Salt lake

A salt lake (or saline lake) is a landlocked body of water that is considerable larger than a pond and that has a high concentration of Salt (chemistry) salts (typically sodium chloride) and other minerals in comparison to a freshwater lake. Among the world's largest salt lakes are the Caspian Sea, Iran's Lake Urmia, Utah's Great Salt Lake, Australia's Lake Eyre Lake Eyre (Kati Thanda), the Aral Sea, and the Dead Sea. Quotes Salt lakes are an important feature of the landscape of many regions of the world. Despite their Salinity#Classification of water bodies based upon salinity elevated salinities, Brine#uses saline lakes serve a variety of uses and form the cornerstone of multimillion-dollar minerals industries. Scientific investigation of saline lacustrine environments in many parts of the world, extends back over 100 years, although segmented disciplinary research contributed to generally slow progress in our understanding of salt lakes throughout most of the 20th century. Only during the past several decades has effort been directed toward unravelling the complexities of various interactive physical, chemical, and biological processes in modern salt lake systems. Modern salt lakes exhibit tremendous diversity in terms of hydrology, morphology, chemistry, and sedimentary processes. While most of today’s salt lake basins are small and shallow, and many exhibit playa characteristics, noteworthy also are the giant saline lacustrine basins. Unlike the marine setting, Salt lake#Classification salinity and ionic composition of salt lakes show great diversity, with virtually every water chemistry type represented, often within the same geographic region. Associated with this large range in brine chemistry is an equally diverse assemblage of endogenic and authigenic minerals found in salt lakes. William M. Last, Geolimnology of salt lakes Geosciences Journal 6 4 2002 347–369 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF03020619 10.1007/BF03020619 The Great Basin’s magisterial salt lakes — found in Oregon, Nevada, Utah and Southern California — feel precarious and unlikely, and indeed may not exist for long. In “Salt Lakes,” the journalist and critic Caroline Tracey recalls being first struck by them in 2014: “The lakes’ beauty captivated me,” she writes, “and their strangeness piqued my curiosity”; their palettes “of glistening blue water, white salt crusts, green wetland edges and fuchsia and emerald microbial life turned the horizon into a painting.” Robert Sullivan, A Salty Ode to Nature’s Wonders. In a new book, Caroline Tracey explores the mysteries and beauty of salt lakes. (book review of “Salt Lakes: An Unnatural History”) The New York Times March 17, 2026 https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/17/books/review/salt-lakes-caroline-tracey.html The Qaidam Basin Qaidam basin in Western China W China is an immense hyperarid intramontane basin with flat vast Dry lake playas and salt lakes on the Tibetan Plateau Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. The central basin is about 2800–2900 Metre m Height above seal level a.s.l. elevation and enclosed by mountain ranges reaching > 5800 m in the Qilian Mountains and > 6200 m in the eastern Kunlun Mountains. The extensive playas of the basin are covered by gypsum or halite with very subordinate additional solids. In this contribution we report on the chemical composition of salt lakes and inflows to the Qaidam basin (analysis of 30 water samples collected in the summer of 2008 and 2009) together with the composition of 22 salt samples. Salt lakes and small salt ponds formed at topographic depressions. Some of the lakes cover > 300 km2 surface but are very shallow (1–2 m deep). Most salt lakes and salt ponds are NaCl dominated and contain typically 250–300 g kg−1 total dissolved solids (TDS). Some lakes are industrially used and produce Potassium chloride#Fertilizer KCl fertilizer, Lithium chloride LiCl, and Boron boron or are strongly modified by deep water produced in oil fields. Lakes along the borders to the high mountains are typically not fully saturated with halite. However, also these lakes lost most Calcium Ca and are drastically enriched in Magnesium Mg and some lakes also in B and Li. The chemical development of the most natural salt lakes follows a path producing Ca-deficient water that ultimately precipitate Mg-bearing carbonates and chlorites in addition to halite upon evaporation. The salt lakes form by continuous and drastic evaporation of the waters supplied by the inflows to the lakes in the basin. All inflows carry considerable amounts of Cl and are characterized by very high Cl/Bromine Br ratios. Ingrid Stober, J. Zhong, and Kurt Bucher, From freshwater inflows to salt lakes and salt deposits in the Qaidam Basin, W China Swiss Journal of Geosciences 116 1 2023 article 5 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s00015-023-00433-4 10.1186/s00015-023-00433-4 External links Nature at Extremes: Great Salt Lake Nature Lab by The Nature Conservancy, YouTube September 19, 2024 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtVHVqWvG8s Category:Lakes