Why is the Great Salt Lake drying up? What saline lakes can tell us
The Great Salt Lake is a time capsule. It can tell us where the Earth has been, and where it is going. Like its “sister” lakes in the sprawling Great Basin that cover 200,000 square miles, Utah’s Great Salt Lake appears to be on a collision course with nature plagued by diversions, drought and climate change. It has lost close to half its volume, and more than 800,000 square miles of lakebed are now exposed, vulnerable to wind-whipped storms that spread toxic dust along the Wasatch Front. … These saline lakes in the Great Basin are terminal, meaning they are fed by rivers and are a hydrologic endpoint. When the rivers start to dry up or are diverted, the lakes’ levels of salinity increase.
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