Talk:Aral Sea

Untitled

On June 19, 2007, seems everything between "Ecological Problems" to "Bioweapons" is verbatim from http://www.aralseainfo.com/ HighFlyer12 17:46, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

That page lists this one as the source.Kmusser 17:52, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Facts Missing

Hello.

This article deals almost completely with the environmental disaster of Aral Sea. Basic facts such as surface area (as of 199x or 200x, for example), geography, climate and economy issues are almost completely missing. Given the fact that pre-1960 Aral was the 4th largest lake in the world, I could describe this article as stub.

However, at the moment I cannot spend time in making the text better.

Cleanup tag

This article has been tagged because it needs to have spelling and grammar corrected, be rearranged, wikified, and in fact almost completely rewritten. If possible, help from a more advanced Wikipedian or Cleanup Task Force member would be appreciated, as I am only a lowly Wikimite. Vanderdecken ^℘ζξ 12:40, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Looks like you visited the page just a couple of hours after a huge messy anon rewrite. I've reverted to the old version, which is of decent quality. Staecker 13:36, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, somebody went through and replaced the R in aral with an N throughout the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.176.107.26 (talk) 03:58, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Watchlist

I can't find the link to put this on my watchlist. I know. I suck. I have a lot of stubs on there, but this one, though not a stub, I feel is a rather important article. I want it on my list. Could anyone help me?

Oh, I forgot to sign in...Sorry!

CommKing 19:41, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Aral Sea

Hi i'm called Phil and i think that what they are doing to the aral sea is wrong. I dont think that they should take all the water but only take it to one cotten plantation.

This is not a genral talk page but now you mention it I read that some fields that are been used to grow cotton are floodedmattypc 20:16, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Contradiction

In the current situation area, it lists near the top of the paragraph that the sea had lost 60% of its surface area, thus leaving 40%. Later, however, it states that only 25% is left. Which is it?

The article says that the Soviet Union decided in 1918. The Soviet Union did not exists until 1922 and Wikipidia itself has an article on Soviet Union "The Soviet Union was established in December 1922 as the union of the Russian (colloquially known as Bolshevist Russia), Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Transcaucasian Soviet republics ruled by Bolshevik parties. ". Please, correct the contradiction. Ruslan Moskalenko

I made the change, but anyone can edit Wikipedia, you could have made the correction yourself. Kmusser 16:11, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

History of Aral Sea

This article should cover also the history of Aral Sea before the Soviet era. Aral Sea has been constantly changing, sometimes it has been even larger than before the current shrinking, other times it has been almost dried up when Amu Darya has flowed into the Caspian Sea instead.--Jyril 12:46, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

True, though an in-depth history would probably have to start with the words Turgai Sea in the first sentence. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 18:52, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

This is more important than it might seem for classifying the Aral Sea. It's accepted to classify it as a lake, but from the perspective of the Oligocene epoch, it is the result of a marine transgression, making it a sea. From the perspective of the Holocene, it's more of a lake. Kind of messy.

IMHO, this article needs a geologic history section; this is especially important since there is a link to inland sea which may cause confusion (it did for me, at least). Note that Paratethys links here. demonburrito (talk) 20:32, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Bizarre but persistent accounts that North Aral is rapidly being restored

Observers in 2006 claim the waters have returned 3 years earlier than expected (after World Bank August 2005 damn set up), previous port city of Aralsk is no longer 100 km from the coast but now only 25(!), and substantial fishing stocks (for export!) with returning fishing industry. I know this sounds preposterously optimistic, but everybody concerned seems to agree it is somehow happening. I edited the article to reflect this, using footnotes and lots of qualifiers in case the observers are seeing a few mirages, but I don't see how this can be ignored while we just parrot old news about what a calamity it is when reports are suddenly otherwise. Mare Nostrum 19:13, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

North Aral is a tiny lake, compared to the rest of the Aral Sea. Now that the dam separates it from the Aral Sea proper, it is being filled up by the Syr-Darya river. However, the south part of the Aral Sea (which is enourmously larger) is still in a dire condition and drying up quickly. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.114.255.99 (talk)

I totally agree with you. If nothing is done in 10 years the southern part will be either gone or almost gone.But i guess they value cotton over the sea.

In an other perspective, the drying and rising in salinity already killed all endemic species to Aral Sea. So there is sadly nothing left to save from extinction there. The projects to restore Aral Sea are aimed at economic development, or more acuratly, fixing the harm done to economy. That's kind of sad that greed for cotton killed the sea and now humans want a new sea for the economic oportunities lost with the water. A different sea of course, because it will never be the same. Aral Sea's endemic fauna and flora is now extinct. That's why I'm not cheering at the restoration of the Northern part of the sea. Correjon (talk) 07:45, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

I think it is very important that someone revise the sentence "Salinity has dropped, and fish are again found in sufficient numbers for some fishing to be viable." Fishing is clearly not viable. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.126.231.73 (talk) 22:03, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Image:Aral sea 1985 from STS.jpg

Is there any particular reason why this image has been flipped so that the foreground is at the top of the frame? -- MacAddct1984 22:51, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

It was probably done so that north would be at the top of the picture, I agree that it looks odd that way though. Kmusser 07:10, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Non-sequitur about Lake Superior

"On 9th/10th June 2007 BBC World broadcast a documentary called 'Back From The Brink?' made by Borna Alikhani and Guy Creasey that showed some of the changes in the region since the introduction of the Aklak Dam. His prediction is that within ten years Lake Superior in the United States will contain 15% less fresh water than it currently holds."

The second sentence needs to be made relevant to the topic, or it will soon be deleted I suppose, by me or someone else, as an archetypical non-sequitur.Mare Nostrum 11:13, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

Introduction Paragraph Tense

The first sentence in the intro para talks about the Aral Sea in the past tense. As far as I can tell, it's still there and isn't gone yet. Is that just a typo or some previous vandalism? Bigheadjer 01:53, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

"Karalpakstan"?

Is "Karalpakstan" a misspelling? Because there's no use of that name in any other part of the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.252.229.213 (talk) 21:56, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Karalpakstan

OK, so what the hell does it have anything to do with the Aral Sea? wikipedia is not an outlet for a separatist group's marketing campaign. >:( i'm gonna delete it in a few days if not one objects. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Completesentence (talk • contribs) 06:52, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Since that kind of info belongs in the Karakalpakstan article (and is in fact already there), I removed it from here. Otebig (talk) 11:35, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Confusing image

The image captioned "Aral sea seen by SPOT satellite" is hard to decipher. Is it a close-up of a small part of the shoreline? It certainly doesn't look like the whole sea. I think the caption needs to be clarified, and also needs a date. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.133.242.135 (talk) 22:07, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Looks to me like the image is copyrighted and shouldn't be on wikipedia anyway. Its description page says it comes from here: http://gallery.spotimage.com/product_info.php?products_id=1319 ..and that website's "Terms of Use" page, here: http://gallery.spotimage.com/pages.php?pID=14 says in part "The contents of this site are intended solely as information for visitors to the site. Its contents may not be extracted, modified, distributed or circulated either wholly or in part, for any other purpose than the personal information of visitors, without prior written permission from Spot Image." Sounds pretty clear, no? Pfly (talk) 01:14, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Vozrozhdeniya Island - image would be better there ? --195.137.93.171 (talk) 05:53, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Where?

There do not appear to be any maps showing where in the world this sea is. Might want to fix that. 193.63.128.55 (talk) 16:57, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Yeahh but all the maps which are not a close-up of the Aral sea use outdated 1960-ish contours, probably being ignorant of the water loss. ⤺ms.⁴⁵ 00:54, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Altitude?

What is the altitude of the Aral Sea? And of the Caspian Sea? That would help understand the feasibility of transferring water from Caspina to Aral. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.159.118.174 (talk) 08:58, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Surface elevation of the water north of the dam is about 125 ft above normalnull, whereas the Caspian sea is about 92 ft. below. However the Caspian sea is also drying up, only at a much slower rate which (should it ever become a problem) the Russians can solve by pushing a few buttons up in Volgograd. They were planning to build some much longer canals to refill the Aral sea, but as of the early 1990s it's not their problem anymore. ⤺ms.⁴⁵ 00:54, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Eastern Aral hasn´t dried up yet

The eastern Aral hasn´t dried up yet, the evidence I have for this is that the photo used on the German web page to show that the aral had dried up clearly shows water. Have a look on the website ´flashearth´ (type ´flashearth in on google) and you will see that the area that the website calls dust etc. has receeded further. Dust doesn´t receed, but water does. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.37.133.180 (talk) 20:57, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

this article states that the aral sea lost more water than erie and ontario combined when it was the world's 8th largest lake. this is not true. as stated in the article aral sea once had almost 300 cubic miles of water. lakes erie and ontario hold 110 and 430 cubic miles apiece. how could the aral sea lose more water when it does not even equal the amount of water in the lakes?? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.240.94.94 (talk) 04:10, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Salt-water

Shouldn't the fact that this is a salt-water lake be mentioned somewhere in the opening paragraphs? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Elron (talk • contribs) 15:40, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Well, I just added a link to saline endorheic basin. But note the article talks about the Aral Sea in the past tense. It is now three lakes: the North Aral Sea and the eastern and western basins of the former South Aral Sea. The salinity of each of the three lakes differs, with the southern lakes being super-saline and the North Aral Sea apparently undergoing a reduction in salinity. Still, all three are salty, if I understand right, so I make a link saying so in the lead. Pfly (talk) 09:26, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Some wiki editing jargon trapped in the History section

Hi. I was just noticing that there was some wiki "programming" language remnants or whatever you really call it in the History section as of April 7th, 2010. I don't know how it is fixed, but I thought I'd point it out so that someone who has more experience could take care of it. I hope that made sense. Thanks, 24.10.181.254 (talk) 11:25, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Hi again. It might make a little more sense if I paste what it said: Cite error: Closing </ref> missing for < ref > tag. The "<>" brackets were moved in the second instance of "ref" so that it didn't turn into a citation, so that you have the general idea of what to look for in the "History" section. Wow. That might not have made sense either. Good luck fixing and much obliged. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.10.181.254 (talk) 11:32, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Hi one more time. I think I figured it out. I guess someone tried to tag this article to say there was a citation error, but didn't format properly. I erased the tag that said {{citation (note no closing brackets), and then made sure there was a </ref> to end the citation. I don't think it's a violation of Wikipedia policy to remove a "tag" if it wasn't formatted properly in the first place and I ended up fixed it to look right, but just in case it was, I wasn't intending to break policy, I was just trying in Good Faith to make it look right. Hope I didn't step on any toes. Regards, 24.10.181.254 (talk) 11:47, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Well done. Don't worry about "policy". Be bold!. Rwxrwxrwx (talk) 11:56, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Hey thanks. Isn't the "Show Preview" button awesome? I would never dare to edit articles without it! 24.10.181.254 (talk) 04:58, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Turkmenistan building man-made "Golden Age Lake"

I learned from a youtube Aral Sea video comment that Turkmenistan is spending billions to create a new lake, with the water to be diverted from Amu Darya through the desert by a 100-mile(?) canal. Google yielded the following:

From the Radio Free Europe website: "Turkmenistan: Ashgabat Has Grand Plans To Create Man-Made Lake, River (Part 1)" http://www.rferl.org/content/article/1054572.html "Turkmenistan: Projects Sounding Alarm Bells In Region (Part 2)" http://www.rferl.org/content/article/1054573.html "Analysis: A River Runs Through It" http://www.rferl.org/content/article/1054577.html

From the Institute for War and Peace Reporting: "Turkmen “Golden Lake” May Prove Green Disaster" http://www.iwpr.net/report-news/turkmen-%E2%80%9Cgolden-lake%E2%80%9D-may-prove-green-disaster

Then there's this, which suffers from translation problems, but has the whiff of official documentation and also maps and photos, including one of the already-excavated "Karashor" lake-bed depression: "The « Golden age lake » of Turkmenistan" http://91.121.162.160/aral/Golden_age_lake.pdf

I see (belatedly) that the lake-building project has a stub, but the topic seems pertinent to this Wikipedia article, too. "Further reading", if nothing else. 24.128.188.152 (talk) 06:23, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Amu Darya Flowing into Southern Aral

It would look like the Amu Darya sometimes still flows into the Southern Aral (filling it considerably): http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/subsets/?subset=CentralAsia1.2010163.aqua.1km 81.154.104.54 (talk) 22:46, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

IS

The Aral Sea is or WAS? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.54.188.35 (talk) 13:45, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Good question. I would say "was", but the article is currently worded otherwise. --Roentgenium111 (talk) 21:54, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm more inclined to say 'was' as well because it isn't a geographically distinct location due to the way it's been divided 75.93.212.49 (talk) 19:21, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Early human use

This section is very russian centric and needs to be edited. Humans have been living around Aral sea for thousands of years. History didn't begin with russian conquest of Central Asia. --Indipuk (talk) 20:23, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Feel free to add appropriate info. It's a wiki!--Roentgenium111 (talk) 21:11, 18 November 2010 (UTC)