Some of the book's most dramatic satellite images document the shrinkage of the Aral Sea.
The Aral Sea was dried up by upstream diversions of water for vast areas of irrigation.
Over the last 30 years the Aral Sea has shrunk to a fraction of its former size.
Finally a word for Michael Coe who according to Banyan sees a comparison to the Aral Sea.
Starting in the 1960s, the Soviet bureaucracy irrigated cotton fields in Uzbekistan by diverting Himalayan rivers that used to feed the Aral Sea.
Fishing used to be big business on the Aral Sea in Kazakhstan.
With significantly less water feeding into it and the evaporation rate remaining the same the Aral Sea began to shrink dramatically.
Sitting on the border between two former Soviet states, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, the Aral Sea was once the fourth-largest inland sea in the world.
What used to be seen as separate, local difficulties in California, the desiccated Aral Sea, the Sahel now look more like manifestations of a global problem.
Aral Sea Archival Fond (Kazakhstan) consists of files from 1965 to 1990 that record the ecological tragedy of the Aral Sea and attempts to fight it.
The people of Aralsk, once a port at the northern tip of the Aral Sea, even began to dream about going back to sea for their livelihoods.
As with irrigating Soviet cotton fields from the Aral Sea in Central Asia or introducing rabbits to Australia, modifying the climate will have both physical and biological consequences.
If the Aral Sea's northern neighbours do get their dam, there does not seem to be much hope left for the larger, southern section, which Kazakhstan shares with Uzbekistan.
As a result, these rivers now diminish to a trickle before they reach the Aral Sea, which has shrunk to about two-thirds of its former size, creating an environmental catastrophe.
Due to the consequences of the environmental crisis in Aral Sea region such as poor soil conditions, intensive desertification and land degradation, the farmers and dehkhans often face a plenty of problems.
Take the Aral Sea in Central Asia, now a shrunken, poisonous cesspool of pesticide residues and toxic chemicals that are causing an explosion of chronic bronchitis, cancer, typhoid and hepatitis, kidney and liver disease.
The book uses satellite photographs of Earth, as well as detailed charts and diagrams, to illustrate how the planet is changing from the destruction of the Aral Sea to the spread of pollutants.
The Russians must also answer for the disappearance of much of the Aral Sea, the consequences of extensive biological-weapons testing, and the remains of hundreds of missiles and rockets that litter vast areas of the Kazakh countryside.
It is a unique fond of information for the study of the Sea of Aral and of how it came to shrink to 10 per cent of its size in the 1960s.
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