A striking new satellite image released by the European Space Agency (ESA) on April 4, 2025, illustrates the latest stage in the collapse of the Aral Sea, once the fourth-largest lake on Earth.

The Aral Sea straddles the border between Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan—it was once the fourth largest saline lake in the world. But since the 1960s, it has been shrinking because water from the ...

U ntil the 1960s, the Aral Sea was one of the largest inland reservoirs of water in the world. Over seven decades, the lake ...

This spot was once the tip of a peninsula jutting into the Aral Sea, which up until the 1960s was the world’s fourth largest inland body of water, covering some 26,000 square miles—an area ...

The Aral Sea, once the world’s fourth-largest lake, is now not only a dried-out ecological ruin but the source of an ...