Heart of Aral Sea

This image, which was captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission on 30 August 2018, shows just a part of the Aral Sea: the heart-shaped northern tip of the western half of the Large Aral Sea.

The Aral Sea was once the fourth largest lake in the world. However, in the 1960s, Soviet irrigation projects diverted the rivers that fed the lake to grow water-intensive cotton in the desert, and as a result the Aral Sea shrank dramatically.

By the end of the 1980s, it had split into the Small Aral Sea (north) in Kazakhstan, and the horse-shoe shaped Large Aral Sea (south) shared by Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. 

While efforts are underway to save the northern part, the sea’s entire southern section is expected to soon dry out completely. Also this heart-shaped emerald sea is withering away and might soon disappear altogether.