Discover the haunting tale of the Aral Sea's transformation from the world's fourth-largest lake to a barren desert due to Soviet irrigation projects in the 1960s. This environmental catastrophe unveiled Vozrozhdeniya Island, a Soviet biological weapons site, with deadly secrets like anthrax, smallpox, and plague, now released into the air. Dust storms have spread these toxins across Central Asia, causing a fivefold increase in cancer rates. This was no natural disaster; it was a man-made calami

This is how much the Aral Sea shrunk in just a few decades. 😔 Excessive water extraction and other factors have pushed it to the brink, devastating local communities. We're taking too much from our planet and giving back too little. It’s time to change our ways and protect our shared home. | WWF

Shrinking Aral Sea, 2000-2016 In the 1960s, the Soviet Union undertook a major water diversion project on the arid plains of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan. The region’s two major rivers, fed by snowmelt and precipitation in faraway mountains, were used to transform the desert into farms for cotton and other crops. Before the project, the Syr Darya and the Amu Darya rivers flowed down from the mountains, cut northwest through the Kyzylkum Desert, and finally pooled together in the lowe

The Aral Sea environmental disaster, the shrinking of the Aral Sea between 1960 and 2014 ➖ Formerly one of the four largest lakes in the world with an area of 68,000 km2 (26,300 sq mi), the Aral Sea has been steadily shrinking since the 1960s after the rivers that fed it were diverted by Soviet irrigation projects. By 2007, it had declined to 10% of its original size, splitting into four lakes – the North Aral Sea, the eastern and western basins of the once far larger South Aral Sea, and one sma

Sixty years ago, the Aral Sea thrived. Now, fishing fleets lie stranded in the sand, victims of Soviet irrigation. People watched their livelihoods slowly disappear as rivers dried up. Today, the Aral Sea faces extinction. #AralSea #EnvironmentalDisaster #Uzbekistan #SovietUnion #WaterCrisis #EcologicalDamage From: Alexander's Lost World S1 Ep1 | Odyssey - Ancient History