John Law (7:25)

We'll be right back after this quick break.

Tide Representative (7:32)

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Will Kaback (8:38)

To understand the lake's predicament, it's important to know what makes it unique. The lake is salty, up to nine times more briny than the ocean in certain locations because, unlike other lakes, it is terminal, meaning it has no outflow points. In other words, Once water reaches the lake, it stays there. Great Salt Lake receives the bulk of its water from rivers and streams, with a smaller percentage coming from direct precipitation and groundwater. The Great Salt Lake is also a remnant of Lake Bonneville, an even more massive pluvial lake, which is a body of water formed by a combination of excessive rainfall and low evaporation levels, and that covered a larger area from about 30,000 to 13,000 years ago. As the Great Salt Lake's water naturally evaporates, it leaves behind minerals and salt from this past period. Today, the Great Salt Lake is a totem for the state and a fascinating product of the natural world intersecting with human development. You can see those dynamics just by looking at it from above. And here we'll put a link to some images of the Great Salt Lake that we have in the newsletter, so you can check those out in the episode notes. But what these images are showing is that the lake is separated into those north and south arms, having been bifurcated by the Union Pacific railroad causeway in 1959. The division has produced distinct ecological features in each arm. The north is cut off from most freshwater inflows and thus is much saltier than its counterpart, creating a striking visual difference. Now, scientists have used the North Arm to offset rising salinity in the South Arm as its water elevation drops. The Great Salt Lake is relatively shallow, as is, with a maximum depth of about 35ft. And the South Arm's water level in particular varies widely from year to year, depending on factors like snowfall, no river's flow into the North Arm, making its water level more consistent, but also its water much saltier. And in fact, by cordoning off the higher salinity into the north side, scientists say that the embankment dividing the lake has actually been key to keeping the South Arm's salinity level tolerable to the ecosystem. Even as its water level drops. The North Arm is somewhat of a cautionary example of what the South Arm could become if salinity continues to rise. Bonnie Baxter, a professor of biology at Westminster University, was a co Author of the 2023 report on the lake's potential ecological collapse, and she told me that the South Arm is nearing its breaking point. Quote, the brine shrimp and brine flies won't be able to live there, and they feed the 10 million birds that visit the lake every year. She said, we know what it will look like if the lake gets too salty, and that's not when the lake is on its last drop of water. Ecological collapse will come well before that. In Baxter and her co authors report. They highlighted how the Great Salt Lake's water level has declined precipitously this century. The evidence of this is clear to the naked eye, and here's where you should go to the show notes and check out two different visuals of satellite imagery of the lake in 2000 and the same satellite image of the lake in 2020. Effectively, what it shows is that the lake has shrunk considerably. Now water use is the primary driver of the lake's decline. Utah diverts roughly 2.1 million acre feet over 600 billion gallons of water from entering the Great Salt Lake each year. Much of that water goes to agriculture, which accounts for about 67% of withdrawals that would otherwise go to the lake. With alfalfa and hay as the most water intensive crops, Utah's population has also strained water resources. The state is projected to add 500,000 residents in the next decade, about a 14% increase from its current population. And Salt Lake county alone is expected to add 125,000 new residents. Of course, more people means more water use. Baxter and Ben Abbott, an associate professor of plant and wildlife sciences at Brigham Young University and another co author of the paper, have been studying the Great Salt Lake for years, and their research has been key to tracking the lake's decline and informing policymakers. As the lake neared record lows in 2022, however, their sense of urgency ratcheted up. Quote the lake was potentially within a matter of months of ecological collapse, Abbott told me, noting that the brine shrimp and flies, which are key players in the lake's ecosystem, experienced huge population loss due to the lake's rising salinity. These observations led him to conclude the lake was nearing a point of no return far faster than the public or lawmakers realized. Quote we had to communicate the urgency of the issue, abbott said. My colleagues and I did discuss being more vague and saying the lake could disappear in the next few decades or the lake is near the edge. But the specificity was really important. I would not feel ethical as a researcher if we hadn't been as clear as we were. The report also touched on the impact of climate change on the lake's health. It calls climate change a, quote, secondary contributor, estimating that human greenhouse gas emissions have caused about 4 degrees Fahrenheit of warming in northern Utah since 1900 and exacerbated drought in the southwestern U.S. this, the authors argue, has led to reduced runoff to the Great Salt Lake and increased evaporation. In all, they find, climate change accounts for roughly 9% of the lake's decline. Other researchers have reported further distressing findings. Soren Brothers, a former assistant professor of limnology, the Study of Inland Aquatic Ecosystems at Utah State University and the current curator at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, led research into the drying lake bed, and his study found that as the Great Salt Lake dried, it exposed sediment that was emitting carbon dioxide and methane. In 2020, the lake emitted 4.1 million tons of CO2, or equivalent greenhouse gases, about 7% of Utah's carbon dioxide emission. That percentage will likely rise as more lakebed becomes exposed, he told me. That exposed lakebed also runs the risk of releasing toxic dust into the atmosphere, the poisonous dust clouds that the news articles I read at the beginning of this piece warned of. In early 2023, Carrie Kelly, an associate professor of chemical engineering at the University of Utah and a former member of Utah's Air Quality Board, told me about her research into the effects of the dust that comes off the lake, which has been linked to asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, copd, heart attacks, heart failure and arrhythmia. She found that particle samples from the lake showed higher oxidative potential, a measure of how much inflammation those particles might generate than samples compared to other regional playas. Quote we saw elevated levels of copper and manganese and iron. Those are transition metals and they tend to be pretty reactive. When they get into your lungs they can cause a lot of irritation and damage, she said. Around the lake we have smelting operations and other industrial activity. We're a big urban area and what ends up in the road eventually ends up in the lake. Now that the lake bed is exposed, we're breathing it in. Abbott told me that all of these factors water use, climate change and increasing emissions clearly showed the lake was in grave danger. While the five year projection prompted scrutiny after the fact, he said their conclusion was never in doubt and he wouldn't change it. The pre existing narrative in the public was yes, the Great Salt Lake is reaching an all time low, but we've got a lot of time. Eventually we'll need to fix this, but not this year, abbott told me. In the scientific and lake management communities there was total consensus. Though we were not close to the edge, we were barreling over the ed.

John Law (16:23)

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Isaac Saul (16:59)

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Tide Representative (17:59)

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Will Kaback (18:31)

What happened? The report prompted alarm, then action, then doubt, then ambivalence. Of course, it's too early to render judgment on the paper's projection, as we're only halfway through its five year timeline. However, we can take stock of how a series of events, both natural and human driven, have impacted the lake's outlook since the start of 2023. Most notably, the report was published in the midst of record snowfall in the state on January 11, 2023. The state's median snowpack was at 191% of its normal level and and it had already matched the levels of the historic 20102011 water year. The snow was sorely needed in a state where 95% of the water supply comes from snowpack collection and the spring snowmelt runoff period. It also meant more water flowing into the Great Salt Lake. Now, every expert I spoke to for this piece described this 2023 snowfall as vital. Brothers said the snowfall in 2023 was was a very helpful stabilizing force for the lake. Kelly said.

John Law (19:43)

Hey everybody, this is John, Executive Producer for Tangle. We hope you enjoyed this preview of our latest Friday edition. If you are not currently a newsletter subscriber or a premium podcast subscriber and you are enjoying this content and would like to finish it, you can go to readtangle.com and sign up for a newsletter subscription. Or you can sign up for a podcast subscription or a bundled subscription which gets you both the podcast and the newsletter and unlocks the rest of this episode as well as ad free daily podcasts, more Friday editions, Sunday editions, bonus content, interviews and so much more. Most importantly, we just want to say thank you so much for your support. We're working hard to bring you much more content and more offerings, so stay tuned. I will join you for the daily podcast on Monday. For the rest of the crew, this is John Law signing off. Have a fantastic weekend, y'.

Will Kaback (20:34)

All.

John Law (20:37)

Peace.

John Law (20:40)

Our Executive Editor and founder is me, Isaac Saul, and our Executive Producer is John Law. Today's episode was edited and engineered by John Law. Our editorial staff is led by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman with Senior Editor Will Kaback and Associate Editors Audrey Moorhead, Bailey Saul, Lindsay Knuth and Kendall White. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75 and John Law. And to learn more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership, please visit our website@readtangle.com.