The Aral Sea, located on the border of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, was once the fourth largest lake in the world. This Timelapse shows how water levels here have gradually decreased.
In the 1960s, the rivers that fed the Aral were diverted to irrigate newly created cotton fields in the adjacent Kyzylkum Desert. By 1997, water volume had declined to 10% of its original size, and recent satellite images show its entire eastern basin dried up.