Preconditions

During Soviet Union the new lands in Central Asia had been develop for growing monocultures, in particular cotton and rice. Given that agrarian sector in CA countries based on irrigated agriculture the water for irrigation had been taken form the only source available in the region, i.e. the basin of Amudarya and Syrdarya rivers. Since 1970-s scarcity of water resource forced Central Asian republics to accumulate “their” water through constructing numerous storage pools, water intakes, canals. Construction spiced with cynical competition for intercept of the head water.

The modality of water resource management, complicated multi-level approval system of five Central Asia Republics, lack of water saving technologies for irrigation and farming caused extreme scarcity of water in Aral in some years even the potable water was inaccessible.

This is considered to be the most spread reason for the Aral drying.

Another reason for the Aral desiccation is the land elevation in the region. Certainly the process is not man-made but still human beings are responsible for outstanding intervention into the nature.

Since 1965 the sea level started to fall down rapidly. Water mineralization increased sharply. In 1983  The Aral Sea lost its fish industry. In case the latest trends will remain the same the sea will vanish and leave only shallow ponds with bitter salty water where even microbes cannot survive.

It seems that the Sea is taking a revenge on a human for its tragical destruction raining down sand—and-salt storms, severe frosts, poison salt and chemicals on people, pastures and cattle.

Explanation of the phenomenon Caspiy-Aral suggested by Boris Seredin was based on the article by a research fellow of the Geology and Geophysics Institute under the Uzbekistan Academy of Science, L. Morozova. The article Cloud Indices of the Earth crust geodynamics was published in The Earth Physics magazine (#10, 1993). Morozova studied previously unknown natural phenomenon, namely reaction on seismic genesis in the atmosphere, when nebulosity diffused over the land breaks. The shots made from the satellites proved this theory.

The photos demonstrated that nebulosity diffusion appeared as a narrow dark line (cloudless corridor) or as a contrast rectilinear nebulosity approaching the break. This phenomenon was caused by tectonic activity over the break.

The chart in Morozova’s article designed based on the shots made in August 1988 clearly demonstrate active breaks connecting the Caspian Sea and the Aral Sea. Given that the Aral is higher than the Caspian Sea (7,075 metres overfall) the cross-flow between the basins is rather natural. Moreover the Aral water used to flow into the Caspian Sea through the currently arid Uzboy river. There is a statistics record on fluctuation between the Caspian and the Aral seas. The textbook Common Hydrology (V. Mikhaylov, A. Dobrovolsky, 1991, p 216) provides the tables of the secular and longstanding fluctuations. The tables shows the initial decrease in the Aral Sea, and increase in the Caspian Sea 5 years after. The levels in both seas changed vice-versa. Such a recurrence is well connected with Seredin’s hypothesis on the so-called “breathing” of lithospheric plates in accordance with his “tidal model”. As a result somewhere in a 2 kilometer thick stratum of sarmat limestones there is a surface that used to be a bottom of a deep pool (in accordance with the map of the year 1496) there are channels between the Caspian and the Aral seas. Based on the rule of communicating vessels water flows to the lower lake, and we are the contemporaries of this process. Seredin suggested the trigger effect of the plate movement could be underground nuclear tests on polygon near Semipolatinsk.