Children run past ruined ships abandoned in sand that once formed the bed of the Aral Sea near the village of Zhalanash, in southwestern Kazakhstan in this April 17, 2005 file photograph. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on Central Asian states to work together to tackle the disastrous effects of the shrinking Aral Sea Sunday after local people urged the United Nations to resolve a regional dispute.Reuters 
Kazakh villager collects water from a well in a desert that once formed the bed of the Aral Sea, outside the village of Karateren. A Kazakh villager collects water from a well in a desert that once formed the bed of the Aral Sea, outside the village of Karateren, south-western Kazakhstan April 16, 2005. Once the world's fourth largest lake, the Aral has shrunk so much that it has now split into two separate bodies of water. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has been running an Aral Sea Programme since 1995, focusing mainly on water resources management, small business development, humanitarian assistance and a social and health programme as the ecological disaster of the dying sea has brought about a host of associated health problems.Reuters
Aral Sea - the giant lake between Kazakhstan in the north and Uzbekistan in the south - has dried up completely, says NASA.
In the early 1900s, the Aral Sea was the fourth largest lake in the world.
Today, the vast lake - formed 5.5 million years ago in Central Asia - in the middle of the Kyzylkum desert has shrunk to a level where water is no more visible to the eyes, revealed a series of images from Nasa's Terra satellite.
A massive water diversion project begun by the Soviet Union in the 1960s caused it to shrink dramatically.
"It is likely the first time it has completely dried in 600 years since the diversion of the region's major river Amu Darya to the Caspian Sea," Philip Micklin from the Western Michigan University was quoted as saying in media reports.
According to NASA, this is happening because of low snowpack in the mountains that feed the lake.
Experts predict the giant lake will disappear completely by 2020.
According to the United Nations Environment Programme, more than 60 million people live in the Aral region - up fourfold since 1960.
