Sarez Lake - Сарезское озеро

The Problems of Lake Sarez: Sarez Lake is a lake in Rushon district of Gorno-Badakhshan province, Tajikistan. Length about 55.8 km, depth few hundred meters, water surface elevation about 3,263 m over sea level and volume of water is more than 16 km³. The mountains around come up more than 2,416 m over the lake level. The lake formed in 1911, after a great earthquake, when the Murghab River was blocked by a big landslide. Scientists believe that the landslide dam formed by the earthquake, known as the Usoi Dam, is unstable given local seismicity, and that the terrain below the lake is in danger of catastrophic flood if the dam were to fail during a future earthquake.[1] But its a paradox, the beautiful Sarez is fraught with dreadful danger - 17 bin. m3 of water this lake will turn into a terrible "dragon" for the Central Asia in case of downfall of the obstruction. There are some other epithets among explorers, for example, they compare Sarez to Murgob "an incendiary bomb". It's difficult not to agree to such epithets-many specialists of the past suggested that there is a danger of breaking of the lake and even predicted the date of feasible catastrophe. The wash out Usoy overload and brake of Sarez lake is quite possible. There are reasons for such inferences: -after 38 years of "lull" in September 1994 the washout of tail - water of Usoy overload by filtration waters began again. More over erosive canyon in the lower slope of obstruction moved upwards to the lake for 45m,in the body of overload appeared a lot of springs: -landslip removals take place on the shores of Sarez lake appers landslides with displacement or rocks. In 1987 about 12 km to the East of Usoy obstruction a landslip by volume of 20 min m took place, which was the reason of 2 m and 16 m high waves in the defined water area of Sarez. So the situation on Sarez obviously get complicated. In this connection in April, 1993 Visechairman of the supreme Soviet of Tajikistan A. Dostiev in the international seminar on Aral problems in Washington said: "The feasible downfall of Sarez waters may envelope the border and territories of Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Usbekistan and Turkmenistan. Population of 5 million people, objects) agricultural lands, vegetation and animals may be gone away with water, (fig 1) That's why the break of Sarez must be apprehended not only as a problem of possible catastrophic calamity of Central Asia countries, but also as an ecological problem of world community. In this connection the intergovernmental commission of experts on Sarez as long ago, as 80th considered that its inadmissible to Sarez without regulation of flowing and without guarantees of full relability of Usoy obstrction All that became a reason for inclusion of Sarez problem into common problem of Aral sea.