The Tragedy of Drying Lakes

Quite a few lakes throughout the world are drying or completely dry due to water diversion caused by irrigation or overwhelming urban demands. Its a tragic situation often with dire and monumental consequences. Three of the lakes are detailed below.

Lake Urmia - Iran

Lake Urmia is a drying salt lake near Iran's border with Turkey. At its former peak size, it was the largest lake in the Middle East and the sixth largest saltwater lake on earth.  The lake has shrunk to 10% of its former size since 1970 due to damming of the rivers that flow into it and pumping of groundwater from the area. Becase of its high salinity, the lake no longer sustains any fish species.

ARTICLES
Action Urged - Lake Urmia Is Drying Up! >
Lake Urmia (Wikipedia) >
Iran’s Most Famous Lake Is Disappearing >

Aral Sea - Russia, 

Formerly one of the four largest lakes in the world with an area of 26,300 sq mi, the Aral Sea has been steadily shrinking since the 1960s after the rivers that fed it were diverted by Soviet irrigation projects. By 2007, it had declined to 10% of its original size. Satellite images taken by NASA in August 2014 revealed that for the first time in modern history the eastern basin of the Aral Sea had completely dried up and is now called the Aralkum Desert.

The shrinking of the Aral Sea has been called "one of the planet's worst environmental disasters". The region's once-prosperous fishing industry has been essentially destroyed, bringing unemployment and economic hardship.

The receding sea has left huge plains covered with salt and toxic chemicals [the results of weapons testing, industrial projects, and pesticides and fertilizer runoff] which are picked up and carried away by the wind as toxic dust and spread to the surrounding area. As a result, the land around the Aral Sea is heavily polluted, and the people living in the area are suffering from a lack of fresh water and health problems, including high rates of certain forms of cancer and lung diseases.Vast salt plains exposed by the shrinking Aral have produced dust storms, making regional winters colder and summers hotter.

ARTICLES
Aral Sea (Wikipedia) >
Aral Sea's Eastern Basin Is Dry for First Time in 600 Years >

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Owens Lake

Now just a dry lakebed — a howling wasteland of toxic dust — Lake Owens once held significant water until 1913, when much of the Owens River was diverted into the Los Angeles Aqueduct. This caused Owens Lake to dry up by 1926. Although today, some of the flow of the river has been restored, tragically as of 2013 it is the largest single source of dust pollution in the United States.

Dust Storms

Bales of Hay are scattered in the dry lakebed to help minimize loose dust and dust storms.

Los Angeles Aqueduct

ARTICLES
Owens Lake (Wikipedia) >
Where Chinatown Began >
Flying Over Owens Lake During California’s Drought:
Owens Lake: Past Resent and Future >

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List of Drying Lakes (Wikipedia) >

Visual Quick Study: Kurdistan

Kurdistan

Kurdistan roughly encompasses the northwestern Zagros and the eastern Taurus mountain ranges.

Kingdom of Corduene in 60 B.C

Medieval period

Kurdistan in the Middle Ages was a collection of semi-independent and independent states called "emirates". It was nominally under indirect political or religious influence of Khalifs or Shahs.

In the 16th century, after prolonged wars, Kurdish-inhabited areas were split between the Safavid and Ottoman empires. After the Battle of Chaldiran in 1514 up until the aftermath of World War I, most Kurdish areas were generally under Ottoman rule.

Kurdish Independent Kingdoms and Autonomous Principalities circa 1835.

World War I and the Treaty of Sèvres

After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the Allies contrived to split Kurdistan among several countries, including Kurdistan, Armenia and others (as detailed in the ultimately unratified Treaty of Sèvres). However, the reconquest of these areas by the forces of Kemal Atatürk caused the Allies to accept the renegotiated Treaty of Lausanne and the borders of the modern Republic of Turkey, leaving the Kurds without a self-ruled region. Other Kurdish areas were assigned to the new British and French mandated states of Iraq and Syria.

Further Info

Turkey, Kurds and The Treaty of Sevres 1920. A history >

Treaty of Sevres-Lausanne >

The Collapse of the Oil/Gas Industry

This is a great article with amazing interactive maps

Watch Five Years of Oil Drilling Collapse in Seconds >

Also of interest...

How Will Low Oil Prices Affect Natural Gas?

Decline of U.S. Railroads - Animated Maps

Railroad History has always fascinated me. The two animated maps below vividly illustrate the huge loss of railroad passenger service across America...

Map from the National Association of Railway Passengers 

and Malcolm Kenton via Greater Greater Washington.

Animation by Joss Fong
Slowed Down by Rich Coffey

Article >

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Watch: The slow, sad decline of Amtrak

Source: http://media.mnn.com/assets/images/2011/05/amtrak-timeline.gif

Article >

1924 Snapshot of New York State’s Trolleys

A series of ten mobile-friendly zoomable maps of various regions of New York State, detailing the interurban systems in 1924. The interactive maps are the centerpiece of the site but timelines and an abundance of links to other sites on New York State trolleys create an interesting history-saturated "launching pad" for research on this subject.

Other New England States will eventually be added as all.

Northeast Interurbans (A 1924 Snapshot) >

Mayan Civilization

The Mayans

The Maya civilization developed in an area that encompasses southeastern Mexico, all of Guatemala and Belize, and the western portions of Honduras and El Salvador.

The Maya recorded their history and ritual knowledge in screenfold books, of which only three uncontested examples remain, the rest having been destroyed by the Spanish. The Maya developed a highly complex series of interlocking ritual calendars, and employed mathematics that included one of the earliest instances of the explicit zero in the world. As a part of their religion, the Maya practiced human sacrifice.

The Mayans were noted for their hieroglyphic script, the only known fully developed writing system of the pre-Columbian Americas, as well as for its art, architecture, and mathematical and astronomical systems.

The Mayan Civilization (Cities)

Trade Routes

Ruins

Numerous city ruins have been discovered in the jungles of Yucatan. The principal architecture of these cities consisted of palaces, pyramid-temples, ceremonial ballcourts, and structures aligned for astronomical observation. 

Mayan Causeway

Mayan causeway systems linked important features of a city to one another and later linked cities with other cities. These causeways, created above the ground level, were paved with crushed white stone, and were known as by their Maya name sacbe ("white way"). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacbe

Causeway at Labna

Further Info

Maya Civilization >(Wikipedia) 
Living Maya Time > (Smithsonian)
Guide to the Maya Civilization >
Maya - Facts & Summary > (HISTORY.com)

Albany/Schenectady Area Trolleys

Two Highlights from a Web Site Detailing History in Upstate NY

Chock full of historical info and photos, maps and “trips in the field” - this site details history on railroads and trolleys in the area, Native Americans settlement in the area as well as how Glacier Flooding created the landscape.

The before and after is much better now!

Scroll to the bottom of the page

Trolley Bridge - Then and Now  Schenectady, NY

Interactive Map 

1924 Trolley Lines in the Albany/Schenectady Area

Interactive Map of Interurbans in the Albany/Schenectady Area- 1924 -

History Tidbits Home Page >