Using satellite images, photographs made from the air (thank you EcoFlight for the opportunity to photograph the Great Salt Lake from the air) and photographs made from the ground, my contribution to the exhibit Climate shows the teetering existence of the Great Salt Lake in Utah.

Climate change fueled drought, water diversions and human’s use of water lake threatened the delicate closed loop water system that sustains the lake, Utah’s famous lake effect snow and provides water for the inhabitants of the Wasatch Front. At present, 70-80% of the water that would flow to the lake is diverted for agriculture and irrigation, 7% is used in the process of mining on the lake, and human consumption, in a population that is expected to double along the Wasatch Front by 2050, all are drying the lake. Estimates are that all consumption must cut by 30% to 50% to sustain the lake that is currently 5 feet below the minimum healthy level for the ecosystem to survive. 

Humans rely on this ecosystem to live along the Wasatch Front but so do 12 million birds migrating birds. For them, the lake is an essential stopover on the Pacific Flyway, home to their traditional breeding grounds and where they fuel up on their migration between Alaska and Patagonia. With the drying of the lake on one side of the wetlands they stopover in and human incursions closer to the lake on the other, their habitat is decreasing. 

ORGANIZATIONS WORKING FOR THE GREAT SALT LAKE -

Friends of Salt Lake | Great Salt Lake Audobon | Great Salt Lake Collaborative | Grow the Flow Utah | Lake Words | Sageland Collaborative | Save Our Great Salt Lake | Stop the Polluting Port | Utah Rivers Council | Utah State Ducks Unlimited | Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve Network