ASTANA, Kazakhstan, Sept. 30 (UPI) -- New photos from NASA are showing the Aral Sea as just a sliver with the entire basin diminished as a result of a Soviet-era irrigation diversion project.
The draining of the Aral Sea began in the 1960s when the Soviet Union began a project to divert the two major rivers that flowed into the basin, the Syr Darya and Amu Darya, to irrigate the deserts of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. The project successfully let farms and crops flourish in the arid terrain but sacrificed the Aral Sea.