Sarykamysh Basin

(also Sarykamysh Depression), a desert basin in Middle Asia with no water outlets, on the border between the Karakum Desert and the Ustiurt Plateau; it is situated in the Turkmen SSR, with the northwestern part in the Ka-rakalpak ASSR of the Uzbek SSR. The basin is 125 km long and 90 km wide; its lowest point is 38 m below sea level. The bitter Sarykamysh Lakes are located in the central part of the basin. The basin is a flat, oval-shaped bowl filled with ancient lake sediments and covered by solonchaks and drifting sand. In the past, it occasionally received the waters of the Amu Darya, at which times it became a lake; when the river again turned toward the Aral Sea, the lake would dry up. The basin was a lake at the end of the Neogene, in the Late Quaternary, when its maximum level was 58 m above sea level, and during the 14th through the 16th century, when its level was 50 to 62 m above sea level. The last occasion the waters of the Amu Darya reached the basin was the summer of 1878. In 1971 water broke through to the basin by way of the Dar’ialyk course, forming a lake with an area of more than 1,000 sq km; the lake had a volume of approximately 12 cu km and depths up to 30 m.