# Will The Aral sea Disaapear? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 1, 2002, 1:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-aral-sea-disaapear/101193 "2002-04-01T13:07:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2002, 1:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-aral-sea-disaapear/101193/1 "2002-04-01T13:07:30Z")
I read a recent article about how the Soviet government had diverted the rivers that used to flow into the Aral Sea. This has been an ecological catastrophe, as the sea (really a large saltwater lake) has begun to dry up. The sea formerly produced a huge amount of fish, and now is dead. Also, the salt deposits are blowing around, and causing respiratory illness for most of the population. My question: could the Aral sea be restored? Would a super-national authority like the UN be powerful enough to force the Russians to restore the sea? Further, if the sea dries up completely, will all of central asia become a desert? I read that the same thing is happening to the Salton Sea in California-but that lake was man-made, so I guess the ecological consequences are not as bad. ---
**Author:** ![Ringo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/779978/32.png) [@Ringo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ringo)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2002, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-aral-sea-disaapear/101193/2 "2002-04-01T13:44:41Z")
> [@](#): > > …but that lake was man-made, so I guess the ecological consequences are not as bad. Eh? ---
**Author:** ![casdave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c6cbf5/32.png) [@casdave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/casdave)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2002, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-aral-sea-disaapear/101193/3 "2002-04-01T13:54:40Z")
The Aral sea is one heck of a man made disaster. The divertion of the feeders was mainly down toStalinist central planning to irrigate land for the production of cotton.The completion of the main culprit being the completion of the Karakom canal which was started in the '50’s but finally comppleted in the '80’s The desparate need by Russia for foreign currency kept the irrigation scheme expanding and now is dependant upon the diverted water. The irony is that irrigation for intensive farming upon land that is not up to it has reduced greatly the effect of the whole programme. The irrigation scheme has the effect of increasing the rate of evaporation of the available supply much more than would be the case if it were to go into the Aral sea. The expansion of the irrigation schemes has been halted but that will not help much, there are proposed scheme that would divert water from other area, but then its divertion of water from where it was supposed to collect that has caused all the problems, just abstracting from elsewhere would need very careful consideration. Other schemes concentrate on binding the salt into large polders and allowing it to set hard. In the short temr Russia gains foreign currency but at the cost of poisoning the local inhabitants, and their land, so there is a massive cost to agriculture. Much of it could be restored to some semblance of normality but the changes made have already gone too far, the sea will never return to what it was, however it could still be returned to a valuable envirnomental commodity. Right now folk are doing lots of studying, coming up with plans, feasibility studies etc but the real political will is not there. Summat fer yer ter read [http://www.ciesin.org/docs/006-238/006-238.html](http://www.ciesin.org/docs/006-238/006-238.html) There is a lot of material out there if you do a search on it. It does provide a valuable lesson for other countries with water problems, particulary the US. ---
**Author:** ![Tranquilis](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tranquilis/32/3639_2.png) [@Tranquilis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tranquilis)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2002, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-aral-sea-disaapear/101193/4 "2002-04-01T18:38:53Z")
**Ringo** : [The Salton Sea](http://www.sci.sdsu.edu/salton/SaltonSeaHomePage.html): > [@](#): > > The Salton Sea, located in the southeastern corner of California, is actually a lake which occupies a desert basin known as the Salton Sink. This body of water covers a surface area of 376 square miles, making it larger than Lake Tahoe and Mono Lake. In fact, the Salton Sea is the largest lake in California. The Sea’s current elevation is about 227 feet below mean sea level, its maximum depth reaches 51 feet and its total volume is about 7.5 million acre-feet. [About the Salton Sea](http://saltonsea.ca.gov/thesea.htm). [History of the Salton Sea](http://saltonsea.ca.gov/histchron.htm). [Chronology of the Salton Sink](http://saltonsea.ca.gov/histchron.htm#period1). The Salton Sea is not so “man-made” as people generally assume. The Salton Basin has flooded any number of times over history, creating a sea that lasted from months to decades, to longer still. The current manifestaion of this sea happened when an agricultural civil engineering project went awry in 1905, and the entire flow volume of the Colorado river flowed into the basin. Despite the canal breach being sealed as quickly as possible, the sea hasn’t dried up in the last century, as it’s maintained by agricultural runoff from the thriving farming economy of SoCal. > [@](#): > > The Salton Sea was so named in 1905, but its history begins in the Salton Basin of ancient times – a time removed some 10,000 years. > > The present-day Salton Sea is a body of water that currently occupies the Salton Basin, but it is certainly not the first to do so. Historic evidence and geologic studies have shown that the Colorado River has spilled over into the Salton Basin on numerous occasions over the millennia, creating intermittent lakes. The first lake to arise was Lake Cahuilla in 700 A.D., which formed when the Colorado River silted up its normal egress to the Gulf of California and swung northward through two overflow channels.