Aral

Never the most hospitable of places, Karakalpakstan was then turned into a vast arena of destruction by the Aral Sea disaster.

An inland lake, the Aral is found between Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan and used to be the fourth largest lake in the world.

One of the branch routes turned northwest to the north of the Aral and Caspian seas then and on to the Black Sea.

Since the 1960s, however, when Soviet irrigation projects diverted several of its source waterways, the Aral has shrunk 90%.

For more details on the shrinking of the Aral Sea, please see the American University case study Aral Sea Loss and Cotton.

Perhaps nothing says more about mankind's impact on these habitats than the disappearance of the Aral Sea in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.

If this goes on long enough, the Sea could face Owens Lake's and the Aral Sea's fate: becoming a wind-swept salt flat.

The level is dropping, rather like the Aral Sea.

Environmentalists raise the spectre of Central Asia's Aral Sea, all but drained by Soviet irrigation projects.

In less than 40 years, Central Asia has witnessed the drying up of Aral sea, once the fourth biggest inland water body in the world.

The shrinking Aral Sea has also had a noticeable affect on the region's climate.

Situated between Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, the Aral was once the fourth largest lake on earth, as big as Ireland.

The Southern Aral, however, still remains a shadow of its former self.

BP will buy just over half of E. on's Veba business, which includes Aral, Germany's largest chain of petrol stations.

Before a Soviet Union irrigation project in the 1960s, the Aral Sea was the world's fourth largest lake.

A secondary effect of the reduction in the Aral Sea's overall size is the rapid exposure of the lake bed.

By today the drying Aral Sea has moved 100 km away from its former coastline near Muinak, Uzbekistan.

By 2000 the Northern and Southern Aral Sea had already separated.

On Friday, the European Space Agency released before-and-after satellite photographs of the Aral Sea in 2006 and 2009.

The sequence of images above, acquired by Landsat satellites, shows the dramatic changes to the Aral Sea between 1973 and 2000.

This is online map of the address "Nong You Duan Hai He Lu , Aral City, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, China" .

A visit to central Asia - to the shrinking and polluted Aral Sea, for example - provides evidence of that.

The Northern Aral's surface span has grown by 20 percent and fish and bird species are starting to return.

In the grasslands of western Kazakhstan, roughly 320 kilometers (200 miles) north-northeast of the Aral Sea, lies Chiyli Crater.

The World Water Council cites the Parana La Plata in South America, the Aral Sea, the Jordan and the Danube as examples.

The Aral Sea gets almost all its water from the Amu and Syr rivers.

We see aerial photos of the Aral Sea drying up.

The Aral Sea supported a thriving commercial fishing industry employing roughly 60, 000 people in the early 1960s.

Perhaps exaggerating, the UN Development Programme (UNDP) has said Lake Balkhash could turn into a salty mess, like the Aral Sea;

Satellite image of the Aral Sea used to be the fourth largest lake in the world

Analysis on Biodiversity Characteristics of Natural Plant Community of Degenerative Ecosystems in Upper Reaches of the Trim River, Aral

STREAM WATER POLLUTION AND ITS CONTROL WAYS IN TARIM RIVER WATERSHED -- A Case Study at Aral Hydrologic Station

Synergy of Active and Passive Satellite Microwave Data for the Study of First-Year Sea Ice in the Caspian and Aral Seas

Concrete Action Programme for the Problems of the Aral Sea;

Aral Sea Basin struggling to deflect water use from irrigation to environment

Temporal and spatial patterns of sea level in inland basins: Recent events in the Aral Sea

A Solution to the Aral Sea Crisis? Sustainable Water Use in Central Asia

Strengthen Monitoring on Aral Ecosystem in Tarim River

The Problems of Fishermen in the Southern Aral Sea Region