Lake shrinks by third. (The sharp fall of the lake's water level will affect shipping and fishing as well as nearby residents' water supply)

China's largest freshwater lake, Poyang, has shrunk by one third over the last three days due to a reduced water supply from the Yangtze River and little rainfall.

At 8 am Wednesday, the lake's surface area was 1,490 square kilometers, a reduction of 679 square kilometers compared with 2,169 square kilometers on Monday, said the Jiangxi Provincial Hydrological Bureau on Wednesday. 

The water level at the Xingzi hydrological station was 11.99 meters at 4 pm Wednesday, 2.13 meters lower than the average level recorded in recent years. The water level is falling by 30 centimeters every day.

The two major causes for the lake shrinking were the reduced water supply from the upper Yangtze River due to the construction of dams and sparse rainfall over the past month in Jiangxi, said the bureau.

The precipitation was less than 5 millimeters since September 20 in Jiangxi Province.

The lake's flood season began on April 30 and lasted until October 18.

This year's flood period was 33 days longer than last year's.

The sharp fall of the lake's water level will affect shipping and fishing as well as nearby residents' water supply.  
Sources : Xinhua - globaltimes.cn
22- 23/10/14
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NASA Photographs Show Eastern Basin of Aral Sea Totally Dried

New NASA photographs taken by satellite show Central Asia' once-vibrant Aral Sea shrinking to levels possibly not seen in centuries.
The images taken in August by the Terra satellite show that the sea's eastern basin, on the border of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, completely empty, the first time in modern times, said Philip Micklin, a well-known geographer and professor emeritus of Western Michigan University and an Aral Sea expert.

"And it is likely the first time it has completely dried in 600 years, since medieval desiccation associated with diversion of the Amu Darya [river] to the Caspian Sea," he told NASA.
By some accounts, the destruction of the sea is considered one of the world's worst environmental catastrophes.

• Once the fourth largest sea in the world, the Aral has been shrinking since the 1960s when the Soviet Union undertook a major irrigation project to supply the arid plains of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. 

The region's two main rivers — the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya — were tapped to irrigate water-intensive crops like cotton and others in the arid Central Asian desert.

The desert bloomed in many places, but at the expense of the lake, which has shriveled, destroying ecosystems, decimating a vibrant fishing industry and leaving dozens of communities suffering from poverty and environmentally-induced disease.
Micklin said lower rain and snow fall in the mountains to the east this year  considerably reduced the flow into the Amu Darya feeding the lake.
Uzbekistan continues to use the river for its economically-important cotton industry.
As the water receded, the sea has split into two separate sections: the North, or Small, Aral Sea, located within Kazakhstan; and the South, or Large, Aral Sea. The latter split into western and eastern basins.

• “As the lake dried up, fisheries and the communities that depended on them collapsed,” NASA noted in its statement that accompanied the publication of photographs. “The increasingly salty water became polluted with fertilizer and pesticides. Blowing dust from the exposed lakebed, contaminated with agricultural chemicals, became a public health hazard.”

The continual loss of water has also contributed to a change in the regional climate, making winters colder and summers hotter and drier, the statement said.

The photos of the drying lake were taken in August of this year by NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on the Terra satellite.
In an effort to save the lake, in 2005 a World Bank-funded dam was built in Kazakhstan, which has helped to partially restore the northern section, albeit at a fraction of its former size and volume.
http://www.voanews.com/content/nasa-photographs-show-eastern-basin-of-aral-sea-totally-dried/2471680.html
3/10/14
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