Brutal Soviet-era farming practices severely damaged the Aral Sea's delicate ecosystem. Now ecologists are planting saplings ...

Once the world's fourth-largest lake, much of the salty Aral had largely disappeared by the late 1970s, as the rivers feeding it were diverted for irrigation in the Soviet era to water cotton and ...

The Aral Sea straddles Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan ... moisture evaporated off the lake each day. “Now instead of water vapor in the atmosphere, we have toxic dust,” says Kamalov, as he downs ...