Shrinked lakes, altered rivers and degraded wetlands.
Around one-third of the word's basins experience significant flow alterations. More than half of the world's large lakes have declined. Around 35% of the world's wetlands have been lost Quality degradation further accelerates the finctional loss of of these surface water. Paired satellite images (4–5 TM and Landsat 8–9 Level-2 true-color) showing the shrinkage of: 1) the world's third largest lake, Aral Sea (1989, topleft vs. 2025 top-right), lying between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan; and 2) the largest saltwater lake in the Western Hemisphere, Great Salt Lake, U.S.A . (1986, bottom left vs. 2022, bottom-right) due to increased upstream water use and reduced inflows, illustrating parallel declines of large inland lakes Figure 4. Global human exposure to wildfire . The map on top shows cumulative human exposure to wildfire in each country from 2002-2021 and the plot on the bottom shows the continuous growth in the number of people who are exposed to wildfires globally ,...