We Destroyed the 4th Largest Lake in the World

For a while now, people have been changing the environment to suit their needs. But in recent years, we’re starting to realize that nature’s resources aren’t, in fact, infinite. If you take the almost complete destruction of the 4th largest lake in the world as an example, we can see a really gloomy picture…

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TIMESTAMPS:

What led to the Aral Sea’s total demise 1:04

Was this lake a “mistake of nature?” 2:52

Toxic desert wasteland ? 4:48

Can the Aral Sea be restored? 5:54

Music by Epidemic Sound https://www.epidemicsound.com/

SUMMARY:
– The Aral Sea used to be the world’s 4th largest saltwater lake with an area of 26,300 square miles, which is roughly the size of West Virginia.
– With the coming of industrialization in the region, the lake started to get really polluted.
– In the 1960s, the Soviet government decided to irrigate the surrounding desert to try and make it bloom. For this, they diverted the two giant rivers feeding the Aral Sea: the Syr Darya to the north and the Amu Darya in the south.
– With the canals dug and the rivers successfully diverted, the Aral Sea began to shrink.
– In 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed, but the now independent states sharing the lake continued to use the water supply from the rivers that once fed it.
– By the end of the ‘80s, it had divided itself into two lakes: the North and South Aral Seas. Not only that, the salt content in it had also risen drastically. By 1990, the salinity had reached 36.7%.
– Over the decades, the Aral Sea had diminished by an astounding 80%! Some part of it remained, but much of the space it formerly occupied became a desert wasteland.
– The fishing industry that had once thrived in the region was no more. Even the small part of the Aral Sea that still remained a lake wasn’t suitable for fishing.
– With financial aid from the World Bank, a recovery plan did begin in the North Aral Sea, and it’s currently being restored with the help of a concrete dam built in 2005 to separate the two halves of the lake.
– The whole ecosystem has changed for the worse: a lot of land animals depended on the water and food that the Aral Sea provided, and they either died out or had to move somewhere else to survive.

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