Aral Sea

Aral Sea

Aral Sea

Aral Sea, Kazakh Aral Tengizi, Uzbek Orol Dengizi, a once-large saltwater lake of Central Asia. It straddles the boundary between Kazakhstan to the north and Uzbekistan to the south.

Discover how water projects begun under Soviet rule led to the rapid evaporation of the Aral SeaSee all videos for this article

The shallow Aral Sea was once the world’s fourth largest body of inland water. The remnants of it nestle in the climatically inhospitable heart of Central Asia, to the east of the Caspian Sea. The Aral Sea and its demise are of great interest and increasing concern to scientists because of the remarkable shrinkage of its area and volume that began in the second half of the 20th century—when the region was part of the Soviet Union—and continued into the 21st. That change resulted primarily because of the diversion (for purposes of irrigation) of the riverine waters of the Syr Darya (ancient Jaxartes River) in the north and the Amu Darya (ancient Oxus River) in the south, which discharged into the Aral Sea and were its main sources of inflowing water.