Where Is the Aral Sea?

The Aral Sea once lay between Kazakhstan (to the north) and Uzbekistan (to the south) in Central Asia, covering about 68,000 km² — the fourth-largest lake in the world. Beginning in the 1960s, Soviet irrigation projects diverted the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers that fed the lake to grow cotton in the arid steppe. By 2014, the Eastern Aral Sea had completely dried up for the first time in modern history. The shrinkage exposed toxic seabed contaminated with pesticides and salts, causing health crises in surrounding communities. The Kok-Aral Dam, built in 2005 with World Bank funding, has partially restored the smaller North Aral Sea in Kazakhstan.