Abstract
THE rapid drying up of lakes in the Aral-Caspian depression, in so far as it appears from surveys made during the last hundred years, is the subject of a very interesting and important paper contributed by M. Yadrintseff to the last issue of the Izvestia of the St. Petersburg Geographical Society (vol. xxii. fasc. i). Two maps, which will be most welcome to physical geographers, accompany the paper. One of them represents the group of lakes Sumy, Abyshkan, Moloki, and Tchany, in the Governments of Tobolsk and Tomsk, according to a survey made in 1784. The other represents the same lakes according to three different surveys made during our century, in 1813 to 1820, in 1850 to 1860, and finally in 1880, and it shows thus the rapid progress of drying up of these lakes. There are also earlier maps of Lake Tchany, which represent it as having very many islands (Pallas estimated their number at seventy), but they are not reliable. As to the map of 1784, no cartographer, accustomed to distinguish “nature-true” maps from fancy ones, would hesitate in recognising it as quite reliable as to its general features. It is also fully confirmed by the ulterior detailed surveys dating from the beginning of our century. It appears from this series of four maps, dating from different periods, that the drying up has gone on at a speed which will surely appear astonishing to geographers. The group of lakes consisted of three large lakes—Sumy, Abyshkan, and Tchany, with a smaller lake, Moloki, between the two latter. Lake Tchany (the largest of the three) has much diminished in size, especially in its eastern and southern parts; but the greatest changes have gone on in the other lakes. Whole villages have grown on the site formerly occupied by Lake Moloki, which had a length of twenty miles at the end of last century, and now is hardly three miles wide. Of Lake Abyshkan, which had a length of forty miles from north to south, and a width of seventeen miles in the earlier years of this century, and whose surface was estimated at 530 square miles, only three small ponds have remained, the largest of them being hardly one mile and a half wide. The drying up has been going on with remarkable rapidity. Even twenty-five years ago there were several lakes ten and eight miles long and wide, where there are now but little ponds. Lake Tchsbakly, which was represented in 1784 as an oval forty miles long a>id. thirty miles wide, has an elongated irregular shape on the map of the beginning of our century; it measures, however, still forty miles in length, and its width varies fro n seven to twenty miles; while several small lakes to the east of it show its former extension. Thirty years later we find in the same place but a few small lakes, the largest of which hardly has a length and width of three miles; and now, three small ponds, the largest of them having a width of less than two miles, are all that remain of a lake which covered about 350 square miles a hundred years ago. The same process is going on throughout the lakes of West Siberia, and throughout the Aral-Caspian depression. No geologist doubted upon, but we cannot but heartily thank M. Yadrintseff for having published documents which permit to estimate the rapidity of the process.
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K., P. Drying up of Siberian Lakes . Nature 34, 329–330 (1886). https://doi.org/10.1038/034329a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/034329a0