We often describe the stillness and quiet of the desert as timeless. But deserts are dynamic and desert lakes fragile, none more so than Utah’s Great Salt Lake.
Emblematic of the West’s Great Basin, the Great Salt Lake has no outlet. The lake can only hold its own against evaporation if sufficient water arrives from three river systems fed by mountain snowmelt. When inflow decreases, the lake recedes. Each year since 2020, the Great Salt Lake received less than a third of its average (since 1850) stream flow. The lake level fell to the lowest surface elevation ever recorded, 4,188 feet above sea level, in November 2022.
The crisis is real. The Great Salt Lake is disappearing.
