# data[].attributes.body
Asia rely's on irrigation for crops the most out of any continent in the world. There are three main reasons that the amount of water affects how much water a region uses for irrigating crops The first one is climate, then population density and lastly is the type of crop being grown. The places with the driest climates and highest population densities are most likely to run into water stress. The best way to reduce water stress is to try and not using so much water. For families this would mean to cut down on the water usage so you don't use a excessive amount of it.

# data[].attributes.body
-what surprised me was the change in the in just 25 30 years

-I learned that the shrinking sea can actual affect the lifes of the people that have nothing to do with it.

-I want to know what the sea looks like in 2016 right now cause the pic shows 2006 but a lot could change?

# data[].attributes.body
-I was surprised at how polluted the south Aral sea is .
-I learned that this is Asia's main water source
-How long do they predict until it is completely dried up

# data[].attributes.body
What surprised me was...
How polluted the sea got and how much it shrunk
What I learned was...
That the sea shrunk over not that many years and many species of fish and other water animals died
What I wonder is...
How they plan to fix this problem and why so many animals died from it

# data[].attributes.body
what surprised me was how much the sea was shrinking.

I learned how much of a problem this was

I wonder how they plan to fix this problem

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The Aral Sea is situated in Central Asia, between the Southern part of Kazakhstan and Northern Uzbekistan. Up until the third quarter of the 20th century it was the world?s fourth largest saline lake, and contained 10grams of salt per liter. The two rivers that feed it are the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers, respectively reaching the Sea through the South and the North. The Soviet government decided in the 1960s to divert those rivers so that they could irrigate the desert region surrounding the Sea in order to favor agriculture rather than supply the Aral Sea basin. The reason why we decided to explore the implications up to today of this human alteration of the environment is precisely that certain characteristics of the region, from its geography to its population growth, account for dramatic consequences since the canals have been dug. Those consequences range from unexpected climate feedbacks to public health issues, affecting the lives of millions of people in and out of the region.

By establishing a program to promote agriculture and especially that of cotton, Soviet government led by Khrouchtchev in the 1950s deliberately deprived the Aral Sea of its two main sources of water income, which almost immediately led to less water arriving to the sea. Not only was all this water being diverted into canals at the expense of the Aral Sea supply, but the majority of it was being soaked up by the desert and blatantly wasted (between 25% and 75% of it, depending on the time period). The water level in the Aral Sea started drastically decreasing from the 1960s onward. In normal conditions, the Aral Sea gets approximately one fifth of its water supply through rainfall, while the rest is delivered to it by the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers. Evaporation causes the water level to decrease by the same amount that flows into the Sea, making it sustainable as long as inflow is equal to evaporation on average. Therefore the diversion of rivers is at the origin of the imbalance that caused the sea to slowly desiccate over the last 4 decades.

Level of salinity rose from approximately 10g/l to often more than 100g/l in the remaining Southern Aral. Salinity of the rivers varies with place and time, as well as through the seasons. When going through the desert, rivers often collect some salt compounds residues in the ground that result in higher salinity, but may well be lowered again after going through irrigated lands. Dams also affect salinity, notably by reducing its variability with the seasons. Smaller lakes within the Aral Sea that have stopped being fed by river flows tend to have higher salinity due to evaporation, causing some or all fishes that either survived or had been reintroduced in the 1990s to die. Even re-watering those lakes does not compensate for the increased salinity over the years. In 1998, water level was down by 20m, with a total volume of 210km3 compared to 1,060km3 in 1960.

(source: http://www.envis.maharashtra.gov)

Most of the changes in climate and landscape in the Aral Sea basin that we are about to explore are at the least indirect products of Human induced changes. While we must remember at all times that society is responsible for the crisis that has unfolded in and around the Aral, the point we want to make is that most of the actual changes that have afflicted the Sea since the 1960s are the result of our environment's reaction to the stresses society has imposed on it. Thus, the difficulty lies as much in understanding the way climate and other natural systems function as in being capable of weighing the potential consequences of our actions before we undertake them. Risk assessment combined with scientific understanding should undercut our actions more efficiently; adding an ethical dimension to the equation remains more than welcome in addition to those more accessible and quantifiable factors, but is too fragile to be the centerpiece on which our decisions rely before we commit to large scale actions which can often, as we are about to see, engender even larger responses from our environment.

(source: http://www.geography.hunter.cuny.edu)

(source:www.nationalgeographic.com)

(source: http://eartfocus.typepad.com)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In the last 60+ years the Aral Sea has suffered irreparable damage from an unnatural disaster.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT 06: Shrinking lake, central Asia

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT 06: Shrinking lake, central Asia The Aral Sea was the fourth largest lake in the world until the 1960s, when the Soviet Union diverted water from the rivers that fed the lake so cotton and other crops could be grown in the arid plains of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.

# data[].attributes.headline
The Shrinking of the Sea and the Quality of Life

# data[].attributes.subject
The Shrinking of the Sea and the Quality of Life

# data[].attributes.body
The Aral Sea provided water for the nearby towns before the 1960's. People have gone to rivers and groundwater to meet their water needs because of the Aral Sea region faces severe water stress. Many people have become sick from drinking the polluted water. Air pollution also gives another threat to health. Poverty is only making things worse. They way farmers work need to change as well, governments need to improve their water management. Countries around the Aral Sea may be able to use money earned by selling oil to improve the quality of life in this region in the future.

# data[].attributes.body
Before the sea began to shrink it was full of fish but because of the shrinking of the sea, the fish industry was destroyed. A lot of the workers in that industry have lost their jobs and have been having problems trying to find other jobs. Most of the water that remains is salt water. There were 100 species of fish but now most of them are gone.

# data[].attributes.body
The government of the former Soviet Union, trying to find a place to grow cotton caused an issue. The Soviet government gave water to cotton farms by building dams on the Amu and Syr rivers. The degradation of the Aral Sea was unplanned. Because of the river shrinking it caused the climate to change as well. Also because the river water was used for irrigation it degraded the land.

# data[].attributes.body
The Aral Sea is in Central Asia. It is in two countries: Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. Before the 1990's these two countries were apart of the Soviet Union. Until the 1960's the water from the Aral Sea was drinkable but now the water is too salty to drink and use for watering crops. The water and land have become a lot saltier is from salinization. When the rain falls it comes as fresh water, as this water seeps into the ground or runs off into streams, it picks up some salt from the soil. When a lake is evaporating the salt is left behind. The lake grows more and more saline over time, until it becomes an inland sea. The water and land have both been degraded over time because of salinization.

# data[].attributes.body
In 1960, Moynaq was a fishing town. It was surrounded by the Aral sea, a large lake in the Soviet republics of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. At this time it had a population of about 40,000 people. There was always boats bobbing in the water and many people fishing and farming. Now everything is different, if you would go there today you'd find it surrounded by dust. You wouldn't be able to find the Aral Seas anywhere.  The shoreline of this inland sea has withdrawn. Moynaq and the surrounding areas suffer from water stress which is caused when a place needs more water than it has to offer. As the Aral Sea has shrunk the water stress has increased in this region. The are also suffers from environmental degradation, that is when it degrades and disappears.