Reporte de Noticia Nº 5
Reporte de Noticia Nº 5
The Conversation.com
Humans drained the Aral Sea once before – but there are no free refills this time round
Author: Anson Mackay
Professor of Environmental Change at University College London
https://theconversation.com/humans-drained-the-aral-sea-once-before-but-there-are-no-free-refills-this-time-round-32513
The Aral Sea has reached a new low, literally and figuratively; new satellite images from NASA show that, for the first time in its recorded history, the largest basin has completely dried up.
However, the Aral Sea has an interesting history – and as recently as 600-700 years ago it was as small, if not smaller, than today. The Aral recovered from that setback to become the world’s fourth largest lake, but things might not be so easy this time round. Today, more people than ever rely on irrigation from rivers that should instead flow into the sea, and the impact of irrigation is compounded by another new factor: climate change.
Sandwiched between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, the Aral Sea is actually a lake, albeit a salty, terminal one. It is salty because evaporation of water from the lake surface is greater than the amount of water being replenishing through rivers flowing in. It is terminal because there is no outflowing river. This makes the Aral Sea very sensitive to variations in its water balance caused either by climate or by humans.
During early Soviet Union times, the Aral Sea and its fringing wetlands were a significant resource for the fishing industries, agriculture, animal husbandry and fur trapping. But in the 1950s, the extent of irrigated land used for “white gold” (cotton) increased dramatically from 4 billion to 8 billion hectares, with Uzbekistan becoming one of the world’s largest cotton producers. To feed cotton’s insatiable demand for water, the Karakum Canal was built out of the desert sands and because it was unlined, water losses were extremely high.
During the late 1960s, the amount of water evaporating from the Aral Sea become greater than the amount of water entering the lake, so lake levels declined dramatically in the 1970s and 1980s. More than 75% of the surface area and more than 90% of the lake’s volume has been lost. In 1987-1988, the lake split into two, and the Large and Small Aral Sea basins were created. International efforts have been made to protect the Small Aral Sea through the construction of dams, and this has meant that lake levels here have increased. The Large Aral Sea continued to shrink and subsequently split itself into two basins; a deeper, smaller west Large Aral and a more shallow, but expansive, east Large Aral. And it is this latter basin which NASA images show had dried out completely this summer.
Perspectiva: El medio The Conversation.com, es una alternativa noticiosa interesante, las fuentes son cotejadas y se nota la investigación y la seriedad de las fuentes. Con respecto a este artículo, es triste ver como el capitalismo, ha llevado que los recursos sean drenados, a tal punto que las especies no son las únicas que están desapareciendo, también los recursos y en este caso, un lago interior que ha acompañado la región por miles de años, pero que gracias a nuestro actuar depredador, ocasionó que este hermoso recurso, este adportas de desaparecer, lo que implica una catástrofe ambiental, no solo para la zona y sus pobladores, sino para el mundo.