The drying of one of the world’s largest lakes is among the greatest human-made disasters to ever impact the Earth’s surface.

In the 1950s, the Soviet Union began diverting the rivers that fed the Aral Sea for cotton production, and over time, it dried out. Sixty years later, it has lost 90 percent of its volume, ...

Once the world's fourth-largest lake, much of the salty Aral had largely disappeared by the late 1970s, as the rivers feeding it were diverted for irrigation in the Soviet era to water cotton and ...

The Aral Sea was once the world's fourth largest lake, but 60 years ago, local industry diverted the rivers feeding the lake to irrigate cotton fields.

Since the 1950s, river water entering the Aral Sea, once the world’s fourth-largest lake, has been diverted to irrigate cotton crops. Today, the sea spans only 10% its former surface area.

When the farm boom began in the 1960s, the Aral had a commercial fishery that brought in more than 40,000 tons of fish each year, hauled from the sea by ships more than a hundred feet long.

The Aral Sea in July — September 1989 (L) and on August 16, 2009 (R). Image obtained from the University of Maryland Global Land Cover Facility / Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer ...

Mr. Dreyer, an editor and writer, wrote from Muynak, Uzbekistan. Walking toward the shrinking remnants of what used to be the Aral Sea in Uzbekistan was like entering hell. All around was a desert ...

Once one of the world's largest inland lakes, the Aral Sea in Central Asia, has evaporated into the desert, its waters sucked dry by Soviet-era irrigation plans.

MUYNAK, Uzbekistan (AP) — Brushing the dust from his hat and lying on the floor inside his home, Ali Shadilov recalls how he and other fishermen used to laugh at town elders who warned that the… ...

Climate change is fueling the disappearance of the Aral Sea. It's taking residents' livelihoods, too ...

A boat sits where the Aral Sea once was in Muynak, Uzbekistan, July 12, 2023. Today, the Aral has shrunk to less than a quarter of its former size. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi) ...