The world’s salt lakes are drying up, but solutions are hard to come by

Email Bluesky Facebook LinkedIn Reddit Whatsapp X Salt lakes form when water collects in basins. They need a consistent water supply from rivers and other sources to counter evaporation. Credit: Urvish Prajapati/Getty Salt Lakes: An Unnatural History Caroline Tracey W. W. Norton (2026) More than 11,000 years ago, at the end of the last ice age, huge glaciers that shrouded the Sierra Nevada mountains in what is now the western United States began to melt rapidly. Vast quantities of water ran into a deep freshwater lake that once spanned 500 square kilometres, an area equivalent to almost half of Los Angeles in California. Over time, the water evaporated to form the smaller, brinier Owens Lake . Indigenous Paiute people call the Owens Valley Payahuunadü, ‘the land of the flowing water’. Putting nature on the balance sheet: how to account for the ecological costs of our actions