Cartophilia and The Map Scroll look at the Aral Sea, once the fourth-largest lake in the world, now all but dried up due to irrigation diversion. The above time-lapse video captures the Aral Sea’s disappearance.

NASA’s Earth Observatory has been watching the lake’s disappearance as well: this slideshow documents the water’s retreat from 2000 to 2009 (see here and here for earlier comparisons). This image was taken last month.