Nurpeisov, Ogonyok 1, 23 (1988).

35. Southward. Azimov, Literaturnyay Gazeta, 26 November 1986, p. xi.

36. D. Ratkovich, A. Frolov, V. Kuksa, Institute of Water Bug, USSR Academy of Sciences, meeting 19 September 1987.

37. A. B. Bakhnev, N. K. Novikova, M. Ye. Shenkareva, Vodn. Resur. 2, 167 (1987).

38. 5. A. Bondarev, Tr. Sredneaziat. Reg. Nauchno-Issledovatel'skogo Inst. 96 (no. 177), 12 (1983).

39. I. A. Klukanova and Ye. N. Mkinayeva, Izvestiya Akad. Nauk SSR Ser. Geogr. 1, fifty (1986).

40. S. K. Kabulov, ibid. ii, 95 (1985).

41. I. Thousand. Chernenko, Probl. Osvoyeniya Pustyn' 3, xviii (1983).

42. K. I. Lapkin and E. D. Rakhimov, ibid. two, 84 (1979).

43. G. V. Voropayev et al., Establish of Water Bug, USSR Academy of Sciences, meeting, sixteen September 1987.

44. I. 1000. Chernenko, Probl. Osvoyeniya Pustyn' 4, 53 (1987).

45. N. F. Vasilyev, Gidrotekh. melior. xi, 6 (1987).

46. P. Khabibullayev and Five. Dukhovnyy, Pravda Vostoka, three March 1988, p. three.

47. P. Micklin, Soviet Geography Studies in Our Fourth dimension, L. Holzner and J. One thousand. Knapp, Eds. (Univ. of Wisconsin Press, Milwaukee, 1987), pp. 229-261.

48. V. Kotlyakov, Pravda, 14 April 1988, p.three.

49. N. R. Khamrayev, Probl. Osvoyeniy Pustyn' 1, 11 (1988).

50. A. A. Rafikov, Geogr. Prirodny. Resur. 4, 44 (1986).

51. N. Reymers, Trud, ane December 1987, p. 4.

52. A. Due south. Kes' and Yu. Northward. Kulkov, Izv. Akad. Nauk SSSR Ser. Geogr. 4, 143 (1987).

53. G. Diov, Izvestiya, 20 September 1987, p. ii.

54. Fifty. Perlov, Lesnaya Promyshlennost', 9 April 1988, p. 4; L. Levin, Pravda Vostoka, 11 May 1988, p. 2.

55. P. Micklin, Soviet Geogr. 5, 287 (1986); Cent. Asian Sur. 2, 67 (1987).

56. "5 Tsentral'nom Komitete KPSS i Sovete Ministrov SSSR," Pravda, xx August 1986, p. one.

57. Due south. Zaligin, Kommunist 13, 63 (1985); Nash Sovrem. 1, 113 (1987); Due south. P. Zaligin, Povorot (Mysl', Moscow, 1987); V. Leybovskiy, Ogonyok 40, 24 (1987).

58. "Inverv'yu po pros'be chitateley," Gidrotekh, Melior. v, 66 (1987); Nov. Mir 7, 181 (1987); V. Korzun, Zvezda Vostoka 9, 122 (1987).

59. M. Walker, Manchester Guardian Weekly, 24 April 1988, p. 8.

threescore. During a fall 1987 visit to the Soviet Union, P.P.M. spoke with several Soviet water management experts who held this stance.

61. NOAA-ix AVHRR image record (GIL ane 226:North:46 08606 2 92AN9 LVS, 14 August 1986).

62. S. L. Vendrov, Problemy Preobrazovaniya Rechnykh Sistem SSSR (Gidrometeoizdat, Moscoa 1979), p. 56, figure 4.

63. Supported past the National Quango for Soviet and East European Enquiry, the National Academy of Sciences, and the Lucia Harrison Fund of the Department of Geography, Western Michigan University. I thank the Constitute of H2o Issues, Institute of Geography, and Desert Institute of the Soviet Academy of Sciences for providing data and other information that aided this research and B. Fogle for assistance in the preparation of the figures.

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