| CASPIAN SEA
Caspian Sea
Caspian Sea The Caspian Sea (Persian : Daryâ-ye Mâzandarân; "Sea of Mazandaran", Russian : Kaspieyskoye more) is a large landlocked salt lake on the border of Europe and Asia . With its surface of 371,000 km², it is the largest lake in the world. Because of this size and the salty water, the lake is characterized as a sea . It was considered an ocean by the ancient coastal inhabitants, possibly because of its salinity and apparent boundlessness. There are no outflowing waters from the Caspian Sea, therefore it is aendorheic pelvis. The sea is named after the Caspians.
The main rivers feeding the sea are the Volga, the Urals , the Terek and the Kura. Each year, these drain some 350 km³ of fresh water into the sea. The Volga supplies the largest part with 80% of this. Because there are no outgoing rivers but a lot of water evaporates, the salinity of the water gradually increases. The salinity (salt content) is about 1.2%, slightly more than a third of the average ocean salinity (3.5%). In the north, where most rivers flow into the sea, the salinity is about half the average.
The surface of the Caspian Sea is slightly smaller than the Black Sea, but the sea is much less deep. The sea contains about 77,000 km of water, much less than the more than 500,000 km³ of the Black Sea. The sea is deepest, a maximum of one kilometer, in the southern part and the northern basin is very shallow in most places, between four and 25 meters. The two basins are separated by a shallower part that connects the peninsulas Apsheron (Azerbaijan) and Cheleken (Turkmenistan). To the sea belongs the almost closed inlet Garabogazköl in Turkmenistan.
The Caspian Sea will be approximately 28 meters below sea level in 2008, which means that a large part of the coastal area, including the Caspian Depression, is also below sea level. The water level is not a constant: 2000 years ago it was about eight meters lower than it is now and in the 13th century it was eight meters higher. The water level has decreased by several centimeters per year since 1990 due to low rainfall and dams that hinder the water supply from the Volga. According to scientists, this process will accelerate and the water level will drop by nine to eighteen meters between 2020 and the year 2100. With a drop of 18 meters the sea loses more than a third of its surface, with especially the shallow, northern part drying up.
In the north of the sea there is a continental climate with cold winters and in the south a subtropical climate with a Mediterranean character. The latter results in warm dry summers and mild winters. In winter storms are not uncommon and the northern part of the sea freezes over. The prevailing north wind carries ice to the south in winter and spring. Summers are warm with little wind.
Economic
significance :
On
March 9, 1916, Persian Prime Minister Sepahdar (Mohammad Vali Khan
Tonekaboni) awarded an oil concession to Russian businessman Akaki
Khoshtaria in the five northern provinces of Azerbaijan, Khorasan,
Gilan, Mazandaran and Golestan. That concession was never ratified
by parliament, and in the wake of the Russian Revolution, the government
canceled it. Khoshtaria then sold its rights to the Anglo-Persian
Oil Company (APOC), later BP. It faced competition from the American
firms Standard Oil and theSinclair Oil Corporation.
The Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli oil field is located 120 kilometers east of Baku and is one of the largest oil fields in the country. To the north near Kazakhstan is the even larger Kashagan oil field. Oil extraction is seen as a threat to the environment. The sea is also a source of carnallite, a raw material used for the production of magnesium. Furthermore, the sturgeon population produces caviar and the endangered Caspian seal is still there.
The main port city is Baku in Azerbaijan and other important ports include :
•
Aktau in Kazakhstan
•
Türkmenbasy in Turkmenistan (until 1993 known as Krasnovodsk,
as it was called by the Russians who founded it)
In 1921, the Russian Soviet Republic concluded a Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation with Persia; this was followed by a series of bilateral agreements between the Soviet Union and Iran until 1940. The provisions of those treaties, which remained in force until recently, had many gaps, were partially obsolete and unsuitable for the new political, economic and environmental issues. In addition, after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the successor states of Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan refused to recognize the treaties.
On August 12, 2018, it was announced that the five riparian states Russia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan had reached an agreement after a week of consultations in the city of Aktau (Kazakhstan) on a legal framework for the territorial rights of the riparian states, and in particular the distribution of sea and soil resources. A legal framework has been lacking since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The treaty gives the Caspian Sea, it is sea and nothing more, a special status, because no treaties on international or inland waters apply. The According to the agreement, territorial waters will extend 15 miles offshore, with an additional 10 nautical miles of fishing grounds. From there, the Caspian Sea would become a common body of water. Many details have to be negotiated later. The five riparian states did agree to exclude any military presence of third countries in the Caspian Sea.
Pollution
:
Zones of high concentrations of hydrocarbons in the northern part of the sea are the shallow areas near the Volga delta and in the west. Over the period 1978-2004, the initially high concentration of phenols and detergents decreased steadily. A high concentration of ammonium was found near the mouths of the rivers Volga, Terek and Sulak. The main chlorinated pesticide was DDT (31 ng/l), but its concentration also decreased sharply between the 1980s and the 1990s, becoming immeasurable from 1992 onwards.
Data on the pollution of the southern part of the sea comes from the Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan. There, petroleum pollution is significantly stronger in the east than in the west, with average winter concentrations of 0.19 and 0.15 mg/l respectively. Other problem substances are phenols and detergents in the upper water layers. In general, the southern Caspian Sea is considered highly polluted.
Historical listing :
Source :
https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaspische_Zee |
