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.
[...] According to a report released by researchers at Brigham Young University in January, the Great Salt Lake will likely also disappear within five years if residents continue their current rate of "unsustainable" water consumption.
The good news is Utahans still have time to halt or even reverse the Great Salt Lake's decline by using less water. Cutting agricultural and other outdoor water use by a third to half through a combination of voluntary conservation measures and policy changes would allow the lake to refill enough to support the region's economy, ecology and quality of life, the report says. If Utahans succeed, the Great Salt Lake can be a model for how to save other saline lakes around the world.
Previously: Great Salt Lake on Path to Hyper-Salinity, Mirroring Iranian Lake
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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
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday April 18, @11:51PM (9 children)
Desalination. We can take fresh water from the ocean, and use that for agriculture, and major population centers, instead of sucking up all the water in rivers, lakes, and aquifers.
It would probably save lives in the long run if we got an early start on the projects. It might even save lives in the mid- to near term future. After we run out of water to supply a major metropolitan area, the months or years necessary to put a desalination plant online will seem like eternity!
Yeah, I've not forgotten the arguments about brine. How 'bout we get busy, and figure a proper way to deal with the brine? Like - maybe we use more seawater, take less freshwater from it, and the brine won't be so dense and strong, thus sinking to the bottom of the sea?
Or, do we just sit around, and wait until the need is urgent?
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Wednesday April 19, @12:17AM
Well, it's briny, so I say put the piss back into it. Allow for public urination within 10-20 feet of the perimeter of the lake, and voila! More salty water back in the lake.
(Score: 5, Touché) by hendrikboom on Wednesday April 19, @01:37AM (2 children)
Let's see. One pipeline to pump the desalinated water to Utah.
And another to pump the brine -- where else? -- to the Great Salt Lake.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday April 19, @01:47PM
Honestly should be fine - I'm pretty sure the lake is significantly saltier than the brine.
Too bad it's ~600 miles from the ocean (and almost a mile above it).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 19, @02:50PM
Let's not forget a 3rd pipe to carry the oil needed to fuel the process. I'll estimate 1 gallon of oil burnt per gallon of fresh water produced.
But seriously, perhaps it's time to follow the actual, no joke advice of Governor Cox: “I’ve already asked all Utahns to conserve water by avoiding long showers, fixing leaky faucets, and planting water-wise landscapes. But I fear those efforts alone won’t be enough to protect us,” Gov. Cox said. “We need more rain and we need it now. We need some divine intervention. That’s why I’m asking Utahns of all faiths to join me in a weekend of prayer June 4 through the 6th.”
https://governor.utah.gov/2021/06/02/gov-cox-invites-utahns-to-pray-for-rain-june-4-6/ [utah.gov]
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday April 19, @03:57PM (1 child)
Hard to desalinate the great salt lake once it turns into the great salt flats!
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday April 19, @06:09PM
No, extra easy, then you only need a shitload of back end loaders and big trucks.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Wednesday April 19, @08:56PM (2 children)
This idea again. It's really fun to think about, but not likely to ever happen. Some simple calculations about the difficulty of piping sea water to Salt Lake give you serious pause. The politics of pumping water from eastern states make it a non-starter, aside from the engineering challenge.
Let's set that aside though, because even though I doubt it would ever happen, there's an interesting thing that could make it a bit more feasible: pumped storage.
If you pump water from southern California somewhere, you get a fairly fast entry in to the high desert, basin and range regions. Those areas have plentiful solar power and some wind. As we know, those are power sources that don't always work, especially solar at night. Now traditionally pumped storage is used around hydro projects where there's plenty of fresh water. You pump up in to the reservoir, and let it go through the turbines when you need power but aren't getting it from another source. So now let's imagine a bunch of new salt water lakes in the desert, with dams, pumps, turbines, etc. Instead of pumping back and forth, you'd pump up and discharge in to a pipe or canal that moved on to the next station. Eventually the brine would reach Salt Lake.
It's still incredibly unlikely to ever happen, but to reiterate, there's something about the scale and challenge of such a massive project that just tickles my fancy somehow.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 1) by Runaway1956 on Thursday April 20, @01:31AM (1 child)
You will note, I think, that I did not call for any water to be pumped to Salt Lake City, or the Great Salt Lake, specifically. In fact, I didn't call for water to be pumped very far uphill, at all. What I specified was, that desalinated water be used for irrigation, and population centers. That is, instead of California pilfering rivers, lakes and aquifers of their water, they use desalinated water instead. California takes the lion's share of water from the Colorado River, as well as the vast majority of electricity from Hoover Dam.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_River [wikipedia.org]
Known for its dramatic canyons, whitewater rapids, and eleven U.S. National Parks, the Colorado River and its tributaries are a vital source of water for 40 million people.[6] An extensive system of dams, reservoirs, and aqueducts divert almost its entire flow for agricultural irrigation and urban water supply.
I am calling for desalination to be built out, to relieve the pressure on natural water supplies, such as the Colorado River. If California farms and cities stopped using Colorado River water, Utah and other states would have access to that water, even if desalinated water were never pumped to Utah, Arizona, Nevada, and surrounding areas. (Note that much of Arizona could have seawater pumped to it - it's not all high country.)
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Thursday April 20, @05:46PM
Yeah, I get that you didn't say that. The problem with using desalinated water for irrigation is that it has to be very high quality. I think it has to be higher than drinking water. Why? Because even if you can't taste the salts, there's usually still some and they'll accumulate in soil when used for irrigation. This is already a problem in parts of CA's Central Valley even with "fresh" water coming down from the mountains. To avoid the problem, the desalinated water would have to at least have less minerals than that water.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 2) by Adam on Wednesday April 19, @12:03AM
The mountains near Salt Lake have record snowpack this year, so that should take care of the shrinking for at least a year. Probably better to have it shrink than refill and flood the houses that were built in the former wetland adjacent to the lake.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bradley13 on Wednesday April 19, @05:16AM
As almost everywhere in the Southwest: the main problem is overuse. Upstream water is taken for cities or agriculture, leaving too little downstream.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 19, @06:25AM
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday April 19, @06:11PM (1 child)
With all the floods, droughts, and forest fires out west from climate change, how smart is worrying about a briny lake? If it wants to dry, let it dry.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 20, @01:11AM
As for me, I love the smell of gypsum and heavy metals in the morning. It smells like victory.
(Score: 2) by inertnet on Thursday April 20, @08:20AM
Just rename the city to Salt Leak City.