Imagine you are on the coast, looking out to sea. In front of you lies 100 metres of barren sand that looks like a beach at low tide with gentle waves beyond. And yet there are no tides.

This is what we found when we visited the small harbour of Liman, on the Caspian Sea coast of Azerbaijan. The Caspian is actually a lake, the largest in the world, and it is experiencing a devastating decline in its water level that is about to accelerate. By the end of the century the Caspian Sea will be nine metres to 18 metres lower. That’s a depth considerably taller than most houses.

It means the lake will lose at least 25% of its former size, uncovering 93,000 sq km of dry land. If that new land were a country, it would be the size of Portugal.

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https://innerself.com/content/social/environment/climate/impacts/24599-the-caspian-sea-is-set-to-fall-by-9-metres-or-more-this-century.html

Read by Marie T Russell. Publisher InnerSelf

Music By Caffeine Creek Band, Pixabay

Frank Wesselingh, Senior Researcher, Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Utrecht University and Matteo Lattuada, PhD Candidate, Department of Animal Ecology & Systematics, University of Giessen

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

https://theconversation.com/the-caspian-sea-is-set-to-fall-by-9-metres-or-more-this-century-an-ecocide-is-imminent-152229