December 08, 2016

Swiss scientists ran an assessment of change of the land areas, occurred on the planet for the past 32 years, partly, in the territories of the Siberian Yenisei and Ob River basins. Resultant expansion of dewatered territory area for the entire world was dozens of thousand square kilometres. The survey report was published in Nature magazine.

On the compiled maps, one can trace change of the territories that had been covered with water, in the examples of the Yenissei and Ob Rivers in Western Siberia. Dark-blue colour on the image indicates permanent presence of water in the areas, light-blue – seasonal water coverage. Green coloured areas are the locations, which had been dry land before, pink colour areas – territories that had been covered with water. For the past 32 years, a total of 90 thousand square kilometres area was covered with water, while 184 thousand square kilometres area has been dried. Most of the water loss territories, 70%, fall on Middle East and Central Asia. And on average, the area of territories, covered with water has increased in all large regions and continents. Oceania is an exception here, where the area of dry land has expanded for 1 per cent.

The scholars drew their conclusions based on their analysis of over 3 million LandSat satellite images, obtained in 1984-2015. According to the authors, base data allowed tracing accuracy at 900 square meter areas.

Earlier, Dutch scientists had assessed the expansion of dry land that had happened for the past 30 years, equalling to 58 thousand square kilometres. Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan were the record breakers for dry land expansion.

https://lenta.ru/news/2016/12/08/water/   

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature21100.html