Posted on 06/12/2005 3:33:49 PM PDT by Brian328i
BRIGHAM CITY, Utah (AP) - The water in the Great Salt Lake has begun rising again after years of drought, changing the landscape and starting to submerge one of Utah's best-known artifacts: an enormous earth sculpture called the Spiral Jetty.
The six years of drought had allowed the curious to flock to the lakeside to see the 1,500-foot-long, salt-encrusted spiral that Robert Smithson built in 1970 using backhoes to pile up rock and earth.
For decades before the dry spell, the jetty had largely been just out of sight beneath the surface of the salty water.
Thanks to a winter of record snowfall, it's not just the spiral Jetty that is changing.
"Change in lake levels can produce significantly more of a change than you'd expect," says Maunsel Pearce, chairman of the Great Salt Lake Alliance, a consortium of conservation groups with interests in the lake. "You really need to see it to believe it."
Sandbars exposed during the drought are now covered with water. Wetlands that had dried into sheets of cracked mud and thin dry grasses are now soggy marshes sprouting thick vegetation.
Water also is inching back toward Antelope Island, although boat docks there remain beached.
The lake's elevation averages about 4,200 feet above sea level, a level at which water spreads out across about 1,700 square miles, according to data kept since 1875 by the U.S. Geological Survey.
But the drought that began in 1999 dropped the surface by about 6 feet, shrinking the lake to just 950 square miles.
As of Saturday, it had gone back up a bit less than 4 feet, according to a USGS Web site.
Such fluctuations are part of what makes the lake beautiful, says Lynn de Freitas, executive director of Friends of the Great Salt Lake. Each climate pattern changes the lake and people's perception of it, she said.
"I guess my excitement is that the lake has the ability to breathe. Those droughts are part of the natural cycles of the lake," she said.
The Great Salt Lake is a remnant of the ancient Lake Bonneville, which more than 12,000 years ago covered some 20,000 square miles of what is now Idaho, Utah and Nevada.
Although just glimmer of its former self, the Great Salt Lake still is the world's fourth largest "terminal lake," where water flows in but doesn't flow out. Water delivered to the lake by four rivers is lost only through evaporation, which concentrates its mineral content, leaving behind a harsh solution in which only salt-tolerant species of brine shrimp, bacteria and algae can survive.
Mineral companies extract selenium and magnesium from the lake bed. Commercial fishermen harvest brine shrimp. Each of those industries and recreational users were affected by the drought and will be again by the rising water, de Freitas notes.
Rising water in the north arm of the lake will dilute the salty water where the Spiral Jetty sits and stimulate bacterial growth that turns the water pinkish-red, offering a different vision of the sculpture, de Freitas said.
"The drama of the ability to see the jetty, I think now is actually improved," she said. "Now the water and is coming up and lapping at the jetty and even though you're slogging through the water, there's still a vague visible presence. I think people will find it more in keeping with the photographs they've seen."
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On the Net:
Spiral Jetty: http://www.spiraljetty.org/
US Geological Service: http://ut.water.usgs.gov/greatsaltlake/index.html
Its a part of the natural cycle once the lake begins to rise, when it drops its "climate change".
I'm convinced that that liberals have a long term memory disorder.
I dunno, some of the more extreme wackos will say everything is climate change.
Rising, falling, snow, rain, drought, its all climate change
We were there late last June. Long way out from the main road at the Promontory Point Visitor Center, and a bit rough after passing the remains of the Army DUC. Just ordinary water-colored water then.LOL
Far from "flocking", on the entire 16 miles out there & back, we only encountered ONE vehicle. They were headed to the Jetty as we were returning. It was the last (moving) car we saw until we got to Park Valley.
We drove the old rail lines & farm roads from the Spiral Jetty to Park Valley, and then on to I-80 in Nevada. Awesome country.
Buy property on the mountain tops!
The falling levels were caused by global warming.
The rising levels are caused by global warming.
What parts of the liberal mantra do you not understand?
What the hey... just more lake to stink up the valley in August.
I was out that way last night, Jim, and the water is within inches of I-80 in places between Lakepoint and the Dugway-Rawley exit.
I don't know what is like further west toward Wendover, but if history is any indicator, the salt flats should have standing water on it, as it does every spring.
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