alienation news

South Aral Sea 'gone in 15 years'

 The Aral Sea is disappearing even faster than previously thought, with a new study of the southern part of the sea slashing its life expectancy by decades.
Since the 1960s, the sea has been drying up as a result of poor management of irrigation channels that steal water from rivers feeding it. Once the area of Ireland, it is now a quarter that size and broken into two fragments - the North Aral Sea and South Aral Sea (see map).
Because of the costs involved, only the smaller North Aral has been earmarked for rescue (New Scientist print edition, 4 January 2003), and several dams to stem water loss from it have been build since the mid-1990s.
Meanwhile, the South Aral has been abandoned, and as it dries up it is wreaking havoc on the environment. It is leaving behind vast salt plains, transforming the climate with hotter summers and colder winters, destroying what remains of local fisheries, and producing massive dust storms that spread disease.