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sur le développement des zones arides et semi-arides

  Declining Aral Sea : satellite images highlight dramatic retreat

  ScienceDaily (July 12, 2009)

• New Envisat images highlight the dramatic retreat of the Aral Sea’s shoreline from 2006 to 2009. The Aral Sea was once the world’s fourth-largest inland body of water, but it has been steadily shrinking over the past 50 years since the rivers that fed it were diverted for irrigation projects.

• By the end of the 1980s, it had split into the Small Aral Sea (north), located in Kazakhstan, and the horse-shoe shaped Large Aral Sea (south), shared by Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.

• By 2000, the Large Aral Sea had split into two - an eastern and western lobe. As visible in the images, the eastern lobe retreated substantially between 2006 and 2009. It appears to have lost about 80% of its water since the 2006 acquisition, at which time the eastern lobe had a length of about 150 km and a width of about 70 km.
• The sea’s entire southern section is expected to dry out completely by 2020, but efforts are underway to save the northern part.

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