I.

Introduction

Aral Sea (Russian Aral’skoye More; Uzbek Orol Dengizi), saltwater lake, or inland sea, in Central Asia, in southwestern Kazakhstan and northwestern Uzbekistan, about 450 km (about 280 mi) east of the Caspian Sea. In the Turkic languages of the area the sea’s name means “island,” referring to it as an island of water in a sea of deserts. A body of water with no outlet, the Aral Sea is fed by two large rivers, the Amu Darya from the south and the Syr Darya from the east. The rivers have been heavily diverted for crop irrigation during the past several decades, reducing the size of the Aral Sea by more than 75 percent since 1960. The resulting environmental changes pose a serious threat to the local ecology and human health.