Great Salt Lake won’t go the Aral Sea and Lake Urmia way

Great Salt Lake won’t go the Aral Sea and Lake Urmia way

Subject : Environment

Section: Places in news

Context: Down To Earth speaks to Kevin Perry from the University of Utah on the Great Salt Lake in the American West.

More on the News:

• United Nations is holding a global water conference in New York City from March 22-24, 2023. Ironically though, the host of the conference, the United States has been witnessing an ecological disaster that now seems to be irreversible. The Great Salt Lake, in the US state of Utah, is the largest saltwater lake in the western hemisphere.
• Great Salt Lake (GSL) is a terminal basin lake that has shrunk dramatically in the last 35 years due to a combination of climate change, drought, and unsustainable water diversion from tributary streams.
• The lake elevation has decreased by 17 feet and the surface area of GSL has decreased by more than half, exposing more than 800 square miles of the lakebed to the atmosphere.
• Strong winds occasionally generate dust plumes from the exposed lakebed which move into the surrounding communities where more than 2.5 million people reside.
• Utah has received record snow amounts in the mountains this year and the lake has already risen by 2 feet. The lake will likely rise by an additional two or three feet when the mountain snow melts. The lake typically loses 2.5 feet of water during the summer due to evaporation. Thus, the net result of the record-breaking snow year is likely to be an increase of 2 to 2.5 feet.
• The people of Utah have let their leaders know that saving GSL is a priority. Failure to save the lake will lead to significant economic losses and threats to human health.

Great Salt Lake:

• The Great Salt Lake is located in northern Utah, surrounded by the Wasatch Mountains to the east and the Great Basin Desert to the west.
• The Great Salt Lake is the largest saltwater lake in the Western Hemisphere, covering an area of approximately 1,700 square miles.
• The Great Salt Lake was formed around 10,000 years ago by the drying up of prehistoric Lake Bonneville. The lake’s salt content is due to the fact that it has no natural outlets, causing the water to become concentrated with salt and other minerals.
• The lake’s three major tributaries, the Jordan, Weber, and Bear rivers
• The Great Salt Lake is extremely salty, with a salinity level of around 12-15%. This makes it one of the saltiest bodies of water in the world, and the high salt content has created unique ecosystems and land formations around the lake.
• The Great Salt Lake is an important economic resource for the state of Utah, providing opportunities for mineral extraction, salt production, and recreation. The lake is also a popular tourist destination, with several state parks and wildlife refuges located around its shores.
• The Great Salt Lake is home to a diverse range of wildlife, including several species of migratory birds, such as the American avocet and the western sandpiper. The lake also supports a number of brine shrimp and brine fly populations, which are important food sources for birds and other wildlife.
• Environmental concerns: The Great Salt Lake is facing several environmental challenges, including water diversions, climate change, and pollution from human activities such as mining and agriculture. These issues have led to declining water levels and ecosystem degradation.

Aral Sea

The Aral Sea was once the fourth-largest lake in the world. But in the 1960s, the Soviet Union diverted two major rivers to irrigate farmland, cutting off the inland sea from its source. The Aral Sea has been slowly disappearing ever since. It was an endorheic lake lying between Kazakhstan (Aktobe and Kyzylorda Regions) in the north and Uzbekistan (Karakalpakstan autonomous region) in the south which began shrinking in the 1960s and had largely dried up by the 2010s. The name roughly translates as “Sea of Islands”, referring to over 1,100 islands that had dotted its waters. In the Mongolic and Turkic languages, Aral means “island, archipelago”. The Aral Sea drainage basin encompasses Uzbekistan and parts of Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, and Iran.

Lake Urmia

Lake Urmia in the northwestern corner of Iran is one of the largest permanent hypersaline lakes in the world and the largest lake in the Middle East (1,2,3). It extends as much as 140 km from north to south and is as wide as 85 km east to west during high water periods (4). The lake was declared a Wetland of International Importance by the Ramsar Convention in 1971 and designated a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in 1976 (5,6). The lake itself is home to a unique brine shrimp species, Artemia urmiana, and along with the surrounding wetlands and upland habitat, it supports many species of reptiles, amphibians and mammals. Lake Urmia provides very important seasonal habitat for many species of migrating birds. Around 200 species of birds have been documented on and surrounding the lake including pelicans, egrets, ducks, and flamingos (7). The watershed of the lake is an important agricultural region with a population of around 6.4 million people; an estimated 76 million people live within a radius of 500 km (8).