Aral Sea Satellite Photo
The Aral Sea continues to shrink as the summer draws to a close. Once the fourth largest inland sea, the Aral Sea in southern Kazakhstan and northern Uzbekistan has divided into three bodies of water. While the Northern Aral Sea and the Southern Aral Sea have been separate for much of the 1990s, the Southern Aral Sea split along a north-south axis more recently. In this true-color Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) image, the eastern half of the Southern Aral Sea appears particularly smaller than previous images have shown. The southern edges have turned a dusty brown to match the surrounding shoreline, and the jade-green waters have retreated to the center and top of the Sea. This image was captured on October 10, 2003 by the Terra satellite.
