Caspian Sea

The largest lake in the world, second deepest natural depression, Oil production, rich in fish

The Caspian Sea (including the Caspian Sea, Russian Каспийское море, Persian دریای خزر / دریای مازندران, Azerbaijani Xəzər dənizi ) is the largest lake in the world. It is located in Western Asia and Eastern Europe in the extreme with no natural connection to the oceans within the large Aralo - Caspian lowland. To the north it borders Russia and Kazakhstan, on the east by Turkmenistan, on the south by Iran, on the west by Azerbaijan.

Geography

The Caspian Sea, which lies in a spacious and up to 1,023 m deep natural depression, is among other things between the dry -lying part of the great Caspian basin to the north, Kasachensteppe in the Northeast, the great lowlands of Turan in the east, the Alborz in the south and the Caucasus in the west. Azerbaijan ( Coastline: about 800 miles), Iran (coastal length: 750 km ), Kazakhstan ( Coastline: 1894 km ), Russia ( Coastline: 960 km) and Turkmenistan ( Coastline: 1768 km ) border it.

The Caspian Sea is - depending on the definition - part of the border of Europe and Asia, and thus divided Eurasia in two continents. For the course of this limit of merging parts of the world see Inner Eurasian border.

The area of the Caspian Sea is 386,400 km ², so it is the largest enclosed by land water surface of the earth or its largest lake. The area of the Caspian Sea is roughly the size of Germany and Belgium or the Baltic Sea without the Kattegat. Its north- south extent of 1200 km, its east-west extension comprises 435 km (mean 300 km). During the Great Northern part is only about 6 feet deep in the middle, its deepest point is 995 m in the south. Because its water surface area is 28 m below sea level, this low maximum is located at 1023 meters below sea level, making it the second deepest natural depression of the earth after Lake Baikal, the lake bottom 1182 m is located below sea level.

The Caspian Sea has no natural connection with the oceans. There is thus a lake and is called "sea" only because of its size and salinity of the water. An early common name was Caspian. About the Volga River, the Volga-Don Canal and the Don but there is a navigable route through the Sea of ​​Azov to the Black Sea.

Islands

In the Caspian Sea there are numerous islands. Most are small and uninhabited, but there are also some populated. Many of the islands close to Azerbaijan are important because of their oil reserves.

Thus, the Bulla island has significant oil reserves off the coast of Azerbaijan. The same applies to the Pirallahı Island. Here, the first oil well was held in the Caspian Sea, and here there was also one of the first oil discoveries in Azerbaijan.

Nargin, the largest island in the Baku Bay, is a former Soviet military base. Aschūradeh lies at the eastern end of the Miankaleh Peninsula north-east of Gorgan Bay, near the Iranian coast. Aschuradeh was separated by a channel of the peninsula.

Various islands, especially near Azerbaijan, suffered by the oil production enormous environmental damage, for example, Dasch Sirja, although there are still living seals.

In the north- east of the Caspian Sea are the Tjuleni Islands ( Robben Island ).

Off the coast of the island of Daghestan Chechens and the Robben Island is located.

Some islands lie off the coast of Volga Delta and belong to Kalmykia and Oblast ' Astrakhan, or to Oblast' Atyrau in Kazakhstan. The islands belonging to Russia, located in the border zone of the Russian Federation and can not be entered.

Genesis

The Caspian Sea is like the Black Sea and the Aral Sea is a group of Paratethys, an inland sea that stretched during the Oligocene and most of the Neogene of Western Europe to Central Asia. Towards the end of the Miocene, a border made ​​out to the Black Sea, since the beginning of the Pliocene, there was a series of strong water level fluctuations, thereby reducing the size varied greatly. At low water level of the Caspian Sea shrank to a lake in the deepest areas in the south, in times of high water levels there were reunions with the Black Sea. To date the last time this happened at the end of the ice age, when the ice of the Siberian glaciers abtauten and Manytsch valley was flooded. To the east in the Aralo - Caspian lowland created a connection to the Aral Sea.

A direct connection to the ocean never existed, because the Black Sea was separated from the Mediterranean at the time of its connection to the Caspian Sea according to current doctrine.

Changes in water level

In the 20th century the water surface from the beginning of the 1930s, dramatically back to the 1980s; at the beginning of this period was said to be 420,000 square kilometers, the lake surface. The lowering of the lake level has predominantly taken place in the years 1930-1941 and 1970-1977 at a rate of 16 or 14 cm per year. The masses of water were supplied to the lake through the Volga, the Urals and the Kura, at that time was not sufficient to maintain its water content; water withdrawal for irrigation was at its few tributaries enormous and evaporation, which arose on the enormous water surface, leaving its contents and thus its size is constantly shrinking. Shares responsibility was the construction of the great Volga barrages, which increased the evaporation surface of the Volga, so that the Volga could be fed as the main inflow less water.

The Kara - Bogaz Bay, a formerly very flat, but large eastern bulge of the Caspian Sea, was sealed off in 1980 at the narrowest junction by a dam, because in this dry, hot area, the evaporation was particularly high. After the dam was built, it came to a complete drying of the lagoon and for conversion into a dangerous environment for the salt desert. Since the installation of locks in the years 1985-1991, the situation did not improve substantially, the dam in 1992 was again eliminated.

Between 1978 and 1994, the lake level rose persistently and intensively at an annual rate of 14 cm to 40 cm. This led to widespread flooding in this time of the mainland in a width of 5-25 km and a length of 1500 km. This 2 million hectares of land were flooded.

The still ongoing rise in the water level is explained by scientists with increased geological activity at the bottom of the Caspian Sea. [ Evidence ?] The researcher G. Titarenko reckons that the rise of the water level continue for 200 years, in the second half of the 21. century will lead to a rise in the water level by 40 meters above the high water mark of 1994.

The rise of the water level has asked the countries bordering with the need to protect the settlements and industrial plants in the flooded areas. Are threatened in particular the areas of intensive oil and gas production and the industrial landfill with hazardous materials.

Special

Salinity

In the north, where the two main tributaries Volga and Ural open out, the salt content (salinity ) is very low; towards the south, where there are hardly any significant inflows, he rises: The maximum was found with more than 30 % of the salt deposits in the Kara- Bogaz Bay ( Kara- Bogaz - Gol ) in Turkmenistan. On average, the salt content is 1.1 to 1.3 %, which is about one third of the concentration in the oceans.

Fauna

A culinary specialty of the Caspian Sea is the sturgeon, is extracted from the caviar. There are also plenty of partly endemic herring relatives and wild carp. The Caspian seal is an endemic seal of the Caspian Sea.

Mineral resources

Under the sea bed are especially at Baku very large reserves of petroleum and natural gas. Geologists have estimated between 15 and 50 billion barrels of oil on the bottom and on the coasts of the Caspian Sea. Optimistic estimates are denominated in up to 100 billion barrels, which should embody a value of five trillion dollars.

See also: oil production in the Caspian Sea

In the Kara- Bogaz - bay salt is mined.

Peoples Legal status

The international status of the Caspian Sea has not been finally clarified. Therefore, it was founded by the littoral states, Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkmenistan in 1992, the community of cooperation, Caspian Sea States. The objective is an agreement for the protection and use of the Caspian Sea.

Prior to this step, there were only two valid contracts from the years 1921 and 1940 between Iran and the Soviet Union for the regulation of shipping and fisheries. In them, the Caspian Sea was defined as inland waters of the right of common use.

The new neighbors Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan see it for yourself at a disadvantage and would like the Caspian Sea is treated as international waters. Background of these receivables are mainly the drilling rights for oil and gas.

If it came to that status, Russia and Iran favor, there would be a sharing of the wealth among the local residents equally. Would, however - according to the majority opinion of international law - the international Seerechtsabkommen from 1994 to advantage, each riparian would have the exclusive right of exploitation of its zone. Find support the three new littoral states by the Western countries and their oil companies who want no involvement of Russia or Iran. The States could not agree to this day, in the development of new oil fields, the new states are now no longer agree.

Inflows

Some of the largest tributaries of the Caspian Sea

* Called White River, also Sepid Roud or Kizil Usen

Ports and cities

• Aktau (Kazakhstan )
• Astara (Azerbaijan )
• Astara (Iran)
• Astrakhan (Russia)
• Atyrau ( Kazakhstan)
• Babolsar (Iran)
• Baku ( Azerbaijan)
• Bandar Anzali (Iran)
• Bandar -e Torkaman (Iran)
• Derbent (Russia)
• Fort Shevchenko (Kazakhstan )
• Kaspijsk (Russia)
• Lənkəran (Azerbaijan )
• Makhachkala (Russia)
• Nouschahr (Iran)
• Olya (Russia)
• Sumqayıt (Azerbaijan )
• Turkmenbashi (Turkmenistan )