MUYNAK, Uzbekistan (AP) — Toxic dust storms, anti-government protests, the fall of the Soviet Union — for generations, none of it has deterred Nafisa Bayniyazova and her family from making a living ...

Tastubek is a small fishing village located on the coast of the Aral Sea. When the waters of the sea receded due to Soviet-era irrigation projects, life here effectively stopped. After the completion ...

Once one of the worlds largest inland lakes, Asia's Aral Sea has evaporated into desert, dried by Soviet era irrigation plans. One village in Kazakhstan sits on the shrinking shores of the Aral Sea.

A generation ago, the vanishing of the Aral Sea became global shorthand for environmental desolation. Today the region has become a test bed for a resilient future. A thermal spring, visited by locals ...

Once the fourth-largest lake on Earth, the Aral Sea in Central Asia covered more than 68,000 square kilometers. But under the Soviet Union, its rivers were diverted for massive agricultural schemes — ...

In 1990, National Geographic went to the Soviet Union to report on one of the worst environmental disasters of the 20th century: the shrinking of the Aral Sea. From the rusting deck of the boat he ...

The Aral Sea straddles the border of the former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. It was once one of the world's largest lakes, but after years of being drained to irrigate crops, it ...