Eastern Arm Of Remnant Aral Sea Shrinks 80% In Past Three Years, ESA Announces - AFP

[hatrack]

PARIS (AFP) – The eastern lobe of the disaster-struck Aral Sea seems to have shrunk by four-fifths in just three years, the European Space Agency (ESA) said on Friday. It released an overlay of photographs taken by one of its Earth observation satellites, Envisat, on July 1 2006 and July 6 2009.

Once the world's fourth-largest inland body of water but now a byword for ecological calamity, the Aral Sea has been retreating over the last half-century after rivers that fed it were diverted for Soviet cotton irrigation projects. Around two decades ago, it split into the Small Aral Sea in the north, located in Kazakhstan, and the Large Aral Sea, shared by Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.

The horseshoe-shaped Large Aral Sea began to split into eastern and western lobes, in 2000.

"The eastern lobe retreated substantially between 2006 and 2009," ESA said in a press release. "It appears to have lost about 80 percent of its water since the 2006 (image) acquisition, at which time the eastern lobe had a length of about 150 kilometres (93 miles) and a width of about 70 kms (43 miles)."

EDIT

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090710/sc_afp/environmentdisasteraral;_ylt=AtFnFa0Rb6kFPtfMxvYJTs1pl88F

[predfan]

1. This old earth is 6000 years old, and we humans haven't done anything to it yet.

Isn't that what the lady said the other day?

[DCKit]

2. Damn that Discovery Channel! n/t