North Aral Sea levels further were due to begin in 2010. The Aral Sea began shrinking in the 1960s, when the Soviet Union decided that the two rivers feeding it, the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya, would be diverted to irrigate cotton and food crops in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. In 1986, due to an accelerated loss of water, the Aral Sea split into northern and southern parts; the southern part is the current South Aral Sea. There is now an ongoing effort in Kazakhstan to save and replenish the North Aral Sea. As part of this effort, a dam project was completed
Science and technology in Uzbekistan field of science and gender, 2013 or closest year Source: "UNESCO Science Report: towards 2030" (2015), Table 14.1 Since 2012, Uzbekistan has ceded its lead to Kazakhstan for the number of published scientific articles, according to Thomson Reuters’ Web of Science, Science Citation Index Expanded. Even taking population into account, Kazakhstan’s output is now much higher than that of its neighbour, with 36 articles per million inhabitants, compared to 11 for Uzbekistan. The majority of scientific papers focus on physics (35%) and chemistry (21%), a pattern also found in Kazakhstan. Since 2006, the rate of international collaboration has remained steady,