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The Great Salt Lake

The Great Salt Lake is the largest salt lake in North America and is located in Utah.

 

Great Salt Lake, Utah
1963, 1972, 1987
Text and Photos Courtesy of USGS

[a Landsat image]

These images show the dramatic effects of the Great Salt Lake's high water levels in the 1980s.

The Great Salt Lake is a terminal lake, with no outlet rivers running to the ocean. Since water leaves the lake only through evaporation, it leaves behind its dissolved minerals, making the lake up to 8 times as salty as sea water.

The lack of outlets also means the lake responds dramatically to change in inflow. Rainy weather beginning in 1982 brought the highest levels in recorded history, peaking in June 1986 and March-April 1987. The lake is shallow for its size-- about 70 miles long and 30 miles wide, but only about 40 feet deep. Because the lake basin is so shallowly sloped, extra inflow to the lake makes it rise only slowly, but any rise means a large increase in area.1 Highways, causeways, and parts of Salt Lake City were flooded or threatened in the 1980s, costing millions of dollars.

The causeway

One of the first flood-control measures involved the railroad causeway, a solid raised roadway cutting east-west across the lake. The first transcontinental railroad, completed in 1869, had to go around the lake and over the Promontory Mountains to the north. In 1902 the Southern Pacific Railroad constructed a new line directly across the lake, so that engines would not have to climb over the mountains. For 12 miles this route crossed a trestle-- like a low bridge, made of 28,000 wooden pilings. In 1957-1959 this trestle was replaced by the causeway-- a solid raised roadway made of 50 million cubic yards of rock, sand and gravel. This causeway was safer and allowed faster speeds.2

But unlike the trestle, which allowed water to circulate freely underneath for 12 miles, the causeway had only two 15-foot culverts. The causeway was constructed of semipermeable material which reduced north-south flow, splitting the lake into two parts. The south part received most of the lake's inflow from rivers, so it became higher than the north part. The northern part also became saltier, causing different types of algae and bacteria to grow which made it look pink, while the southern part of the lake remained bluer. You should be able to see this subtle difference in the 1972 Landsat image (in this image, reflectance in the visible-red range is represented by green).

By 1 July 1984, after two years of above-normal precipitation, the south part of the lake was 3.7 feet higher than the north, the highest difference it would ever reach. By 3 August of that year, a 300-foot section of the causeway was replaced by a low bridge, allowing water to flow underneath. Within 2 months the difference between the south and north fell to 0.75 feet, and within a year it was only 0.5 feet. Although this was done as a flood-control measure, it also had the effect of reducing the difference in salt concentration. By 1987, the north-south difference visible in Landsat images was reduced.3

The evaporation basin

In June 1986 the State of Utah began construction of a system to pump excess water from the lake onto the Bonneville Salt Flats, creating the Newfoundland Evaporation Basin. This project included a pumping station at Hogup Ridge, inlet and outlet canals, four trestles, almost 25 miles of dikes, a 37-mile natural-gas pipeline, and a 10-mile access road between Lakeside and the pumping station. Pumps ran from April 1987 until June 1989, by which time the lake had dropped almost 6 feet. The pumping caused about 2 feet of that drop.4

In the first year, about 1.5 million acre-feet of water was pumped into the evaporation basin (an acre-foot is a volume that would cover one acre with one foot of water).5 A dike was built at the southeast end of the basin to control the basin's water level and let salt-rich water flow back into the lake-- so that if the level of the basin rose high enough, some water would travel all the way around the Newfoundland Mountains and back into the lake. Over the course of the project about 264,000-283,000 acre-feet of water actually did so.6

Footnotes

1. Hassibe, Wendy R. and Keck, W.G., 1991, The Great Salt Lake: Washington, Dept. of the Interior, Geological Survey, 24 p., p. 4, 7.

2. Hassibe, 1991, p. 15-16.

3. Arnow, Ted and Stephens, Doyle, 1990, Hydrologic characteristics of the Great Salt Lake, Utah, 1847-1986: Denver, Dept. of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey, 32 p., p. 18-19.

4. Hassibe, 1991, p. 22, excerpted from Utah Department of Natural Resources Annual Reports, 1986-1987 and 1988-1989).

5. Kidd M. Waddell, written communication.

6. Wold, Steven R. and Waddell, Kidd M., 1994, Salt budget for West Pond, Utah, April 1987 to June 1989: Denver, Colo., U.S. Geological Survey, 20 p.

Other references

U.S. Geological Survey, 1997, Great Salt Lake, Utah [computer files]: Available: http://wwwdutslc.wr.usgs.gov/ greatsaltlake/saltlake.html [6 June 1997]

Gore, Rick, and Richardson, Jim, 1985, No way to run a desert: National Geographic Magazine, vol. 167, no. 6, June, p. 694-719.

Ware, Leslie, 1984, The Great Salt Lake gets greater every day: Audubon, National Audubon Society, New York, New York, vol. 86, no. 5, September, p. 118-131.

Satellite images

DS09059A047MC018 (Argon photograph, 29 October 1963)

LM1042031007225790 (Landsat 1 MSS, 13 September 1972)

LM5039031008735290 (Landsat 5 MSS, 18 December 1987)

Special Projects Image

A comparison image of 13 September 1972 and 14 August 1988 is available as Special Projects Image E-1858-810CT from EDC Customer Services.

Map

U.S. Geological Survey, 1988, State of Utah: scale 1:500,000.

Photographs

Salt Lake City, June 1983: Doyle Stephens, USGS

Railroad causeway, June 1986: Doyle Stephens, USGS

Salt Ponds, June 1986: Doyle Stephens, USGS

Pump station at Hogup, April 1988: George Pyper, USGS, retired.

Research Links

Great Salt Lake, Utah
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... PLANNING SCHEDULE FOR GREAT SALT LAKE REVISED (04/01/99). The schedule for completion
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F RIENDS of Great Salt Lake The mission of F RIENDS of Great Salt Lake is to preserve
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... Since its discovery, the Great Salt Lake has been an object of far-fetched tales
and legends. Early settlers claimed to have seen a treacherous whirlpool in ...

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Encyclopedia.com - Results for Great Salt Lake
... Electric Library's Free Encyclopedia Great Salt Lake largest salt lake in North
America, in NW Utah. The shallow lake (c.13-24 ft/4-7.3 m deep) has ranged in ...
Description: (Encyclopedia.com)

Great Salt Lake Country
UTAH'S GREAT SALT LAKE COUNTRY Surrounding ... sites. VISIT
UTAH'S UTAH'S GREAT SALT LAKE COUNTRY

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The Great Salt Lake: Fauna and Meteorology. Great Salt
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Mountain-front reservoirs control cycles of Great Salt Lake
... Mountain-front reservoirs control cycles of Great Salt Lake. Reno, Nev. -- Major
cycles in the size and depth of Utah's Great Salt Lake are known from as far ...

Great Salt Lake Publications - Utah Geological Survey
... Great Salt Lake Publications. ... Major levels of Great Salt Lake and Lake Bonneville
by DR Currey, G. Atwood, D. Mabey, 1983, 1:500,000 $5.00 M-73 ...

The Great Salt Lake
... THE GREAT SALT LAKE. Since its discovery by fur trappers
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1) Sailing and the 2) Great Salt Lake, Salt Lake City, Utah, for beginners and newcomers, sailboats, nature, ecology, links, information, history, biology, ...

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Great Salt Lake. Utah, USA. Hemispheric Reserve. Contact:
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... New Explanation For Odd Behavior Of Great Salt Lake Major cycles in the size and
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