Geology Picture of the Week, August 24-30, 2008: What's wrong with this picture?

NASA Earth Observatory ^ | August 26, 2008 | NASA

[cogitator]

The question is: what's wrong with this picture?

Think for a moment and then click the link below.

Aral Sea in the 21st century

Full size

[cogitator]

Lesson from geology: irrigation in a desert requires very careful planning. The former USSR didn't manage that here.

[r9etb]

What's wrong with this picture?

It shows a body of water....

[thackney]

[ExGeeEye]

They sucked it dry for agricultural purposes?

[GladesGuru]

Who would want to live in a place called “Nukus”?

[6SJ7]

Who would want to live in a place called “Nukus”?

Must be a hot town.

[QBFimi]

In my 35 years of crossing the USA as an airline pilot/Air Force pilot, I watched two lakes in Utah repeatedly go up and down: Sevier Lake and the Great Salt Lake. So what's the problem here? Let's all hold our breath for 100 years or so and see if we can spot a trend. (Remember :"Greenland"?) I thought Gorebull warming had been put on the back burner while we are all focused on the Audacity of Hype?

[cogitator]

** ping **

[cogitator]

Nice graphic!

[Moose4]

And the moral of the story is...it sucks to be the poor guy who opened a Sea-Ray dealership in Mo’ynoq, Uzbekistan circa 1970.

}:-)4

[cogitator]

They sucked it dry for agricultural purposes?

More accurately, they diverted the flow of the rivers that provided water to it for agricultural purposes. No inflow + evaporation = loss of lake (or inland sea, in this case).

[HamiltonJay]

This isn’t a natural trend, this lake depletion is the direct result from the redirection of the water for irrigation, that was poorly planned... more water is drained from the system than enters, resulting in one of the worlds largest inland seas to disappear.

This is not an example of natural cycles.

[MarineBrat]

>>They sucked it dry for agricultural purposes?

The Aral Sea is a salt water lake. The term “sea” implies salt water. A lake with no exit to the ocean eventually becomes salt water.

[thackney]

Yeah, not done a lot for the fishing industry.

[Moose4]

Welcome to the Soviet economy. If you aren’t part of the glorious Five-Year Plan, tough borscht, comrade.

The Wiki article on the Aral Sea states that the nomenklatura knew as early as 1964 that the Aral was doomed, but didn’t care. Uzbekistan is still diverting water from entering the south part of the sea to irrigate their lucrative cotton fields (which are probably about the only thing keeping their economy going).

Of course, the thing to remember is that there’s an ex-Soviet bioweapons research base on an island in the southern Aral. After 2000, the water level’s dropped so much, it’s a peninsula now, and accessible via land. Supposedly we sent some people over there in 2002 to destroy large amounts of anthrax stored at the base since the ex-Soviets abandoned it in 1991, but nobody’s really sure what else might be lurking in there.

}:-)4

[JRios1968]

Has it really taken this long for a Bush’s Fault?

[DManA]

Lakes are nature’s most ephemeral features.

[hadit2here]

Yeah, but just think how much new land there is to build condos, skyscrapers and whole suburbs. Land speculators could get rich, I tell ya!

OK, so it’s desert. Start a camel farm, or glass making plant. When nature gives you lemons, don’t make sour grapes, I allus say.

#8^D

[SuziQ]

The former USSR didn't manage that here.

Did they EVER manage anything well?

[cogitator]

Did they EVER manage anything well?

Big May Day parades on Red Square?