Which of the following has/have shrunk immensely/dried up in the recent past due to human activities?
- 1.Aral Sea
- 2.Black Sea
- 3.Lake Baikal
Select the correct answer using the code given below:
Answer & explanation
Answer: (a) 1 only
Only the Aral Sea fits. From the 1960s the Soviet Union diverted its feeder rivers, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, to irrigate cotton, and the lake that was once the world's fourth largest broke into small remnants. The Black Sea and Lake Baikal have not shrunk in this way.
- ✓ 1. Irrigation diversions starved the Aral Sea (on the Kazakhstan–Uzbekistan border) of inflow; satellite images show it was already a fraction of its 1960 extent by 2000.
- ✗ 2. The Black Sea, a large inland sea linked to the Mediterranean through the Bosporus, faces pollution problems but has not dried up.
- ✗ 3. Lake Baikal in Siberia, the world's deepest lake, still holds its vast volume of fresh water; it has not shrunk immensely.
Remember · Aral Sea: once the world's fourth-largest lake, fed by the Amu Darya and Syr Darya; shrank drastically after Soviet-era irrigation diversions from the 1960s.
Sources
- World of Change: Shrinking Aral Sea, NASA Earth Observatory ↗ “In the 1960s, the Soviet Union undertook a major water diversion project on the arid plains of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan. … The lake they made, the Aral Sea , was once the fourth largest in the world. Although irrigation made the desert bloom, it devastated the Aral Sea.”
Question and answer: UPSC's official GS Paper I (2018, Series A) — paper ↗ · answer key ↗. Explanation: Minimalist IAS, checked 30 Sept 2026 (how we verify). ·