
Shrinking Aral Sea - benologist
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/WorldOfChange/aral_sea.php
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groutexpectatio
what is also interesting is that as the Aral/Ural sea has dried up is that the
land bridge that has formed has opened greater access to a former Soviet
biological weapons lab/military base
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vozrozhdeniya_Island](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vozrozhdeniya_Island)

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flohofwoe
I recently learned about another somewhat related large-scale Soviet
environmental project called the 'Northern River Reversal', which probably
would have undone the damage to the Aral Sea (but most likely would have
messed up the environment in northern Siberia even more). Within this project
there were also tests performed for the 'Nuclear Explosions for the National
Economy' program where nukes were used to dig out parts of a planned river-
reversal-channel.

Crazy times.

[edit, link:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_river_reversal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_river_reversal)]

~~~
larsga
Kapuscinski has an outstanding piece on both of these projects in his book
"Imperium". Basically, the real purpose of these projects was to remove all
the private fruit gardens and replace them with state-owned cotton farms.
State-owned in this case really means "owned by the families that ran the
Soviet republic", of course, since these were largely independent of Moscow.

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restalis
Does anyone still have doubts about the fact that we are in an Anthropocene
era? When lakes like this (once having a surface of about 70000 km²)
disappears and the soil all around enriches with layers of salts carried by
wind it's just hard to argue that we as humans haven't have any noticeable
effect on Earth's geology.

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ChuckMcM
On a smaller scale there is Mono lake in California. Same cause, water
diverted for irrigation, lake dries up.

~~~
cjensen
Mono Lake is smaller than it used to be, but it is growing slowly thanks to
legal protections [1].

Owens Lake [2] to the south of Mono Lake is gone. It was larger than Mono
Lake. Lake bed salts blown by the wind are pretty toxic, and Los Angeles was
required to use some water to reduce dust.

The largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi used to be Tulare Lake [3]
in central California. It's gone and the southern San Joaquin Valley no longer
drains to the ocean. Salts and other junk is slowly building up.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Audubon_Society_v._Su...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Audubon_Society_v._Superior_Court)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owens_Lake](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owens_Lake)

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulare_Lake](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulare_Lake)

~~~
mc32
On the other hand, the Salton Sea didn't exist before the engineering accident
which created it.

~~~
greglindahl
The most recent incarnation was created by an accident, sure. The lake has
existed many times in the past:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salton_Sea#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salton_Sea#History)

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briantakita
Systemic issues with how human civilation is run, especially large scale
pertrol chemical monoculture agriculture is to blame. We will continue to have
these issues until we start innovating to use more restorative & ecologically
friendly techniques.

One issue is the feedback cycle of nature is slower than the snap judgments of
humans with vested interests.

One thing I've noticed is some people either understand the systemic issues &
some people do not. I speculate that a person pays attention to certain
things. Many people will discount another person's perspective if they cannot
observe the same distinctions.

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SimeVidas
Btw there was a very good article about this in National Geographic Magazine
earlier this year, with interesting insight from the people who live there.

