Aral Sea

[ar-uhl, uh-rahl]

noun

1. an inland sea between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, E of the Caspian Sea. 26,166 sq. mi. (67,770 sq. km).

Aral Sea

/ ˈærəl /

noun

1. Also called: Lake Aral. a lake in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, east of the Caspian Sea, formerly the fourth largest lake in the world: shallow and saline, now badly polluted; use of its source waters for irrigation led to a loss of over 50% of its area between 1967 and 1997, after which the reduction began to be slowed. Area originally (to 1960) about 68 000 sq km (26 400 sq miles); water area reduced by 2004 to about 17 158 sq km (6625 sq miles) and the lake divided into sections

Example Sentences

The United Nations Development Program calls the destruction of the Aral Sea “the most staggering disaster of the 20th century.”

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“Everyone laughed and said that it would take several million years,” said Shadilov, 73, one of the last surviving former fishermen of the Aral Sea.

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She met with people on the desiccated shores of the Aral Sea in Uzbekistan and saw fishing boats abandoned on the dry bed of what was once Bolivia’s Lake Poopó.

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The republic, in the northwest of Uzbekistan, is blighted by health and environmental problems resulting from intensive Soviet-era farming methods and the drying-up of the Aral Sea.

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Karakalpakstan - situated on the shores of the Aral Sea, for decades an environmental disaster site - is home to the Karakalpaks, an ethnic minority group whose language is distinct from Uzbek, although related.

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