5 ms·

The Aral Sea has shrunk because of the re-routing of its source rivers (2022)

94 points by freediver 4y ago

freediver 4y ago
Aral Sea: The sea that dried up in 40 years https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5N-_69cWyKo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5N-_69cWyKo The Story of the Aral Sea’s Disappearance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsUYt9tlsos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsUYt9tlsos
ryankshaw 4y ago
The same is going to happen to the (once) Great Salt Lake. It's going to be a disaster, the vast majority of the population of Utah lives along the Wasatch Front nextdoor and downwind from it, and all the heavy metals and toxic chemicals that are stably suspended in it from the Kennecott copper mine and the old Geneva Steel mills are going to turn into dust and go straight into their lungs. There's going to be a ton of cancer just like all the towns along the shores of the dried up Aral Sea
- nickt 4y ago
  Indeed. Here’s a discussion from yesterday for those who may have missed it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34276519 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34276519
- John23832 4y ago
  And it's sad, because it can all be averted. A modern day Dust Bowl.
- scythe 4y ago
  It's not the first time this has happened in the United States: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owens_Lake http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owens_Lake
  - pfdietz 4y ago
    It's not even the first time it's happened to the Aral Sea. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv1kz4ggd.10 https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv1kz4ggd.10
- LarryMullins 4y ago
  While as far as I can tell the Great Salt Lake's level is presently severely low due to human actions, reconstructions of the historic level of the lake from tree ring analysis shows that the lake's natural level fluctuates substantially even when humans aren't doing anything to it. So even if water diversions stopped, the GSL area would still have a long-term problem on their hands. The toxic lake bed will get exposed one way or the other, if not through the actions of men then through natural fluctuations. Given that the lakebed is already contaminated and there's no way to fix that, the best solution is to live someplace else. > For example, the driest (wettest) year on record, 1581 (1464) occurred many centuries ago and was substantially larger in magnitude than the historical record. At lower frequencies, the GSL lake-level reconstruction revealed large, multi-year reductions in lake levels from 1580–1600, in the 1630s, and from 1700–1710 that in each case were at least as severe as the known lake-level minima during the drought of the 1930s and 2000–2001 (Figure 3). https://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/pubs/46447 https://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/pubs/46447 Incidentally, the "many centuries ago" framing is revealing of a general attitude I've noticed from Americans, particularly Americans living in the western half of the country. They think "several centuries" is essentially an eternity because in their region, several centuries ago is before recorded history. And in a sense, for an individual human planning their life, several centuries may as well be an eternity. But for city planning, an environmental problem that's likely to be disastrous for the city every few hundred years should be considered a severe threat. That sort of circumstance makes for a city that won't survive the test of time. Another example of this sort of short-term thinking is water levels in California. According to tree stump analysis, California has been unusually wet since America acquired the land; this luck will not last. California had, and will have again, droughts which are far more severe than any Californian drought in living memory. Californian communities should be planning to deal with such severe droughts, but many Californians seem to prefer believing that they can somehow stabilize the Californian climate to always be the way it was when they were kids.
  - nerdponx 4y ago
    All of this is valid, but that doesn't mean humans aren't making it worse than it needs to be. "It fluctuates anyway" is a common talking point for those who want to deny the effect of human activity.
- avgcorrection 4y ago
  That’s terrible. Is the primary reason overconsumption from farming (70% of the consumption according to Yahoo News)? If so then I guess they could import more agricultural products. That’s easier than having most of the residents use less water. But another problem might be: where would the food come from? California also has a drought problem. I don’t know.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - Quenty 4y ago
    The Midwest would be great. It’s right next door and the largest piece of arable land in the world.
    - IIsi50MHz 4y ago
      Water levels supporting much of midwest[1] farming and ranching have been dropping for decades, far faster than the refill rate. Even areas that have formed water-use co-operatives have been unable to convince themselves to reduce draw enough to matter. Even if they zeroed their usage, the co-ops don't cover enough land area to make up for the surrounding areas that are drawing from the same aquifer. [1] Leaving aside the cultural oddity of USA-ians who think the living not only east of centre, but as far east as any part of Ohio, counts as "midwest".
  - yummypaint 4y ago
    Much agricultural use of water in the american west is intentionally wasteful to protect the farmer's future rights to use water. Farmers are afraid of losing a possible edge over their neighbors if they do the right thing. Not providing a legal mechanism to fix this, even during this worsening crisis, is an utter failure of our country.
- madaxe_again 4y ago
  I’ve been to a few of said towns - Aralsk is the most notable. It’s a forsaken place. Never mind the port machinery swinging idly in the hot, dusty breeze, suspended over toxic sludge where a sea once lapped its shores - the human disaster there is palpable. There’s no industry, no work, no future. People sit, and wait. The North Korean friendship centre hands out packages of household supplies on a dusty square full of dead trees. The place is half abandoned, and the people who remain - well, they’re abandoned too. It’s hard to describe the heaviness that sat over the place - it’s oppressive, a feeling of inexorable doom. It’s unlikely these places will exist in the not too distant future. They existed on the brink, and the brink is long gone, and they are in freefall.
- elihu 4y ago
  Apparently the great salt lake is also a huge magnesium source. There's a company called US Magnesium that takes salt water and routes it into a bunch of evaporation ponds.
sitkack 4y ago
The same thing is happening to California's Central Valley. https://phys.org/news/2022-12-depletion-groundwater-california-central-valley.html https://phys.org/news/2022-12-depletion-groundwater-californ...
- labster 4y ago
  You mean already happened. The wetlands have receded hundreds of miles up to The Delta, and Lake Tulare has been gone for a century.
vbezhenar 4y ago
It's not clear whether it was because of re-routing. It used to shrink in the past. Might just be some nature cycle.
- rahen 4y ago
  It is perfectly clear. We're talking of an almost full disappearance in forty years, not mere fluctuations over centuries.
- timeon 4y ago
  One can always find the devils advocate.
layer8 4y ago
I endorse the practice of providing a tldr as the submission title.
kshahkshah 4y ago
Watch this video to learn more about the background, it's awful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJeobqc4mFk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJeobqc4mFk TL;DW - Egypt used to export cotton to Russia, Egypt realigns with the west, stops exporting. Russia starts growing in Uzbekistan, needs water. Shoddily builds pipes from the source rivers to Uzbekistan. Pipes are incredibly leaky, requiring pulling more water. Aral Sea shrinkage causes the salt to blow onto the cotton fields requiring the farmers to desalinate their fields with, you guessed it, more water. Using all that water causes minerals to run off as well, resulting in over usage of fertilizers which destroy the soil life.
- orif 4y ago
  Actually, the Russian textile industry needed cotton, they were a major customer of US cotton, then they saw an opportunity to grow cotton in Turkestan. So they started growing cotton there. Even after the 1917 revolution, Turkestan remained a major cotton producer, and population growth, increasing demand for cotton, the ruthless Soviet central planning dried the lake. That YouTube clip might have a point about water leaks, but even with 100% efficiency they would dry up the lake anyway, the inertia to grow cotton was too strong.
orif 4y ago
I don’t think Aral will be coming back to its original size. Once Afghanistan starts developing it will start consuming more water from Amudarya, and Central Asia’s population is still growing. The climate change going to hit Central Asia pretty hard, the ice glaciers that feed the major rivers are receding already.

94 points by freediver 4y ago

Aral Sea: The sea that dried up in 40 years https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5N-_69cWyKo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5N-_69cWyKo The Story of the Aral Sea’s Disappearance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsUYt9tlsos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsUYt9tlsos

ryankshaw 4y ago

The same is going to happen to the (once) Great Salt Lake. It's going to be a disaster, the vast majority of the population of Utah lives along the Wasatch Front nextdoor and downwind from it, and all the heavy metals and toxic chemicals that are stably suspended in it from the Kennecott copper mine and the old Geneva Steel mills are going to turn into dust and go straight into their lungs. There's going to be a ton of cancer just like all the towns along the shores of the dried up Aral Sea

nickt 4y ago
Indeed. Here’s a discussion from yesterday for those who may have missed it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34276519 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34276519
John23832 4y ago
And it's sad, because it can all be averted. A modern day Dust Bowl.
scythe 4y ago
It's not the first time this has happened in the United States: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owens_Lake http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owens_Lake
- pfdietz 4y ago
  It's not even the first time it's happened to the Aral Sea. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv1kz4ggd.10 https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv1kz4ggd.10
LarryMullins 4y ago
While as far as I can tell the Great Salt Lake's level is presently severely low due to human actions, reconstructions of the historic level of the lake from tree ring analysis shows that the lake's natural level fluctuates substantially even when humans aren't doing anything to it. So even if water diversions stopped, the GSL area would still have a long-term problem on their hands. The toxic lake bed will get exposed one way or the other, if not through the actions of men then through natural fluctuations. Given that the lakebed is already contaminated and there's no way to fix that, the best solution is to live someplace else. > For example, the driest (wettest) year on record, 1581 (1464) occurred many centuries ago and was substantially larger in magnitude than the historical record. At lower frequencies, the GSL lake-level reconstruction revealed large, multi-year reductions in lake levels from 1580–1600, in the 1630s, and from 1700–1710 that in each case were at least as severe as the known lake-level minima during the drought of the 1930s and 2000–2001 (Figure 3). https://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/pubs/46447 https://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/pubs/46447 Incidentally, the "many centuries ago" framing is revealing of a general attitude I've noticed from Americans, particularly Americans living in the western half of the country. They think "several centuries" is essentially an eternity because in their region, several centuries ago is before recorded history. And in a sense, for an individual human planning their life, several centuries may as well be an eternity. But for city planning, an environmental problem that's likely to be disastrous for the city every few hundred years should be considered a severe threat. That sort of circumstance makes for a city that won't survive the test of time. Another example of this sort of short-term thinking is water levels in California. According to tree stump analysis, California has been unusually wet since America acquired the land; this luck will not last. California had, and will have again, droughts which are far more severe than any Californian drought in living memory. Californian communities should be planning to deal with such severe droughts, but many Californians seem to prefer believing that they can somehow stabilize the Californian climate to always be the way it was when they were kids.
- nerdponx 4y ago
  All of this is valid, but that doesn't mean humans aren't making it worse than it needs to be. "It fluctuates anyway" is a common talking point for those who want to deny the effect of human activity.
avgcorrection 4y ago
That’s terrible. Is the primary reason overconsumption from farming (70% of the consumption according to Yahoo News)? If so then I guess they could import more agricultural products. That’s easier than having most of the residents use less water. But another problem might be: where would the food come from? California also has a drought problem. I don’t know.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Quenty 4y ago
  The Midwest would be great. It’s right next door and the largest piece of arable land in the world.
  - IIsi50MHz 4y ago
    Water levels supporting much of midwest[1] farming and ranching have been dropping for decades, far faster than the refill rate. Even areas that have formed water-use co-operatives have been unable to convince themselves to reduce draw enough to matter. Even if they zeroed their usage, the co-ops don't cover enough land area to make up for the surrounding areas that are drawing from the same aquifer. [1] Leaving aside the cultural oddity of USA-ians who think the living not only east of centre, but as far east as any part of Ohio, counts as "midwest".
- yummypaint 4y ago
  Much agricultural use of water in the american west is intentionally wasteful to protect the farmer's future rights to use water. Farmers are afraid of losing a possible edge over their neighbors if they do the right thing. Not providing a legal mechanism to fix this, even during this worsening crisis, is an utter failure of our country.
madaxe_again 4y ago
I’ve been to a few of said towns - Aralsk is the most notable. It’s a forsaken place. Never mind the port machinery swinging idly in the hot, dusty breeze, suspended over toxic sludge where a sea once lapped its shores - the human disaster there is palpable. There’s no industry, no work, no future. People sit, and wait. The North Korean friendship centre hands out packages of household supplies on a dusty square full of dead trees. The place is half abandoned, and the people who remain - well, they’re abandoned too. It’s hard to describe the heaviness that sat over the place - it’s oppressive, a feeling of inexorable doom. It’s unlikely these places will exist in the not too distant future. They existed on the brink, and the brink is long gone, and they are in freefall.
elihu 4y ago
Apparently the great salt lake is also a huge magnesium source. There's a company called US Magnesium that takes salt water and routes it into a bunch of evaporation ponds.

sitkack 4y ago

The same thing is happening to California's Central Valley. https://phys.org/news/2022-12-depletion-groundwater-california-central-valley.html https://phys.org/news/2022-12-depletion-groundwater-californ...

labster 4y ago
You mean already happened. The wetlands have receded hundreds of miles up to The Delta, and Lake Tulare has been gone for a century.

vbezhenar 4y ago

It's not clear whether it was because of re-routing. It used to shrink in the past. Might just be some nature cycle.

rahen 4y ago
It is perfectly clear. We're talking of an almost full disappearance in forty years, not mere fluctuations over centuries.
timeon 4y ago
One can always find the devils advocate.

layer8 4y ago

I endorse the practice of providing a tldr as the submission title.

kshahkshah 4y ago

Watch this video to learn more about the background, it's awful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJeobqc4mFk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJeobqc4mFk TL;DW - Egypt used to export cotton to Russia, Egypt realigns with the west, stops exporting. Russia starts growing in Uzbekistan, needs water. Shoddily builds pipes from the source rivers to Uzbekistan. Pipes are incredibly leaky, requiring pulling more water. Aral Sea shrinkage causes the salt to blow onto the cotton fields requiring the farmers to desalinate their fields with, you guessed it, more water. Using all that water causes minerals to run off as well, resulting in over usage of fertilizers which destroy the soil life.

orif 4y ago
Actually, the Russian textile industry needed cotton, they were a major customer of US cotton, then they saw an opportunity to grow cotton in Turkestan. So they started growing cotton there. Even after the 1917 revolution, Turkestan remained a major cotton producer, and population growth, increasing demand for cotton, the ruthless Soviet central planning dried the lake. That YouTube clip might have a point about water leaks, but even with 100% efficiency they would dry up the lake anyway, the inertia to grow cotton was too strong.

orif 4y ago

I don’t think Aral will be coming back to its original size. Once Afghanistan starts developing it will start consuming more water from Amudarya, and Central Asia’s population is still growing. The climate change going to hit Central Asia pretty hard, the ice glaciers that feed the major rivers are receding already.