Until the 1960s, the fourth largest lake on Earth sparkled many kilometers outside the borders of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. However, by 2015, most of its surface turned into a frighteningly barren space, giving rise to the latest desert in the world and affecting the lives of about 3 million people living in this region, writes Science Alert.

According to the Executive Secretary of the UN Convention on the Sleeping of Ibrahim TIAU, the death of the largest lake of the Earth, of course, became one of the largest environmental disasters in the world.

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Once the Aral Sea once covered 68,000 square kilometers, but now reports indicate that there are only a few slippery areas that occupy only about 8,000 square kilometers of water left here. The rest of its white sea bottom now forms the Aralkum desert.

Studies have shown that the loss of this inner sea almost doubled the amount of atmospheric dust in the region from 1984 to 2015 - from 14 to 27 million metric tons. The former bottom of the lake transferred by air reduced the quality of the air in neighboring cities, even at a distance of 800 kilometers, and helps to accelerate the melting of glaciers. This further exacerbates the water crisis in the region. Scientists also found that the storms carry these destructive salts, destroying the crop by hundreds of kilometers and polluting drinking water.

Scientists also found that the dust of Aralkum is especially toxic in comparison with the dust of the desert in the rest of the region, since it contains drains from nearby chemical weapons tests from the time of the USSR, and is also full of fertilizers and pesticides from those agricultural practices that drained the Aral Sea of \u200b\u200bAral.

In the period from the 1960s to the 1990s, the Amu Darya and Syrdarya River, which flowed from the mountains and supplied the lake, were redirected for irrigation of 7 million hectares of cotton fields. Since then, large -scale irrigation has continued in various forms, which led to a rapid decrease in the lake.

The concentration of salinity in the remaining water has increased to a level exceeding the level of moths in the oceans, destroying most of the local life inside and destroying the local ecosystem. This destroyed the existence of many people.

Researchers also found that dust exposure was associated with health problems in adults and children, including the number of congenital defects increased.

In an attempt to contain toxic dust, regional governments are working on landscaping the former bottom of the lake, and local scientists are looking for plants that are hard enough to transfer salted soil.

Researchers note that the tragedy of the Aral Sea is not at all a distant event, but in fact is an ecological catastrophe of the scale of the planet. Moreover, scientists have found that such circumstances are repeated all over the world now, including: in Africa, in the Middle East, Europe, Australia and the USA.

Previously, Focus wrote that scientists claim that people will not be able to restrain the boiling of the earth.