Garabogazköl
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The Garabogazköl (alternatively the Kara-Bogaz-Gol, lit. "black throat lake") is a shallow (a few metres below-sea level) depression in the northwestern corner of Turkmenistan (surface about 7,000 sq. mi.) Its water volume fluctuates seasonally with the Caspian Sea, which lies immediately to the west, separated by a thin sandbar. At times it becomes a large bay of the Caspian Sea, while at other times its water level drops drastically.
Salt
The bay has high levels of salination (about 35% as compared to the Caspian Sea's 1.2%), and practically no marine vegetation. Large salt deposits accumulated at the south shore were harvested by the local population since the 1920s, but in the 1930s manual collection stopped and the industry shifted northwest to its present center near Bekdash, a town of about 10,000 on the shore of the Caspian Sea. From the 1950s on, ground water was pumped from levels lower than the bay itself, yielding more valuable types of salts. In 1963 construction began at Bekdash on a modern plant for increased production of salines, all the year round and independently of natural evaporation. This plant was completed in 1973.
In the 1980s, the resulting "salt bowl" caused widespread problems (as it has around the Aral Sea) of blowing salt, reportedly poisoning the soil and causing health problems for hundreds of kilometers downwind to the east.
Miscellaneous
The bay is also the subject of Konstantin Georgiyevich Paustovsky's 1932 book Kara-Bogaz.
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