What is the crisis of death faced by the oasis of the Middle East "Dead Sea"?

ByIsraeltourism

The Dead Sea is a huge salt lake located in the northwestern part of the Arabian Peninsula. Tens of thousands of tourists visit each year and play at the dead sea and surrounding resort areas, so the business of tourists is a way of living for people living around the Dead Sea. What kind of thing is the current crisis situation in the Dead Sea?

The Dead Sea is dying: How sinkholes, habitat destruction, and low water levels are destroying the Middle East's most famous body of water. - Slate Magazine
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/moment/2013/09/the_dead_sea_is_dying_how_sinkholes_habitat_destruction_and_low_water_levels.html

Dead Sea
It has a length exceeding 60 miles (about 97 kilometers) in length, Israel, the West Bank district of the Jordan River, and the lake that crosses Jordan is the Dead Sea. It is located at a minus 1388 feet above sea level (about 423 meters) and is called the Dead Sea, but it is the "lake" at the lowest position in the world, not the sea.

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The Dead Sea is at the end of the Jordan River, and the dead sea water has saltiness but not seawater. Water flows in from the other six rivers into the Dead Sea, but minerals containing an enormous amount of salt are precipitated in this water, and further there is no route for water to go out to the Dead Sea. Since the amount of water evaporating from the lake surface of the Dead Sea and the amount of water flowing in from the Jordan River etc are balanced, the water in the lake shows salinity concentration more than 10 times the North Atlantic Ocean, any organism other than microorganism survives It will be water that can not be done.

ByNborun

Many people and industries have gathered over the last 50 years in the area around the Dead Sea. The population that Jordan, Israel, and the three Palestinians combined has increased from about 5.3 million to about 20 million, about four times. These countries and Lebanon and Syria have lived their lives using the Jordan River and its tributaries, but at the price of it, several problems are occurring around the Dead Sea.

◆ Sink Hole
A sink hole is a terrible hole that suddenly empties to the ground without any premonition.

ByHorslips 5

Israel's Ein Gedi is an oasis located in the west of the Dead Sea. Eli Raz, widely known in Israel as a geologist and leading researcher of sinkhole, ten years ago, as a routine work early in the morning one person gave a kibbutz (collective farm) in Ein Gedi When I was surrounding, I heard an ominous roar and was attacked by a sense that I was swallowed by something. "I fell deeply and deeply and I realized that I got buried alive instinctively I started digging upwards and I am not fortunate enough to fall deep into the bottom of the earth , I found it to be on the rocky place.If I was able to breathe and the dust was dancing in the air I knew that the light of the sun was poured from above, but overhead It was frightenedly scared that sediment would not collapse and even fearing even a bit, "Raz tells about what happened when it was swallowed into the sinkhole. "I had a camera and a flashlight, a pen, several sheets of paper, and toilet paper inside my baggage, but I did not have any water, I also had a cell phone, In the deep, the radio waves did not connect ".

ByNicole Hernandez

Rink explains that the sinkhole in this area is caused by "mutual influence of freshwater and the salt layer buried beneath the surface of the earth". Fresh water melts the salt and creates a large space under the basement where the salt layer was present. The ground surface collapses from the condition where a large space underground is formed, so it seems that it is possible to suddenly make a hole when a sink hole occurs. Furthermore, scientists said it is impossible to predict exactly when and where the sinkhole will occur. Even more surprisingly, the sink hole has emerged almost once a day at around the Dead Sea. The first sync hole appeared in the 1980s, and by the year 1990 approximately 40 sink holes appeared. However, now, Raz thinks that there are about 3,000 sink holes in the Israel side of the Dead Sea alone.

ByVanessa Pike-Russell

Raz says, "The sink hole is caused by human irresponsible behavior." "I've always been researching sink halls for over 30 years and constantly warning that if the sinkhall will sweat us in time if we do not take any action against the situation of the Dead Sea, Many people fall into the sink hole around the Dead Sea and bear serious injuries, but this sinkhole countermeasure is very difficult and seems to be a big trouble of people living around Dead Sea.

Furthermore, there are also concerns that the existence of frequent sink halls will cause the travelers coming to the area around the Dead Sea to move away from their feet. Tourism accounts for 40% of the income in the six regions north of the Dead Sea. Most of these tourist facilities occurred in 1967Six days warIt was founded after Israel had conquered the West Bank district of the Jordan River. In addition, Jordan is investing a lot of money in tourism projects around this Dead Sea, and there are plans to develop hotels and fitness clubs in the future in Palestine, tourism projects around Dead Sea are the center of living I will.

ByRoba Al-Assi

In this way, the existence of the sinkhole is threatening the source of income and the lives of people living around the Dead Sea.

◆ Water level reduction
A few generations ago 343 billion gallons of freshwater a year had flowed into the Dead Sea from Lake Galilee. However, now the amount of freshwater that flows in from the Sea of ​​Galilee during the year is less than 26.4 billion gallons (about 100 billion liters).

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Israel's largest water transport projectNational Water CarrierAt that time, we are transporting water through the country from Lake Galilee, and in Jordan we supply more than 90% of the water to agricultural land and water in the country using the King Abdullah Canal (a canal joining the Jordan River). Furthermore, in Syria, we are pumping up water from the Jalmuk River, which is a tributary north of the Jordan River. Also, the Israel Chemicals Company and the Jordanian Arab Potash Company located on the south side of the Dead Sea use dead sea water in large quantities to extract minerals such as potassium carbonate and magnesium, and water flowing into these Dead Sea and Dead Sea It is said that the mass use of the water accounts for 30 to 40% of the dead water level decrease. As a result, the Dead Sea has fallen into a crisis situation where the water level is decreasing more than 3 feet (about 0.9 meters) each year.

ByOrientalizing

"Human intervention drives death sea into death"Ben-Gurion UniversityProfessor Alon Tal, Israel 's environmental history and environment and ecology expert. Recently I have been supplying water from the dead sea to make Hebrew farmland in the desert, but these actions will bring dead sea into a crisis situation. At Hula Lake in Israel, water was forcibly drawn up to make surrounding wetlands an agricultural land, and due to this brute-force measure the natural balance was largely out of order. Unlike such Hula Lake, the Dead Sea is not completely under the control of Israel. And Tal says that the Middle East where the Dead Sea exists is a difficult region of international cooperation and the way to rescue the Dead Sea is very complicated.

This declining dead sea water is also causing other problems. Kibbutz which was landscaped along the deep sea waterfront just five years ago is now 13 yards away from the water's edge (about 12 meters), a five-star resort spa located on the south side of the Dead Sea, Le Meridien and Prima Hotel says it is on the verge of flooding. The hotel which is in danger of being flooded exists near the factory group such as Israel Chemicals Company which extracts potassium carbonate and a large amount of salt which is produced as a byproduct of the extraction work by this plant group settles at the bottom of the lake, As a result, the water level on the southern side of death has risen, and the hotel group seems to be suffering flooding crisis.

ByGashwin Gomes

The hotel managers who felt a sense of crisis in this situation agreed that they will appeal to the factory group on the dead Hainan side and the Israeli government, and the factory group will extract a large amount of salt sank in the Dead Sea. However, the mining has cost more than about 1 billion dollars, details of where to extract salt and where to bring it are yet to be determined. Also, it is said that if this salt disappears, it will lead to destroying the unique ecosystem of Dead Sea, and it is understood that it is a very difficult problem to deal with.

◆ To avoid Dead Sea Death
One means considered to avoid the destruction of the natural environment around the Dead Sea is to conduct a large-scale public works project which was not seen in the international arena. This year the World Bank has formulated a bold plan to replenish water from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea. This idea has been proposed many times so far. The Israeli government facing the oil shock of 1977 established an official committee to submit a work plan (a plan for connecting the Red Sea and the Dead Sea), but this did not happen.

The plan to connect the Dead Sea and the Red Sea with a canal was also proposed at the Earth Summit held in Johannesburg, South Africa in 2002, surprised many people. This proposal is due to the fact that the World Bank has decided to investigate whether the construction of the bypass canal is feasible or not, environmental survey and other investigations. Simon Perez, Foreign Minister (currently President of Israel) considers Israel to be a good opportunity to escape Israel from an unstable international position and make it a "New Middle East", and this large-scale, state-of-the-art global collaborative project I will jump.

ByNASA's Marshall Space Flight Center

In this plan, in order to supply 528 billion gallons of water every year from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea, 111 mile (about 180 kilometers) tunnels and pipes must pass through Jordan. By creating a canal, Jordan will be able to construct hydropower stations and desalination plants, which bring a lot of benefits to Jordan and the Israel side will keep the Dead Sea by allowing water coming from Jordan to flow into the Dead Sea It is considered to be possible.

ByJan Smith

It seems like a valuable project for both Jordan and Israel, but some environmentalists say that "the Red Sea only brings death to the dead in this project," according to their opinion, the Red Sea and If the dead sea water mixes, the dead sea will change to a reddish color, and the gypsum may cover the surface of the dead sea. The impact of this on the ecosystem is unknown, but it is certain that the number of tourists will decline. And it is one of the obstacles to this project that frequent earthquakes occurred in the area between the Red Sea and the Dead Sea. It is thought that salt water may flow into the line supplying freshwater flowing underground if an earthquake occurs.

Both Jordan and Israeli governments support this project, but they insist that Palestinians are ignoring their own death benefits. Palestinian Autonomous Government has largely agreed with the plan to link the Red Sea and the Dead Sea, but as long as the desalination plant is built in Ein Feshkha and it is not allowed to part from the West Bank district of the Jordan River from Israel, this plan An official of the Palestinian Autonomous Government says it will not agree fully.

Even in Israel, there is a big opinion against this project, and even if we can solve environmental problems and diplomatic problems, we will have $ 15 billion (about 15 trillion yen) to $ 17 billion ($ 15 billion) for projects connecting the Red Sea and the Dead Sea About 17 trillion yen) is required, and the problem is pile-up. However, it is also true that the Dead Sea is headed for death and needs some kind of solution. I hope that the best decision will be chosen so that the current beautiful Dead Sea will not be lost, but ...

ByWaterpoloSam