Great Salt Lake Update – levels, what that means, and our work
If our objective is to raise Great Salt Lake to the minimum healthy level by the year 2045, then it is important to understand that all of the current measures combined only deliver 10% of the extra water the lake needs every year during this timeframe. This assumes that no new water diversions are allowed upstream and climate change and dust don’t continue to shrink Northern Utah snowpacks — the source of most of the Great Salt Lake’s water. Simply put, the conservation and water delivery efforts adopted by Utah so far will not come close to saving the broader Great Salt Lake ecosystem.
The climate crisis’ impact this year, though, is a major setback. Utah’s snowpack is at a record low. The lake sits only three feet higher than its 2022 record low.
Our recent report, Downwind, outlines the scope of the public health crisis looming from a desiccated Great Salt Lake. We also take a deeper dive into the snowpack/Great Salt Lake relationship. Aside from posing public health risks, dust storms can increase snowpack’s capacity to absorb solar radiation, accelerating melt by an estimated 25%.
Several studies have used a variety of methods to demonstrate that dust from the Great Salt Lake’s lakebed is being blown toward the Wasatch Front. A 2018 article used atmospheric back trajectory modeling to determine that a single dust storm that occurred from April 13th to 14th, 2017 originated at the Great Salt Lake, blew through the Salt Lake Valley, and deposited a significant amount of dust onto snow near Alta, Utah.
A different study found that dust from the Great Salt Lake has a unique strontium isotope ratio that can act as a sort of ‘chemical tracker’ to identify Great Salt Lake dust that has been blown into nearby population centers and mountains. Using this unique isotope ratio, researchers were able to determine that the lake contributed between 30% and 34% of Salt Lake City’s, Ogden’s, and Logan’s dust load, about 5% of Provo’s dust load, about 11% of the Uinta Mountain’s dust load, and about 22% of the Wasatch Mountain Range dust load.
Another study also used modeling to examine how declining Great Salt Lake water levels could increase dust emissions in the future. These researchers found that declining Great Salt Lake water levels could increase PM2.5 concentrations by 8%, and that, based on current and expected demographic distributions around the Salt Lake Valley, people of color and people without a high school diploma would experience the greatest exposure to these heightened pollution levels.