A giant lake transforms into the planet's youngest desert.

Once one of the world's largest lakes, the Aral Sea lost its water supply from two nearby rivers and gradually dried up. As a result, the Aral Sea became the world's youngest desert.

Before the 1960s, the Aral Sea was

lake

The world's fourth largest lake. However, over the past nearly 70 years, this enormous salt lake has gradually split into smaller lakes, with much of its original surface evaporating completely and transforming into a young desert. Photo: columbia.edu.

The Aral Sea once covered an area of ​​approximately 68,000 square kilometers. If that figure remained the same today, the Aral Sea would be...

third largest lake

The world's largest surface area (second only to the Caspian Sea and Lake Superior). Photo: Earth Observatory.

However, in reality,

large lake

The world's third largest lake is currently Lake Victoria. Lake Victoria has also changed in size over the past few decades, but not as much as the Aral Sea. The other lakes of the Aral Sea have a surface area of ​​only about 10% of the original large lake. Photo: Morris Ryan, National Geographic.

The Aral Sea is located in the border region between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The two main freshwater sources of the Aral Sea are the Syr Darya and Amu Darya rivers. They provide freshwater that sustains this enormous lake in an otherwise arid area. Photo: uplink.

In the 1960s, the Syr Darya and Amu Darya rivers began to be used increasingly for irrigation. Consequently, a large amount of river water was diverted to irrigate 7 million hectares of Soviet cotton fields. This led to a decrease in the amount of water flowing into the Aral Sea, causing the lake to shrink significantly in size. (Photo: Arian Zwegers Moynaq)

By the late 1980s, the lake had split in two. The Greater Aral Sea lies in the south, still within the border region, while the Lesser Aral Sea is now entirely within Kazakhstan. Photo: NASA Earth Observatory.

Over the next two decades, the Greater Aral split into two halves: an eastern half and a western half. In new satellite images released by the European Space Agency (ESA) on April 4, the northern Lesser Aral Lake (located above the Greater Aral Lake) is covered in ice. Photo: Jordi Azategui.

The western part of the Great Aral Sea is now just a narrow strip, while the eastern part has almost completely disappeared, leaving behind a barren, saline landscape. That land is the Aralkum Desert – the youngest desert on Earth. Photo: Mark Pitcher.

Changes to the Aral Sea have had devastating consequences, including the disappearance of the fishing industry and a change in the region's climate: colder winters and hotter summers. Every year, violent sandstorms spread sand and salt hundreds of kilometers, destroying crops, polluting drinking water sources, and affecting the health of millions of people. Photo: Phillip Capper / 2011.

The salinity in the remaining water of the Aral Sea has risen above that of the ocean, killing most of the lake's native species and depleting the richness of the local ecosystem. Photo: central-asia.guide.

Readers are invited to watch the video : Unraveling the mystery of the largest underground lake on the planet.

Source: https://khoahocdoisong.vn/ho-nuoc-khong-lo-bien-thanh-sa-mac-tre-nhat-hanh-tinh-post268282.html