A hypersaline lake is a landlocked

body of water A body of water or waterbody is any significant accumulation of water on the surface of Earth or another planet. The term most often refers to oceans, seas, and lakes, but it includes smaller pools of water such as ponds, wetlands, or more rare ...

that contains significant

concentration In chemistry, concentration is the abundance of a constituent divided by the total volume of a mixture. Several types of mathematical description can be distinguished: '' mass concentration'', '' molar concentration'', '' number concentration'', ...

s of

sodium chloride Sodium chloride , commonly known as Salt#Edible salt, edible salt, is an ionic compound with the chemical formula NaCl, representing a 1:1 ratio of sodium and chloride ions. It is transparent or translucent, brittle, hygroscopic, and occurs a ...

, brines, and other salts, with saline levels surpassing those of ocean water (3.5%, i.e. ). Specific microbial species can thrive in high-salinity environments that are inhospitable to most lifeforms, including some that are thought to contribute to the color of pink lakes. Some of these species enter a dormant state when desiccated, and some species are thought to survive for over 250 million years. The water in hypersaline lakes has great

buoyancy Buoyancy (), or upthrust, is the force exerted by a fluid opposing the weight of a partially or fully immersed object (which may be also be a parcel of fluid). In a column of fluid, pressure increases with depth as a result of the weight of t ...

due to its high salt content. Hypersaline lakes are found on every continent, especially in arid or semi-arid regions. In the

Arctic The Arctic (; . ) is the polar regions of Earth, polar region of Earth that surrounds the North Pole, lying within the Arctic Circle. The Arctic region, from the IERS Reference Meridian travelling east, consists of parts of northern Norway ( ...

, the Canadian Devon Ice Cap contains two

subglacial lake A subglacial lake is a lake that is found under a glacier, typically beneath an ice cap or ice sheet. Subglacial lakes form at the boundary between ice and the underlying bedrock, where liquid water can exist above the lower melting point of ic ...

s that are hypersaline. In

Antarctica Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean (also known as the Antarctic Ocean), it contains the geographic South Pole. ...

, there are larger hypersaline water bodies, lakes in the McMurdo Dry Valleys such as Lake Vanda with salinity of over 35% (i.e. 10 times as salty as ocean water). The most saline water body in the world is the Gaet'ale Pond, located in the Danakil Depression in Afar, Ethiopia. The water of Gaet'ale Pond has a

salinity Salinity () is the saltiness or amount of salt (chemistry), salt dissolved in a body of water, called saline water (see also soil salinity). It is usually measured in g/L or g/kg (grams of salt per liter/kilogram of water; the latter is dimensio ...

of 43%, making it the saltiest water body on Earth (i.e. 12 times as salty as ocean water). Previously, it was considered that the most saline lake outside of Antarctica was Lake Assal, in

Djibouti Djibouti, officially the Republic of Djibouti, is a country in the Horn of Africa, bordered by Somalia to the south, Ethiopia to the southwest, Eritrea in the north, and the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden to the east. The country has an area ...

, which has a salinity of 34.8% (i.e. 10 times as salty as ocean water). The best-known hypersaline lakes are the

Dead Sea The Dead Sea (; or ; ), also known by #Names, other names, is a landlocked salt lake bordered by Jordan to the east, the Israeli-occupied West Bank to the west and Israel to the southwest. It lies in the endorheic basin of the Jordan Rift Valle ...

(34.2% salinity in 2010) and the Great Salt Lake in the state of

Utah Utah is a landlocked state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is one of the Four Corners states, sharing a border with Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico. It also borders Wyoming to the northea ...

, US (5–27% variable salinity). The

, dividing

Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...

and the

West Bank The West Bank is located on the western bank of the Jordan River and is the larger of the two Palestinian territories (the other being the Gaza Strip) that make up the State of Palestine. A landlocked territory near the coast of the Mediter ...

from

Jordan Jordan, officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, is a country in the Southern Levant region of West Asia. Jordan is bordered by Syria to the north, Iraq to the east, Saudi Arabia to the south, and Israel and the occupied Palestinian ter ...

, is the world's deepest hypersaline lake. The Great Salt Lake, while having nearly three times the surface area of the Dead Sea, is shallower and experiences much greater fluctuations in salinity. At its lowest recorded water levels, it approaches 7.7 times the salinity of ocean water, but when its levels are high, its salinity drops to only slightly higher than that of the ocean.

References

{{reflist, refs= {{cite book , last=Hammer , first=Ulrich T. , title=Saline lake ecosystems of the world , url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NOdvPFm6SyoC&q=Lovenula&pg=PA315 , year=1986 , publisher=Springer , isbn=90-6193-535-0 {{Cite journal , last1=Vreeland , first1=R.H. , last2=Rosenzweig , first2=W.D. , last3=Powers , first3=D.W. , year=2000 , title=Isolation of a 250 million-year-old halotolerant bacterium from a primary salt crystal , journal=Nature , volume=407 , pages=897–900 , doi=10.1038/35038060 , pmid=11057666 , issue=6806, bibcode=2000Natur.407..897V , s2cid=9879073 , name-list-style=amp {{cite book , editor-last1=Quinn , editor-first1=Joyce A. , editor-last2=Woodward , editor-first2=Susan L., title=Earth's Landscape: An Encyclopedia of the World's Geographic Features [2 volumes] , url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ErkxBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA9 , year=2015 , publisher=ABC-CLIO , isbn=978-1-61069-446-9 , page=9 {{cite web, first=Christine , last=Wilkerson , url=http://geology.utah.gov/online/PI-39/pi39pg9.htm , title=Utah's Great Salt Lake and Ancient Lake Bonneville, PI39 – Utah Geological Survey , publisher=Geology.utah.gov , access-date=2010-08-03 , url-status=dead , archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100815024315/http://geology.utah.gov/online/PI-39/pi39pg9.htm , archive-date=2010-08-15 {{cite web , url=http://serc.carleton.edu/microbelife/extreme/hypersaline/index.html , title=Microbial life in hypersaline environments , last1=Allred , first1=Ashley , last2=Baxter , first2=Bonnie , publisher=Science Education Resource Center at

Carleton College Carleton College ( ) is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Northfield, Minnesota, United States. Founded in 1866, the main campus is between Northfield and the approximately Carleton ...

, access-date=2010-06-17 {{cite journal , pmid=17367515 , title=Diversity of sulfate-reducing bacteria from an extreme hypersaline sediment, Great Salt Lake (Utah) , last1=Kjeldsen , first1=K.U. , last2=Loy , first2=A. , last3=Jakobsen , first3=T.F. , last4=Thomsen , first4=T.R. , last5=Wagner , first5=M. , last6=Ingvorsen , first6=K. , doi=10.1111/j.1574-6941.2007.00288.x , volume=60 , issue=2 , date=May 2007 , journal=FEMS Microbiol. Ecol. , pages=287–298 , display-authors=4, doi-access=free , bibcode=2007FEMME..60..287K Hydrology

See also

References