Category: Aral Sea
The state of the Aral Sea, started dramatically drying in the 1960s, is gradually stabilized, - reports RIA Novosti with reference to Peter Zavyalov, Deputy Director, Institute of Oceanology, Russian Academy of Sciences.
At the RAS meeting the scientist, delivering a report on anthropogenic impacts on water bodies, said that the Aral Sea is close to equilibrium: its surface decreased to the extent that the rate and amount of evaporation have reduced. Zavyalov added that now even small residual river flows and groundwater runoffs are able to feed and balance the Aral Sea.
The scientist said that the expeditions of the Institute of Oceanology discovered 40 species of phytoplankton and a large mass of zooplankton represented mainly only by one species - crustacean Artemia parthenogenetica. This finding allowed the researchers to conclude that, despite the high water salinity, the Aral Sea has formed its own ecosystem, which means that the sea against all the odds, still alive.
Finally, Zavyalov noted that the Aral Sea history has already seen a precedent of a catastrophic drying. It happened in the Middle Ages about two thousand years ago, that means that drying of the Aral Sea is connected not only with an anthropogenic factor, but also to natural climatic changes.