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Aral Sea Disappearing
W33dz writes "The BBC is reporting today that the Aral Sea on the border of the former Soviet republics of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan has lost half its size and 75% of its volume in the last 15 years. The article includes some stunning pictures from both NASA and the new European Space Agency's Envisat satellite.
This seems especially poignant since the US Government is hosting a summit on a proposed International Earth Observation System in Washington this month (BBC article). The meeting is intended to defend much of the Bush Administration's environmental policy and has an amazing guest list filled with the Who's Who of US politics."
Dissappearance, why stop it? There's a lot of things we dont know about nature and ecological climates.
For all we know, this could be based on the 13000 year cycle of the earth.
What does Bush or his policies have to do with a sea in Asia that started to disappear 10 years before he came to office?
I know that people will post comments saying the Bush administration is trying to protect big business in the U.S. and doesn't want the bottom line hurt but has anyone considered that these less developed nations who are pushing for new regulations to be imposed want to see developed nations crippled and therefore the wealth they have redistributed to the rest of the world? Politicians the world over are usually most interested in the money issue - not the earth issues. So, more study is always a good thing, in my opinion. Has any scientist come out and said if we do not start changing things now, in ten years everyone will be dead or in ten years things will be so bad they won't be able to be fixed?
I hate liberals. If you are a liberal, do not reply.
I recall watching a documentary on a Soviet-era facility dedicated to researching and developing bioweapons. As of the late '90s, there were massive stores of anthrax and smallpox buried there, and some of it was leaking.
They mentioned that the sea was shrinking, and that would make it easy for animal life to transfer the deadly pathogens to the mainland.
Or make it easier for the terrorist bad guys to get their hands on it.
I think this is a bad thing all around.
no thanks
Errr, not to nitpick but the Soviet governments that were responsible for the disastrous irrigation projects in Central Asia were led by Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev. The current Bush administration had very little to do with it.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
I watched a video about this in a Political Science class that I had to take. In the video, they showed places that used to be shipping piers that are now desert. The video also stated that 80% of the feeder rivers' water is lost due to evaporation in inefficient irrigation canals.
To the editors: the link to the BBC site links relative to slashdot. Add http:// before the link!
More than enough BS
If anything, the Aral Sea situation shows that these issues are not as simple as environmental extremists would like to make them out to be. Farmers need water. As the article says, their irrigation systems are not efficient, but who will pay for a new one? Perhaps the farmers should be made to pay for such a system, and maybe they should even compensate the fishermen who have lost their livelihoods. But answers that are acceptable to all sides are not so no-brainer obvious.
The word "leaks" is misleading in this sense. The water evaporates from the irrigation ditches and hence, doesn't flow down the river.
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Ok, I buy that, but it would seem that the watershed for the Aral Sea would be rather large. Is it plausible that the evaporated water would escape it before it rained back down again? That's not a rhetorical question; I am genuinely curious how far it would go...
Nonperiodic Central Trajectory
Just to clarify and emphasize why this is a big deal: Aral is not really a sea - it's a lake. A sea is a body of water that has direct exit into an ocean. A lake - doesn't connect to any ocean. Aral Lake is the second largest lake in the world - the first on is Caspian. Both of them are usually referred to as Sea because of their great size.
Just because I don't care, it doesn't mean I don't understand. Homer J. Simpson
Look at this for a more detailed analysis of its watershed.
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It's not necessarily a red herring. If the problem is that a large amount of water is evaporating, it wouldn't necessarily make it back into the watershed, but could be lost through airborne transmission.
It probably depends a lot on the air currents and geography of the region. But it's very surprising how much water can be moved through the air.
Irrigation can also move water from one watershed to another (it does not respect watershed boundaries like rivers tend to).
For a really interesting technical analysis on the Aral sea issue, check out this google cache of a paper by the Land and Water Development Division, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
I remember seeing stories about this back in 1985, for fuqs sake. Back then, more than half of the sea had already dissapeared because of mismanagement by the Soviet government. I've seen several referneces to it since then. If I recall correctly, that first story was from National Geographic, but that was a looong time ago, so don't hold me to that.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Have you ever seen the mouth of the Colorado river near Baja California?
In case you haven't, it's a small stream in a salt-flat. Irrigation projects siphon all of the water out.
The Soviets built massive irrigation projects that drew off of the Volga and other rivers. They were and probaly continue to grow everything from rice to cotton on land that was once parched steppe.
What ends up happening is that since you are spreading billions of cubic feet of water across hundreds or thousands of square miles, the water is used, evaporated (probaly about 75%) or added to the watertable.
Large-scale irrigation causes all sorts of problems. There has been reasearch that hypothised that the added moisture in western states increases the number of thunderstorms and forest fires in the Sierras and Rockies.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
It's very plausible.
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It's basically a matter of spreading water over a larger surface area.
eg. Leave a cup of water out, and pour another cup of water on a large baking sheet. Water on the baking sheet is exposed to more air and thus will evaporate faster.
Here are some resources that you should find interesting: (remove the space that
Ground Water Budgets
http://water.usgs.gov/pubs/circ/circ1186
50% of Maine rainfall evaporates
http://wa.water.usgs.gov/news/news.wr
water.usgs.gov contains all sorts of interesting climate information.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
In other news, the largest freshwater lake in the United States west of the Mississippi no longer exists.
Life's tough. Without the death of Lake Tulare, California would produce far less crops to feed the world. Without the Three Gorges Dam, China would have to build lots of fossil fuel or nuke plants.
It's always bad when we lose a valuable and unique ecosystem like the Aral Sea, but sometimes we humans must make tradeoffs. I have no clue whether the death of the Aral is an appropriate one, but I think we should not presume that the Aral's death is all bad. For example, do more people get fed by selling irrigated cotton that would have been fed by fishing?
"ust to clarify and emphasize why this is a big deal: Aral is not really a sea - it's a lake. A sea is a body of water that has direct exit into an ocean. A lake - doesn't connect to any ocean"
huh? It is a sea, primarily because it is salty.
The vast majority of what is called lakes do connect to the ocean: from Lake Superior to Lake Placid.
See dictionary.com concerning sea " A relatively large body of salt water completely or partially enclosed by land." This applies to the Caspian Sea as well. Lake Superior is the largest lake in the world, not the Caspian Sea.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
This was when George W Bush was working for his dad on a secret CIA project back in 1986.
Not wanting to commit things to paper and have them get out through the Freedom of Information Act, the planning went around by word of mouth. Dick Cheney (fresh back from a mission to pollute the canals on Mars) wanted to tell Bush Jr over the phone to get rid of the CCCP (Russian acronym for USSR).
However, the phone cut off mid-conversation, and all Bush could hear Cheney say was "About Russia? I want you to get rid of the C..."
Bush took this partial instruction literally, and proceeded to eliminate the smaller of Russia's internal salt seas.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
What was that again? Johnson rises to defend Dick's honor?
The largest freshwater lakes in the United States west of the Mississippi (Lake Powell and Lake Mead) are there because of irrigation needs, as are a wide variety of other lakes created by dams on rivers and streams all over the country.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
The Central US will be running out of water in the next 50 to 100 years because of irrigation. Right now, farmers from Texas to the Dakotas get their water from deep aquifers. The problem is that these aquifers were filled by meltwater from the last ice age and are no longer being replenished. Within the next 50 to 100 years, that water will be gone. Plans are already being discussed to divert the Missouri, Mississippi, and Arkansas rivers so that their waters can be used to continue irrigation in America's breadbasket. This could have devistating effects on water supplies and ecosystems downstream.
Smeghead every day of the week.
...compared to the 1000 miles of streams that have been buried in West Virginia. Not to mention the 15%-25% of southern West Virginia's mountains that have been leveled causing the loss of 300,000 acres of highly productive hardwood forests.
All so you can have electricity for 3 cents per kilowatt-hour.
- Hail to our fearless misleader! Fool speed ahead!
We're going to divert rivers. We're going to alter the natural habitats of pretty much all life on the planet. Animal species will go extinct (unless we take the time to specifically preserve each and every one). We're going to change the mixture of gases in the air...
At some point, everyone is going to have to come to grips with this. The Earth can't support this many people and still exist in it's "Natural" state. The hard part is not screwing it totally up and ending up with a toxic environment.
Eventually, the land's all going to be either populated area (city / suburb), agricultural, or a managed wildlife "park".
> Is the irrigation surrounding the rivers taking the water out of the sea's watershed? Seems unlikely. The water would just eventually run back into the river and the sea.
No, much irrigation water is lost to evaporation or to incorporation into the crops.
Remember that crops, like most other life-forms, are mostly water. So for those little seeds turn into railcar-loads of consumables, all that water has to come from somewhere. Irrigation converts flowing water into money.
Also, some kinds of irrigation are extremely wasteful in terms of evaporation. Next time you drive through Texas under a blazing sun and see all those endless acres of rice shoots submerged under 6" of water, ask yourself what the evaporation rate must be. The lakes behind big dams also greatly increase the evaporation rate in a drainage system.
And though what goes up eventually comes down, it might come down half a continent away.
> I mean, how is water leaking from a poorly-built irrigation system different from the rain that falls right next to it and feeds the rivers and the sea to begin with?
In general terms, it is distributed differently, which means it can behave differently w.r.t. evaporation etc.
To make up an illustrative example, suppose you water your lawn to a total of 10" over 10 months, just a little bit every night. Not much runs off, right? But if you get a 10" rain over a couple of days it stacks up faster than it can be absorbed or evaporate, so most of it runs downhill into streams that feed the sea.
Surely that's not precisely what's happening in Central Asia, but it should call attention to the fact that the way water is distributed in space and time can have a big effect on where it ends up.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Go to Google and search on
"aral sea" saltwater.
You will see many references to it being a saltwater sea, including Encyclopedia Brittanica, The Aral Sea Homepage, and a wide variety of geographical and educational pages.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
How did they make the desert bloom?
The most important innovation in coping with scarce water supplies has been drip irrigation. This method of irrigation applies water and nutrients directly to the root of the plant at a controlled rate. See the drip irrigation pipelines. With traditional irrigation, most of the water evaporates from the ditch and is wasted. Drip irrigation uses less water, works with saline water, requires less fertilizer, and produces more crops.
It was invented in 1965 and has been used all over the world. If those former Soviet republics aren't using it, I suspect the reason is that they don't think they can afford to pay for the equipment. I would say that perhaps they can't afford not to pay for it.
You think wars for oil are bad?
Wait until there are wars for water.
People can live without oil. They may not want to (what would happen to the US without oil?), but they can. Water, however, is a different story.
I've seen an incredible number of stories about water, water shortages, fights over water rights and irrigation, and such in the past year. As the population of the Earth continues to rise, so does the demand for water. Many of the water supplies currently being used are already being used faster than they can replenish - and they're only going to get more use.
Eventually areas are going to start having serious water shortages.
The most wasteful country in the world in terms of water? No suprise, the US. The combination of all the endless golf courses, which is the #1 use of water in the US IIRC, and all those suburban laws, especially in areas they're not supposed to be growing such as the Southwest, and incredible amounts of water are being taken from rivers and aquifers for pretty silly purposes.
I wonder how long until serious money starts being spent on how to make cost efficient desalinization of ocean water, and better pumping to get the water from coasts to inland. Because there aren't going to be enough sources elsewhere to supply all the water needs at the rate things are going.
So much water on the planet, and still there seems to not be enough...
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
It can't be that big of a deal.. the water has to go someplace.. water doesn't really leave the water cycle it just moves around.. I'm sure an ocean someplace just got 1/16 of an inch deeper or something.
The Aral sea used to be the 4th largest lake in the world. (Quick quiz: name the top 3.) It's now the 12th largest. (Slower quiz: name the intervening 8.)
Not only has it lost half its surface area since 1985, it seems to have lost two thirds since 1960. outlines are interesting. I wonder what it's like on that island that's almost a peninsula.
And while this has little to do with global warming, it's a prescient example of significant human-caused environmental change.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
A new country. Maybe Midlakistan or possibly Wasalakeistan. Borderdisputelakistan? I smell a poll....
this book might be interesting to some of you who are interested in climate change and the changes in ecosystems, 2030 by Hunter (co-founder of greenpeace) is a wake up call if nothing more, while it may be slightly blown out of proportion it still gives a basic overview of the problems and what may be yet to come
I guess once every 13000 years two countries might actually share....
Greed - The universal constant.
Q.
Insert Signature Here
However, regardless of how good the irrigation methods, it was my understanding that all irrigation eventually desroys the soil through salinization. "Better" irrigation methods merely reducing either or both the rate at which salinization occurs and the rate at which water is wasted through evaporation.
How efficient is hydroponics in contrast? It or other more or less closed methods would be useful in farming extreme climates such as underground or space.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
(remove the space that /. adds)
Well how 'bout you make it a link for us instead, so the space that slashdot adds is no longer relevant?
Sometimes the best solution to morale problems is just to fire all the unhappy people.
Ummmmmm.... aren't you being a little 'generous' there with your euphemisms? You know, calling the Hoover Dam an "irrigation project"?
Yes, large-scale irrigation DOES have effects on the surrounding environment. Building a gigantic fucking wall across a river bed does too.
If you wanted to give an example of out-of-control irrigation drying up a river, why didn't you pick one that didn't have a $175 million dollar government project designed to accomplish that very task??
Sometimes the best solution to morale problems is just to fire all the unhappy people.
Reading over the original post, the only link made between the lake's drying up and the Bush administration is that its "especially poignant" considering the recent debate over Bush's environmental policy. That's hardly trying to pin the blame on Bush, and people who reach this conclusion are reading far more than what's really there.
The Aral Sea's disappearance serves as warning to how much damage poor farming techniques and industry can do to the environment. As previous posts have stated, water resources are still being squandered at an alarming rate all over the world, and governments and industry should start taking precautions.
This isn't really a trade off between "natural ecosystems" and supporting the population; if the farmers around the Aral Sea are poor now, just wait until the watershed is depleted beyond use.
The building of the Hoover dam itself, does not really cause the lose of water. It is the useage that does. The colorado river gets used mostly by California that is sucking it dry before it hits the ocean. In fact, most of the states take what they are suppose to, except for Colorado and California. Colorado is not taking anywhere near what they are alloted and Ca is taking the CO and the Ocean's allotment. That is where Norton's deal is going to cause issues for CA. Being a Coloradoan, I am happy that we finally get to tell CA to take a hike and simply start drawing the water.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
On-Topic Portion: This is a good justification for the space agencies' continued investigation into environmental problems on earth.
The sending of this message pretty much inconveniences everyone involved.
Having written the oringal post, I need to clarify that I was only pointing out the irony of Mr. Bush hosting an environmental summitt while his government's policies are so obviously ambivalent to the environment. Remember, this is the man who refused to even consider the Kyoto treaty and has opened up MILLIONS of acres of federal land to oil and timber companies. He and many in his administration are ex-oil executives. They made their livelihoods in petrochemicals and are not going to stop now. This is not saying that he is evil. . .it is saying that we need to pay attention to what he does not what he says.
We are Pentium of Borg. Division is futile. You will be approximated.
Frankly, I don't know whether any country will be interested. After all, we are talking about a dry sea-bed, in an arid clime, consisting of mainly salty desert sprinkled with pesticides from the cotton plantations upstream. Unless they discover oil underneath, not much chance that anyone will go to war over it. Then again, wars have been fought over even more ridiculous things.
I know the US gets blamed a lot, and perhaps unfairly so. True, alot of pollution is caused there, but China is just as responsible, with it's 1.3 billion popuplation using mostly coal and fossil fuel for heating. But unfortunately, the US is now the only selfstyled "superpower" left in the world. This brings with it a certain responsability to lead by example. It only strengthens the belief of alot of countries that the US is only interested in protecting its own agenda when it won't ratify international treaties (yes, such as the Kyoto one). Other countries then use this as an excuse not to ratify them either. Eventhough that makes them at least as bad, they wouldn't have been able to do so had the US given the example.
I'd sooner trust the BBC or Reuters than Pentagon News Network or Faux News Network. All reporting is biased, some more so than others.
LOL, you show your own bias in your post. But at least we agree the BBC is more biased than most.
In a moving river, the water shallow and warmed by the sun, but in a large resevoir, it get's cold. The river water temp is therefore much colder downstream of the dam which screws with the wildlife.
Too bad Mexico can't sue the US over taking all the water before it gets to the ocean though...
Eat at Joe's.
Though now, I bet if you lived next to the stinky rotten fish and brine shrimp salt lake, you couldn't wait for it to go away. I wonder who owns the land after a lake dries up?
Eat at Joe's.
This is not meant to be flamebait, I really think this, but whatever..
The fact is that the human race will not stop raping the environment until it's unconsious or dead. Only when the environment is so badly damaged that human beings can not reproduce fast enough to replace all those that die of starvation and cancer will the environmental impact caused by humans really let up a little.
From then on, we'll still take as much as we can which will never be enough.
Why is this true? Because we can not help ourselves. We are alive. As such we are bound to do as best for ourselves as we can, and make as many offspring as we think we can raise to adulthood. If there are some humans who would be 'altruistic' and sacrifice time/energy for the environment's sake then that is just more resources for the rest. If there are some people who would limit their own reproduction - for any reason be it altruism or merely because they want to have enough time/money for each child, they will eventually be bred out of existance by the welfare queens and deadbeat dads that make babies with them.
Watch the Jerry Springer show. That is the future, past and present of the human race. Anybody with 'dignity' is not playing the game.
A mouse does not think about the environment. It accepts it and does it's mousely best. That not optional over generations. Nature demands it of the ancestors of any lifeform. No lifeform exists on earth now whose ancestors did not live up to that mandate and none ever will.
In short we'll never stop raping Mother Nature, because she's a whore who likes it, and She's in charge.
Eat at Joe's.
There's a long section in the Economist about two weeks ago on the Central Asian Republics with one article that talks about the politics of water there. The Aral Sea is drying up because the irrigations systems of the countries along the rivers that feed it are horrendously inefficient, and because the water system as a whole in the region is poorly managed. Unfortunately, with one megalomaniacal ruler in Turkmenistan, and a whole host of other political solipsists in the region, this isn't likely to change in the near future.
No, we don't agree on that at all.
The island in the Aral Sea, Vozrozhdeniya Island, (which incidentally means something like "rebirth" or "revival") was the test site for Russia's expansive bioweapons program.
Think it through - island inhabited by all manner of animal life, and stocked with certain animal life, and this animal life and environment repeatedly blasted year after year with a variety of biological weapons, and the results recorded. What survived, what didn't. Et cetera.
Now, this island is becoming/has become a peninsula so that things can freely wander on and off the island at will.
So from the history books - Many indigenous peoples were wiped out due to a lack of immunity to the influx of disease brought by travellers (among other things - but that is off topic).
What is going to happen to the rest of us when all this badness escapes Vozrozhdeniya Island ?
One dollar to the person who connects this event (island to peninsula) with monkey pox.
Kulakovich
Read Ken Alibek's _Biohazard_ for more information. He is one of the former heads of the Soviet bioweapons program who defected back in the late 80s/early 90s.
Right, but the original parent's post implied that, at the mouth of the river, what was previously a huge flowing river has been turned into a small stream because lots of irresponsible irrigation projects are sucking the water away.
My point is: the river is hugely diminished because they built the Hoover Damn to stop up the river, and they only release as much water as is needed downstream. If they managed to perfectly estimate the water demand needed (and adjust for the natural evaporation of water), and release the exact amount, there would be NO water flowing into the ocean at all.
The lack of water at the river's end does not indicate an irresponsible mismanagement of water resources. The Hoover Dam controls flooding of the river, guarantees a water supply, and generates tons of emission-free electricity for the surrounding areas. This project was one of the best examples in the entire world of properly managed natural resources yielding great benefits to the surrounding peoples without depleting said resources. MY point was, that the parent picked the worst possible example to illustrate his point.
Sometimes the best solution to morale problems is just to fire all the unhappy people.
No.
Where does a developing nation get its wealth? From trade. Weakening the developed countries means they have less money that can be used to buy whatever it is developing countries have to sell, and a side effect is weakening the currencies of developed countries so the manufactured goods and high-level services they can't make for themselves become even more expensive for them.
To use my favorite Ferrengi question, "Where is the profit?"
Tech Public Policy stuff
Not surprising, most of us don't consider Rush Limbaugh and Monsanto and White House spokesdroids as "Men of Science".
Tech Public Policy stuff
If the Aral Sea's bed was not a windswept wasteland of toxic, radioactive, and teratogenic compounds that will pose a danger to local citizenry for a thousand years, there would be no border dispute.
This is not exactly news... the problem was well documented before the collapse of the Soviet Union, after all.
Yes, but it does so just over the border in Mexico, so no one cares. The Colorado delta is a wasteland rivaling the Aral Sea.
an ill wind that blows no good
Interesting to see someone describe Reuters and the BBC as so biased that they would expect them to doo a hatchet job on Bush. In truth they have been fair more favourable to Bush than most of the European press (try reading the Guardian for an anti-Bush viewpoint) - the only press in the world with favourable things to say about that fecking moron in the Whitehouse is found in the US. Telling it like it is is not anti-US.
The reason Bush was mentioned is because the current US government wants to put all action on hold and spend 10 more years "investigating" (or correctly known as stalling) environmetal damage when virtually all research has shown that we are already facing dire impacts.