Turkey's Lake Tuz dries up due to climate change, farming

KONYA – For centuries, Lake Tuz successful cardinal Turkey has hosted immense colonies of flamingos that migrate and breed determination erstwhile the upwind is warm, feeding connected algae successful the lake’s shallow waters.

This summer, however, a heart-wrenching country replaced the accustomed splendid sunset images of the birds captured by wildlife lensman Fahri Tunc. Carcasses of flamingo hatchlings and adults scattered crossed the cracked, dried-up water bed.

The 1,665 quadrate kilometer (643 quadrate mile) water — Turkey’s second-largest water and location to respective vertebrate taxon — has wholly receded this year. Experts accidental Lake Tuz (Salt Lake successful Turkish) is simply a unfortunate of clime change-induced drought, which has deed the portion hard, and decades of harmful cultivation policies that person exhausted underground h2o supply.

“There were astir 5,0000 young flamingos. They each perished due to the fact that determination was nary water,” said Tunc, who besides heads the determination subdivision of the Turkish biology radical Doga Dernegi. “It was an incredibly atrocious scene. It’s not thing I tin erase from my life. I anticipation I bash not travel crossed specified a country again.”

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Several different lakes crossed Turkey person likewise dried up oregon person receded to alarming levels, affected by debased precipitation and unsustainable irrigation practices. Climate experts pass that the full Mediterranean basin, which includes Turkey, is peculiarly astatine hazard of terrible drought and desertification.

In Lake Van, Turkey’s largest lake, located successful the country's east, sportfishing boats nary longer could attack a dock past week aft the h2o fell to antithetic levels, HaberTurk tv reported.

”(We have) rising temperatures and decreasing rain, and connected the different side, the h2o needs for irrigation successful agriculture,” said Levent Kurnaz, a idiosyncratic astatine Bogazici University’s Center for Climate Change and Policy Studies. “It’s a atrocious concern each implicit Turkey astatine the moment.”

A survey based connected outer imagery conducted by Turkey's Ege University shows that h2o levels astatine Lake Tuz started to driblet opening successful 2000, according to Turkey's state-run Anadolu Agency. The water wholly receded this twelvemonth owed to rising temperatures, intensified evaporation and insufficient rain, according to the study.

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The survey besides noted a crisp diminution successful underground h2o levels astir Lake Tuz, a hypersaline water that straddles the Turkish provinces of Ankara, Konya and Aksaray.

The Konya basin successful cardinal Anatolia, which includes Lake Tuz, was erstwhile known arsenic Turkey’s breadbasket. Farms successful the portion person turned to increasing profitable but water-intensive crops specified arsenic corn, sugar-beet and alfalfa, which person drained groundwater supplies, lensman Tunc said. Farmers person dug thousands of unlicensed wells portion streams feeding the water person dried up oregon been diverted, helium said.

Environmental groups accidental mediocre authorities cultivation policies play a important relation successful the deterioration of Turkey’s lakes.

“If you don’t wage them capable money, the farmers, they volition works immoderate is h2o intensive and volition marque wealth for them. And if you conscionable archer them it’s not allowed, past they won’t ballot for you successful the adjacent election,” Kurnaz said.

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The overuse of groundwater is besides making the portion much susceptible to the enactment of sinkholes. Dozens of specified depressions person been discovered astir Konya’s Karapinar district, including 1 that Associated Press journalists saw adjacent to a recently harvested alfalfa field.

Tunc, 46, a autochthonal of Aksaray, is saddened by the thought that helium won’t beryllium capable to bask the flamingos with his 7-month-old lad similar helium did with his 21-year-old son. He remains hopeful, however, that Lake Tuz whitethorn replenish itself, if the authorities stops the water-intensive agriculture.

Kurnaz, the clime scientist, is little optimistic.

“They support telling radical that they shouldn’t usage groundwater for this agriculture and radical are not listening. There are astir 120,000 unlicensed wells successful the region, and everybody is pumping retired h2o arsenic if that h2o volition past forever,” Kurnaz said.

“But if you are connected a level place, it tin rainfall arsenic overmuch arsenic you privation and it won’t replenish the groundwater successful a abbreviated time. It takes possibly thousands of years successful cardinal Anatolia to replenish the underground h2o table,” helium added.

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The drought and flamingo deaths astatine Lake Tuz were conscionable 1 of a bid of ecological disasters to onslaught Turkey this summer, believed to beryllium partially owed to clime change.

In July, wildfires devastated swaths of forests on Turkey’s confederate coast, sidesplitting 8 radical and forcing thousands to flee. Parts of the country’s bluish Black Sea seashore were struck by floods that killed 82 people. Earlier, a furniture of oversea mucilage, blamed connected soaring temperatures and mediocre discarded management, covered the Sea of Marmara, threatening marine life.

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Although Turkey was among the archetypal countries to motion the 2015 Paris clime agreement, the state held disconnected ratifying it until this period arsenic it sought to beryllium reclassified arsenic a processing state alternatively of a developed 1 to debar harsher emanation simplification targets. Turkish lawmakers issued a declaration rejecting the presumption of developed state astatine the aforesaid clip they ratified the clime agreement.

In the municipality of Eskil, adjacent the shores of Lake Tuz, husbandman Cengiz Erkol, 54, checked the irrigation strategy connected his tract increasing carnal feed.

“The waters aren’t moving arsenic beardown and abundant arsenic they utilized to,” helium said. “I person 4 children. The aboriginal doesn’t look good. Each twelvemonth is worse than the erstwhile year.”

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Ayse Wieting and Robert Badendieck successful Istanbul contributed.

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