The Caspian Sea is located in northwest Asia and has shores in Russia, Iran, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan. The average depth of the Caspian Sea is 170 meters, however due to irrigation projects, the water level often fluctuates. The surface of the Sea is located about 30 meters below sea level.

One of the major industries in the Caspian Sea is the harvest of sturgeon eggs, which is more widely known as caviar. The prized caviar is that of the Beluga sturgeon, now endangered due to poaching. Other sources of caviar are now being exploited, including United States produced caviar, which is rivaling the Russian caviars.

Another vital industry in the Caspian Sea basin is the production of oil. Six oil basins have been identified and American oil companies have signed agreements for the rights to use this oil. On a historical note, these oil fields are where Joseph Stalin gathered support for the Bolshevik revolution in 1917. A large amount of machinery used to extract oil is badly damaged and obsolete.

A recent concern in the Caspian Sea is the increasing risk of a severe oil spill, either from the rigs or during the shipment of the oil out of Russia through the Black Sea. These shipments pose a risk in the narrow Bosporus Straight, which supertankers need to traverse on their way from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean.

Damming of rivers in order to create farmland does not only affect the Caspian Sea. Also in Russia, the Aral Sea, once the fourth largest inland body of water is shrinking to a sliver of its original size. Towns once located on the coast are now as far as fifty miles away from the shoreline, the salinity of the water is heavily increased, and the fishing industry is destroyed. As if these problems were not enough, the receding sea is beginning to expose a land bridge to an island used by the Soviet Union for chemical and biological agent testing. Although the facility is closed, the remains of lab equipment had been simply buried and could become easily accessible.

In the United States, the damming of the Colorado River to bring water to Colorado, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, and California has caused the eradication of beaches inside the Grand Canyon, as a source of sediment was lost due to the Canyon Dam. In Mexico, the flow of the Colorado River has been dramatically altered due to the damming projects.

Reference links as of 3.Oct. 2002

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/caspian.html

http://www.caspianenvironment.org/photogallery.htm

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/caspian.html

http://edcwww.cr.usgs.gov/earthshots/slow/Aral/Aral

http://www.movingwaters.org/faq.html

http://www.sierraclub.org/rcc/southwest/coreport/background.asp

http://www.mhhe.com/biosci/pae/es_map/articles/article_43.mhtml

http://karakalpakstan.freenet.uz/English/English%20HE/English%20Aral%20Sea.htm

http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/asiapcf/9906/21/anthrax.island/

http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/~martins/hydro/case_studies/aral_sea.html/