The key question of the Aral Sea evolution important for understanding its economic, social and ecological values

doi:10.13745/j.esf.sf.2021.9.36

Abstract

Abstract: The paper reviews the up-to-date knowledge on the changes of the Aral Sea level to make it useful for decision makers in social and economic projects. We propose a new vision of the ecological standard for the Aral Sea: small to medium size lake instead of huge one as it was before 1960, when modern human-induced shrinking started. Change of the vision may turn many expensive initiatives based on extreme scenarios to be more realistic. The conclusion is based on the multiproxy data obtained from geological, archaeological, historiographical and hydrological studies. These results gave a quite reliable scheme of the changes during about 20 thousand-year history of the Aral, which experienced multiple abrupt transgressions and regressions. However, understanding of the reasons for these changes, except for the modern one, is still not complete and requires special investigation. In this paper, we discuss approaches for correlating the water level changes with climate change and variations of the Aral Basin water supply from its feeding—the Syr Darya and Amu Darya rivers.

Key words: Aral Sea, lake level changes, climate change, hydrological changes

CLC Number:

X145

S.K.KRIVONOGOV, T.I.KENSHINBAY, R.Kh.KURMANBAEV, B.S.KARIMOVA. The key question of the Aral Sea evolution important for understanding its economic, social and ecological values[J]. Earth Science Frontiers, 2021, 28(6): 196-204.

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