A Soviet Union water diversion project took place in the 1960s in an attempt to fertilize the arid plains of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan.

Before their water was diverted to create farms and cotton fields, the Syr Darya and Amu Darya rivers flowed northwest through the Kyzylkum Desert and flowed into the Aral Sea. Prior to 1960, the Aral Sea was the fourth largest lake in the world.

NASA began tracking the Aral’s water loss in 2000. By that time, the smaller northern portion of the sea had been completely cut off, and the southern portion had separated at the middle, forming two large eastern and western lobes.

The photographs from NASA’s Terra satellite tell the rest of the story.

By the time the 2001 photo was taken, the southern connection between east and west lobes had been cut, leaving the shallower eastern lobe to shrink. Between the and 2009 the eastern lobe dried up almost completely, but for some reason the lake saw a resurgence of water in 2010 and looked a bit healthier for a few years.

Unfortunately drought conditions in 2014 have caused the eastern lobe to dry up entirely for the first time.

Fishing communities collapsed as the lake shrank, while its water became increasingly salty and polluted with pesticides. Lakebed dust swirled thick in the air and threatened public health. That salty dust also landed in farms and fields, leading to increased usage of river water to flush the soil.

Completed in Kazakhstan in 2005, a dam was constructed in a final effort to save some part of the lake. All water from the Syr Darya now flows into the Northern Aral Sea, and water levels in that area have begun to rebound. Unfortunately this spells almost certain death for the much larger Southern Aral Sea, which was deemed beyond saving.