Starved for freshwater, the Great Salt Lake is getting saltier. The lake is losing sources of freshwater input to agriculture, urban growth and drought, and the drawdown is causing salt concentrations to spike beyond even the tolerance of brine shrimp and brine flies, according to Wayne Wurtsbaugh from Watershed Sciences in the Quinney College of Natural Resources.
Deciphering the ecological and economic consequences of this change is complex and unprecedented, and experts are closely observing another stressed saline lake for clues on what to expect next — Lake Urmia in Iran. This "sister lake" offers obvious, and troubling, parallels to the fate of the Great Salt Lake, according to new research from Wurtsbaugh and Somayeh Sima from Tarbiat Modares University in Tehran.
[...] The Great Salt Lake and Lake Urmia in Iran were once remarkably similar in size, depth, salinity and geographic setting. High rates of urban growth there also fueled demand for irrigated agriculture and human uses, putting extreme stress on the ecosystem. Compared to the Great Salt Lake, the fate of Lake Urmia is on fast-forward.
Over just 20 years, diversions caused Urmia's salinity to jump from 190 grams of salt per liter of water to over 350 grams, Sima said. (For comparison, ocean water has a salinity of around 35 grams per liter.) The decline in Lake Urmia's ecosystem has been precipitous and easy to recognize. It has lost nearly all of its brine shrimp. How long brine shrimp can endure in increasingly salty water in the Great Salt Lake is a question researchers are eager to understand, especially for the south arm where salt concentrations are high, but still sustaining some shrimp.
[...] Lake Urmia has already lost most of its ecological and cultural function — but the Great Salt Lake has not yet crossed that precipice, say the authors. The ongoing crises at Great Salt Lake and Lake Urmia are not unique: Around the globe, other saline lakes are facing a similar crisis and are entirely desiccated or quickly losing water, Wurtsbaugh said. But communities are noticing, which gives him hope. Making any progress will require considerable sacrifice from the water users if the lakes are to be sustained, Wurtsbaugh said.
Journal Reference:
Wayne A. Wurtsbaugh and Somayeh Sima. Contrasting Management and Fates of Two Sister Lakes: Great Salt Lake (USA) and Lake Urmia (Iran), MDPI, 2022. DOI: 10.3390/w14193005
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The Great Salt Lake is shrinking. What can we do to stop it?:
At Antelope Island State Park near Salt Lake City in the fall of 2022, three duck hunters dragged a sled across cracked desert sand in search of the water's edge. The birds they sought were bunched in meager puddles far in the distance. Just to the west, the docks of an abandoned marina caved into the dust and a lone sailboat sat beached amid sagebrush.
"Biologists are worried that we're on the brink of ecological collapse of the lake," says Chad Yamane, the regional director of Ducks Unlimited, a nonprofit that conserves, restores and manages habitats for North America's waterfowl, and a waterfowl hunter himself.
Last fall, the Great Salt Lake hit its lowest level since record keeping began. The lake's elevation sank to nearly six meters below the long-term average, shriveling the Western Hemisphere's largest saline lake to half its historic surface area. The lake's shrinking threatens to upend the ecosystem, disrupting the migration and survival of 10 million birds, including ducks and geese.
[...] And the Great Salt Lake isn't unique. Many of the world's saline lakes are facing a double whammy: People are taking more water from the tributaries that feed the lakes, while a hotter, drier climate means it takes longer to refill them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 27 2022, @06:58PM
Old Testament (Isaiah 35:1-2)
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/25/mormons-lawns-utah-old-testament-godly-act-megadrought [theguardian.com]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday October 27 2022, @08:07PM (7 children)
When these kinds of changes occur over millions of years, life adapts and overcomes. There are isolated areas where salt water fish have adapted to fresh water, and vice versa, because the trapped population had sufficient time to adapt while the salinity changed.
When you double the salt concentration in 20 years? Yeah, XX eyes on the characters living there.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Reziac on Friday October 28 2022, @03:48AM (5 children)
Except these shallow lakes with no outlet often change dramatically over the course of just a few decades or even a few seasons, shrinking down to almost nothing then growing back larger than before. Given GSL's bed is very flat, even a few feet of water intake can double the surface area; likewise even a minor drought (and it IS in the middle of a desert) can similarly shrink it, with salinity varying apace.
Devils Lake ND is another with similar habits. In the late 1800s it was a substantial lake. During the 20th century it shrank down to just a swampy spot. Then about 20 years ago it suddenly grew again, well past its known historical boundaries, and ate a whole town and a lot of farms.
There's another stretch of northern Nevada with such habits; I've seen it water far as the eye can see, and a few years later nothing but dust, but it was quite extensive again last spring.
Nature is not static. Conditions change, species adapt or die out, and not only because of humans. Were that not the case, Earth would still be a ball of primordial sludge.
Methinks whatever lives in these salt lakes is already adapted to periods of relatively rapid change, or it wouldn't live there in the first place.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday October 28 2022, @09:49AM (3 children)
I believe the point of the article is that both of these lakes are changing in a way that either has killed or is close to killing off most of their existing ecosystems.
Life is (quickly) adaptable to change in a range. We have been making changes in less than 100 years that exceed the ranges seen for millions of years.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Reziac on Friday October 28 2022, @01:57PM (2 children)
And my point is that this is not true. Rapid changes are as much the norm as slow changes... actually more so.
Case in point, the entire temperate zone. In my state the annual temperature swings can exceed 180 degrees, in the same spot, and the record is 103 degrees in a single day. Shallow ponds with no outlets (or larger areas like Freezeout Flats) all over the prairie come and go with the seasons. Yet we have abundant permanent natural residents -- quite obviously adapted to rapid change.
https://montanakids.com/facts_and_figures/climate/Temperature_Extremes.htm [montanakids.com]
Salt pools (and GSL is one, just bigger than most) routinely grow and shrink, often very rapidly. We only pay attention to GSL because it's big and recreation-friendly, and happens to be next to a major metro (rather than covering the same area where there's nothing but sagebrush, as in northern Nevada). Give it a few decades and you'll hear the same complaints as back in the 1980s -- that it's growing so rapidly that it's drowning lakeside structures. (As I recall, they had to move a marina.) I've read of lakes in Australia that grow and vanish on a cycle just long enough for people to forget and build on the dry lakebed, and then when the lake returns there's lots of Ooops... but since it happens regularly, don't you think whatever lives there is adapted to that?? Either that, or it repopulates as conditions change and become friendly to some other organisms, rinse and repeat as the cycle continues.
The idea that we can freeze the Earth, its resident species, or any part of it, in stasis at some ideal of conditions is nonsense. If it were so, a whole era of dinosaurs would probably prefer that it be one vast steaming swamp.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday October 28 2022, @02:50PM
There's a difference between a salt pool and the Great Salt Lake, or at least for the past few million years there used to be.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 28 2022, @03:23PM
I would suggest that it is also nonsense to argue that seeing global conditions change an order of magnitude faster than has ever been seen in either recorded or geological history is "normal" simply because conditions had been of one extreme or another tens of thousands of years ago.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 30 2022, @07:37AM
Lake's name checks out.
(Score: 4, Funny) by driverless on Friday October 28 2022, @05:20AM
Looks like they'll have to change the name over time, Great Salt Lake -> Really Salty Lake -> ----ing Salty Lake -> East Bonneville Salt Flats.
(Score: 2) by Barenflimski on Thursday October 27 2022, @08:35PM (2 children)
This is likely how Dolphins came to exist. Once upon a time, when the world boiled, humans walked into the ocean, and became Dolphins. We're just now reliving the past.
Just give it a few million years and all will be good.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Thexalon on Thursday October 27 2022, @09:00PM
And then they left, with the message "So long, and thanks for all the fish".
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Saturday October 29 2022, @01:31AM
Aren't cows the closest land relatives to dolphins?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by darkfeline on Friday October 28 2022, @01:00AM (2 children)
Losing tributaries isn't really the issue. The lake doesn't have any outlets, so it will get saltier regardless. Losing tributaries will cause the lake to get saltier in the near term, than it would have otherwise.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Friday October 28 2022, @06:25AM (1 child)
That depends on the solubility of the salts. At a certain concentration, they will precipitate out.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Reziac on Friday October 28 2022, @02:09PM
Soluble enough that brackish deposits are the norm, not the exception. Our western desert isn't desert just because it's dry (and in spots it's not; I commend to you Fallon, Nevada); it's desert in part because of alkali that leeches up during the wet season and winds up as a surface crust, and it's very unfriendly to anything not adapted to it. Alkali seeps are why in my area, otherwise largely crops and natural grassland, we have patches that look more like the moon.
Also, that shining example, the Dead Sea...
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.