Archive for the ‘Green Breaking News’ Category
how do the international conventions on the law of sea apply to the caspian, aral, and dead sea?
please discuss each case in detail
please notice that each ove the above mentioned "seas" is shared by two or more countries…
i wonder if any of them wants them to be considered as seas and to comply with correspondent international conventions.
karuf col broccolino mi fai morire!
all these seas are internal seas and were divided long ago by following the land border dragging it down to the other coast unless the sea itself is the border.
as in dead sea – the border just follow fr north to south.
aral sea – borders already decided and split between uzbek/kazakhs. there are no issues with these 2 seas.
the compass markings r adhered to.
with collapse of USSR and emergence of Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Azerbaijan as independent states, ownership and development rights in the caspian is being debated. currently, there is no agreed-upon convention that delineates the littoral states’ ownership of the Sea’s resources or their development rights. iran / kazakh had some naval issues on oil exploration etc. stalemate now!
all 3 r shrinking – so the land borders will come into being in a few more decades!
What happened to the Aral Sea?
What happened to the Aral sea and when did it disappear. What caused the disappearance of Aral Sea.
In the 1960s the Soviets started growing cotton crops in Uzbekistan. Uzbekistan’s dry climate made it necessary to divert water from the main rivers of Uzbekistan: the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya, and their inflow to the Aral Sea decreased. During the 1980s the inflow was only 10 percent of what it was in the 1950s. The loss of inflow, combined with evaporation and little rainfall, caused the shoreline to recede, and in 1987 the sea’s southern and northern parts separated, although they are still connected at times by a channel. By the end of 1996 the Aral Sea’s total area had decreased by 57 percent, its water volume also decreased. The water level of the sea, which receives 80 percent of the flow from the Amu Darya dropped 15-18 meters. The Salt level in the Aral Sea rose to that of the ocean.
The dying sea has an effect on the people as well as the plant and animal life, especially in the region of Karakalpakistan. Because Uzbek soil was not good for growing cotton crops, there were huge numbers of pesticides used on the fields and the runoff went into the rivers. This affected people living along the rivers. Diseases like anemia, cancer, tuberculosis, and allergies are frequent. Lots of children are born with defects. In the first years of the cotton project diseases like the typhoid fever, viral hepatitis, TB, and throat cancer in many areas was as high as three times the national average. Most of it happened because of the reduction in the quality and quantity of pure drinking water, and the spread of toxic dusts and the worsening of the regional climate all resulting from the Aral Sea disaster.
The really big problem about the Aral Sea disaster is that it can’t be prevented. The only way to stop it is for Uzbekistan to stop producing cotton, but it can’t because its economy depends on it. One thing they could do to slow the process down is at least close the canals’ tops because, before the water gets to the fields, about half of it evaporates. The Aral Sea is a huge disaster that affects the whole of Uzbekistan and I hope that one day maybe we can find a way to fix it.
Aral sea dried-up coasts, captured by Google Earth
Aral sea dried-up underwater lines and roads, captured by Google Earth
Duration : 0:5:2
Syr Darya River Aral Sea
This is the Syr Darya river where it flows into the North Aral sea. This structure appears to be used to stop the flow of water or reduce it as needed. The water is replenishing the once shrinking North Aral by means of a 30km world bank funded dam.
Duration : 0:1:6
Syr Darya River Aral Sea
This is the Syr Darya river where it flows into the North Aral sea. This structure appears to be used to stop the flow of water or reduce it as needed. The water is replenishing the once shrinking North Aral by means of a 30km world bank funded dam.
Duration : 0:1:6
Lacul aral in 2025 – The Aral Sea in 2025Aquatic Biodiversty: The Changing Shape Of Our Planet
Aquatic Biodiversty: The Changing Shape Of Our Planet
Aquatic biodiversity is important to the health and well-being of our planet, but is being threatened at an increasing rate. It is affected by many variables, including irrigation, contamination, and evaporation.
Irrigation
Irrigation is, possibly, the most subtle threat to aquatic biodiversity. Until recently, most irrigation issues were considered strictly from an engineering standpoint, with little regard to how construction and maintenance of irrigation channels would affect aquatic biodiversity.
body of water’s aquatic biodiversity
The channels were just earthworks, with no seepage protection. Over time, seepage affects a body of water’s aquatic biodiversity by changing its composition, affecting all life in or sustained by it.
Contamination of the body of water
In the past, lakes were often used as dumping grounds for waste materials. These materials are ingested by native animal and plant life, directly affecting aquatic biodiversity by killing off entire species. According to Philip Micklin and Nikolay V. Aladin’s article in the Scientific American, over the last thirty years animal life has decreased as follows: Fish species, from 32 to 6; bird species, from 319 to 160; and mammal species, from 70 to 32.
Evaporation
If rate of evaporation exceeds rate of rainfall, snowmelt, or groundwater supply, aquatic biodiversity is threatened.
volume decreases
When a body of water’s volume decreases (transforming the area into first a marsh, then dry ground, then eventually a desert) aquatic biodiversity changes as well. Micklin and Aladin state that the Aral Sea has actually suffered sufficient evaporation that it split into two smaller bodies, the Small and Large Aral Seas.
Large Aral Sea
The Large Aral Sea split again, into a deep western basin, a shallow eastern basin, and an isolated gulf. None are as deep as the original body of water and damage has been done to both plant and animal sectors. They further note that the marshland has decreased from 100,000 hectares in 1960 to 15,000 hectares in the 1990s.
percentage of salinity
Second, the percentage of salinity (the ratio of salt to water) can rise. Two of the smaller bodies are no longer habitable largely due to this aspect. According to Micklin and Aladin, the salinity of the Large Aral Sea has risen from about 14 grams per liter (g/l) to over 100.
ocean’s salinity
A typical ocean’s salinity is about 53 g/l, so this is devastating. What were once lush expanses of plant life sustained by the lake’s water are now barren except for the few varieties able to thrive in either saline soil, dry conditions or both.
aquatic biodiversity
If damage was restricted to this one body of water, the threat to aquatic biodiversity would not necessarily be world-threatening. The problem (exceedingly costly to fix once the damage has begun), however, is spreading. The latest victims are Central Africa’s Lake Chad and California’s Salton Sea.
survival
Unfortunately, even economically fortunate countries are cautious in allocating funds for remedying the problems. Unless ways can be found to help smaller countries, where immediate survival is often more urgent than long-term effects, we can expect these changes to continue, with disastrous effects.
Duration : 0:1:19
Irrigation draining the Aral Sealessons learned from the Aral Sea tragedy?
What ecological and economic lessons can we learn from the Aral Sea tragedy?
The problem arose initially in the aftermath of the First World War when the newly established USSR wanted to obtain greater agricultural production by irrigating parts of Kazakhstan / Uzbekistan for the production of cotton.
This involved the diverting of two rivers, the Amu Darya in the south and the Syr Darya in the northeast to water areas of desert. Many of these pipelines and canals were badly constructed resulting in huge leakages and wastage of water. The scheme was continued and even extended as it had resulted in good cotton harvests from the region.
It was not until the 1960s that the removal of water from these rivers was having a noticeable effect on the diminishing level of water in the Aral Sea which had employed 40,000 fishermen as well a further industry related to muskrat trapping in the deltas of the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers.
In terms of economic and economic lessons, one has to be exceptionally careful when redirecting water resources within a desert region. Where water is KNOWN to empty into the sea, then river can (with caution) be pumped or diverted into irrigation channels.
The main problem as far as the Aral Sea is concerned is that it is an inland sea and the development of a large cotton industry has been at the expense of a large fishing industry as well as a significant change to the local climate.
I would hope that a similar venture would never be tried again and that with use of more waterproof pipe and canal floor materials, gradual repair and overhaul of the irrigation infrastructure will result in increasing flow back into the Aral Sea. The water level has already risen by 7 feet in the northern parts of the Sea. It is clear that the Kazakh government is taking a much more responsible attitude to the problem than the Soviet government had done.
Going Green: More Bang for Your Buck
WSVN Channel 7 News in Miami, FL. Broadcast August 31, 2006. Ways to go green without breaking your bank account. Includes interviews with Rebecca Carter of www.greenerMIAMI.com, Marci Zaroff of Under the Canopy, Eco-Dipes, and Bannavis Sribyatta of PIE.
Duration : 0:2:36