Researchers from Utah State University found that the Beehive State’s Great Salt Lake has shrunk by 48 percent since 1847. Meanwhile, Lake Poopó, Bolivia’s second-largest lake, is died up and may be beyond recovery.
The Utah State researchers published their findings last month in a white paper, Impacts of Water Development on Great Salt Lake and the Wasatch Front. They warned that the Great Salt Lake may follow in the footsteps of some of the world’s salt lakes, such as the Aral Sea in central Asia or California’s Owens Lake, which have almost entirely disappeared.
“There’s no doubt about it, Great Salt Lake is shrinking,” Wayne Wurtsbaugh, lead author on the paper, said. “Though we’ve witnessed droughts and floods