Shrinking Aral Sea, 2000-2016 In the 1960s, the Soviet Union undertook a major water diversion project on the arid plains of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan. The region’s two major rivers, fed by snowmelt and precipitation in faraway mountains, were used to transform the desert into farms for cotton and other crops. Before the project, the Syr Darya and the Amu Darya rivers flowed down from the mountains, cut northwest through the Kyzylkum Desert, and finally pooled together in the lowe

180K views · 2.5K reactions | Once the fourth-largest lake in the world, the Aral Sea has been slowly disappearing since the 1960s. Watch how the lake has shrunk over the past few decades. Learn more: https://go.nasa.gov/2REMJMS | NASA Earth | Facebook

4.8M views · 10K reactions | The Aral Sea, located on the border of...