The Great Salt Lake is dying, but these scientists have a solution

A worrying study published last month in Environmental challenges claims that nearly two-thirds of the Great Salt Lake’s decline is attributable to human use of river water that would otherwise have replenished the lake.

Utah’s Great Salt Lake is a relic of a once vast lake that occupied the same site during the Ice Age. Since then the lake level has fluctuated measurements of it began in 1847, but is about 75 miles (120 kilometers) long by 35 miles (56 km) wide with a maximum depth of 33 feet (10 meters). The water level of the Great Salt Lake hit a record low in 2021, that was usurped the following year.

According to the recent document, about 62% of the river water that would otherwise have filled the lake was instead used for “anthropogenic consumption”. The research group found that agricultural use cases were responsible for 71% of those depletions driven by humans; in addition, about 80% of agricultural water is used for crops to feed just under a million cows.

“The research highlights the alarming role of water consumption for livestock feeding in driving the rapid depletion of the lake,” said William Ripple, an ecologist at Oregon State University and co-author of the paper, in a university liberation.

The lake is no stranger to change; A Utah State University report indicated that the lake’s water levels have been falling since the mid-19th century. Like the US Geological Survey Utah Water Science Center reports, the bisection of the lake by a railroad in 1959 significantly changed the salinity levels in the newly created half of the lake, and because the body of water has no outlet or inflow rivers, the their water levels change dramatically due to evaporation or substantial rain.

“An abnormally large flow of snowmelt during the 1980s and 1990s served to temporarily obscure the long-term decline in lake levels, and the lake reached its highest level in more than a century in the 1987,” Ripple said. “But it has declined by about 4 inches a year on average since then.”

The researchers proposed a goal of reducing the anthropogenic consumption of river water in the area of ​​35% to start filling the lake, as well as a detailed breakdown of specific reductions in food production of the animals.

“We find that the most powerful solutions involve a 61% reduction in alfalfa production with 26-55% in grass hay production,” the team wrote, “resulting in reductions in farm income of 97 million dollars a year, or 0.04% of the state’s GDP. The team added that Utah residents could be compensated for their loss of income easier to propose on paper than to sell people as a reality, but it is a road to recovery for the Great Salt Lake.

As the team added, the lake directly supports 9,000 jobs and $2.5 billion in economic productivity, primarily from mining, recreation and brine shrimp fishing. Exposed saline lake beds (such as the Great Salt Lake are increasingly with their water levels decreasing) are also associated with dust that can be a health risk due to its effects on the system human respiratory.

For now, the average levels and volume of the Great Salt Lake continue to drop. But the team’s research has revealed a specific pain point and suggests ways to reduce the tension on the large, but shrinking body of water.