The Tragedy of Aral Sea

Some of the popular names of inland seas and lakes such as Aral Sea, Lake Chad, Lake Eyre etc. are those that have had shrunk (or still shrinking) much smaller to its original size due to various natural / man-made reasons. Aral Sea's shrinking is considerably highlighted as if one sees the maps of this water body previous to 1960 and compare it to today, has shrunk by 75% and currently only 10% of the original volume of water is remaining. 

On older maps, Aral Sea's appearance first could be seen not before 1650s when it was labeled as Kithay Lake. Later on, the map of the sea changed throughout with certain ones showing tributaries and distributaries channelizing and coming into / onto the lake. On 19th century maps, an offshoot of the sea, known as Aybuguir Bay or Lake Aybuguir or Lake Laudan, would appear on the southwest tip of the Aral Sea. Even the area of the sea was bigger in the 19th century as compared to what it became in the next one. Another small offshoot at a northeast tip of Aral Sea was Ak Tscheganak Basin touching today's Steppe region of Kazakhstan. On such maps one could also see Aral Sea enclosed by the Kirgees or Kyrgyz Horde in north and east, the Kara Kalpak tribe to the east, the Aral Oosbecs (Uzbeks) to the south, Turcomans (Turkmens) to the southwest, all part of the larger Tataria in Central Asia. Tataria was not a unified nation but just a geographical and historical region that comprises all the Central Asian tribes. Interestingly, although the Kyrgyz Horde resided in the north of Aral Sea, it's current location would be today's Kazakhstan. While Kyrgyzstan is more towards the east, bordering China. 

Gulf of Malmishka, Coultuk Oujany, Zal Barsutskoi were other three water bodies part of the Aral Sea. Its hard to tell why and when these water bodies started to shrink but since late 1800s, the maps of Aral Sea was pretty much the same that continued till the mid-20th century. It was the 1960s when the real shrinking of the sea started. The lower arms of the Amu Darya river that drained into the sea had numerous tributaries - Taladyk, Ulkun Darya, Kigailee, Kazzak Darya etc. These rivers were the first to dry out. The Uzbek town of Kumgrad (which still exists) has witnessed the entire swallowing up of the delta into barren land. This was followed by draining of the eastern coast that largely consisted of a series of archipelago, all getting buried during the 1970s. The sea also started drying around an island towards the northwest, Nicolas 1st Island. This was followed by other islands such as Borsa (Barssa) Kilmas, Kuga Aral, Tsessarevitch, Biurgundy, Kaska Gulan, Lebiajiy, Kush Djitmes, Tchutchka, Altay, Menshikoff etc. But particularly about the islands of Nicolas 1st combining with Tsessarevitch and the adjoining lands emerging between 1980s and early 2000s led to the formation of Vozrozhdeniya Island, which got divided between the independent nations of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan after the dissolution of the USSR. This island, sadly, doesn't exist now and is part of the lands that dried to its east. Today, Aral Sea is nothing but scattered splashes of lakes divided between the two nations. And even now, the southeastern lake has almost disappeared. 

Before shrinking to a thin strip of lake, Aral Sea was once the 4th largest inland water body of the world. The disaster actually started from 1930s when the neighboring lands had an excessive demand of flourishing cotton industries. This would need a higher consumption of water and thus plenty of canals and dams were being built. Almost 70% of water was drained out from the Aral Sea and between 1960s and 1998, roughly 40,000 sq.km of water area was lost to land. 

Although efforts are being taken now by all the central Asian countries to revive the sea, but there is still more to be done. The map here is of 1872, when Aral Sea was still a proper, healthy liquid vegetation.