What action contributed to the Aral Sea’s decline in the 1960s?

• A. Build more dams along rivers
• B. Increase fishing quotas
• C. Diversion of rivers for irrigation
• D. Release of polluted water to the sea

Answer: (C)

The main idea here is how changing where water goes can massively affect a lake. In the Aral Sea case, the two big rivers that fed it were redirected to supply irrigation for agriculture, especially cotton, starting in the 1960s. By sending most of their flow away from the sea, the freshwater input plummeted and the Aral Sea began to shrink dramatically; salinity rose, habitats collapsed, and aquatic life declined. The other choices don’t explain the drastic loss of water itself: increasing fishing quotas affects fish, not the lake’s level; releasing polluted water harms water quality but isn’t the primary cause of the shrinkage; building more dams is related to flow changes but it’s the diversion of rivers for irrigation that directly reduced inflow and drove the decline.