Back to Search
Start Over
High agricultural water consumption led to the continued shrinkage of the Aral Sea during 1992-2015
- Source :
- The Science of the total environment. 777
- Publication Year :
- 2020
-
Abstract
- The shrinkage of the Aral Sea started in the 1960s, and it has been continued for decades due to arguably both human and natural causes. However, the change of the Aral Sea in the post-Soviet era and its correlations with other changes in the extent of the basin have yet to be fully investigated. Here, we studied the land cover dynamics of the entire Aral Sea basin during 1992–2015 from the perspective of the surrounding environment, in order to investigate the causes of the Aral Sea further shrinkage in recent years. We used the annual Climate Change Initiative (CCI) land cover dataset to provide a spatiotemporally consistent delineation of land cover throughout the period. We found that: (1) In recent years, the Aral Sea continued shrinkage, approximately 50.38% of its water area in 1992 had dried out and turned into bare land by 2015. (2) The cultivated land area remained stable with a slight increase during the period, suggesting that no large-scale abandonment or expansion of farming extent occurred in the post-Soviet era. (3) Among other land types, urban areas are small and slightly expand at a rate of 0.024 × 104 km2/year, suggesting urbanization, and likely contribute to more water consumption. Our investigation also found that climate warming increased the upstream runoff, which has a positive effect on the water supply of the Aral Sea. The impact of human activity on the Aral Sea is more pronounced than climate change. Therefore, the continued shrinkage of the Aral Sea was likely due to high water consumption of agriculture continues to exert the influence that existed in the 1960s. Other factors, such as urbanization have exacerbated this effect. The study examined the continued shrinkage of the Aral Sea in post-Soviet era, to provide an insight into the driving factors of the complex and still controversial Aral Sea crisis.
- Subjects :
- Driving factors
Environmental Engineering
010504 meteorology & atmospheric sciences
business.industry
Global warming
Water supply
Climate change
Land cover
010501 environmental sciences
01 natural sciences
Pollution
Urbanization
Farm water
Environmental Chemistry
Environmental science
Physical geography
business
Surface runoff
Waste Management and Disposal
0105 earth and related environmental sciences
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 18791026
- Volume :
- 777
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- The Science of the total environment
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....a44059cc66a9b8d782fe802c7cffe5cf