Ongoing Changes of Ionic Composition and Dissolved Gases in the Aral Sea

Abstract

Starting from 1961, the Aral Sea, a major saline lake in Central Asia, has been continuously shrinking because of deficiency in its water budget. Accordingly, the salinity of the once brackish lake increased by a factor of magnitude. During the desiccation, the salt composition of the Aral Sea has been subject to continuous changes because of chemical precipitation accompanying the salinity buildup. This paper provides a summary of these changes based on water samples collected from the so-called Large Aral Sea during the field surveys of 2002–2007. Once fully ventilated, the lake developed anoxic conditions and H2S contamination is frequently observed in the bottom layers. However, hydrogen sulfide is a variable rather than a permanent feature of the present Aral Sea. Because of the precipitation of calcium carbonate, gypsum, and, possibly, mirabilite, which successively occurred as the salinity increased, the relative content of SO4− and Ca2+ ions decreased. Accordingly, compared with the pre-desiccation period before 1960, the sulfate-to-chloride mass ratio decreased by 10–30%, while the relative content of calcium decreased almost 7-fold. The depletion in calcium is more pronounced in the shallow eastern part of the lake, where salinity is much higher. However, the reduction of the sulfate-to-chloride ratio in the eastern basin is smaller than that for the western basin of the Aral Sea. Hypothetically, this could be explained through precipitation of halite already taking place in the eastern basin, but not yet in the western basin. Vertical profiles of the ionic content in the relatively deep western part of the lake reveal a decrease of calcium content and relative increase of sulfate ion content toward the bottom, which is consistent with the previously published concept that the bottom layers of the western trench contain a significant admixture of the water advected from the eastern basin.