A hypersaline lake is a landlocked

body of water A body of water or waterbody (often spelled water body) 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 p ...

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'', an ...

s of

sodium chloride Sodium chloride , commonly known as salt (although sea salt also contains other chemical salts), is an ionic compound with the chemical formula NaCl, representing a 1:1 ratio of sodium and chloride ions. With molar masses of 22.99 and 35.45 g ...

brine Brine is a high-concentration solution of salt (NaCl) in water (H2O). In diverse contexts, ''brine'' may refer to the salt solutions ranging from about 3.5% (a typical concentration of seawater, on the lower end of that of solutions used for br ...

s, and other

salts In chemistry, a salt is a chemical compound consisting of an ionic assembly of positively charged cations and negatively charged anions, which results in a compound with no net electric charge. A common example is table salt, with positively cha ...

, with saline levels surpassing that 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 colour of

pink lake A pink lake is a lake that has a red or pink colour. This is often caused by the presence of salt-tolerant algae that produces carotenoids, such as ''Dunaliella salina'', usually in conjunction with specific bacteria, which may vary from lake ...

s. Some of these species enter a dormant state when

desiccated Desiccation () is the state of extreme dryness, or the process of extreme drying. A desiccant is a hygroscopic (attracts and holds water) substance that induces or sustains such a state in its local vicinity in a moderately sealed container. ...

, and some species are thought to survive for over 250 million years. The water of hypersaline lakes has great

buoyancy Buoyancy (), or upthrust, is an upward force exerted by a fluid that opposes the weight of a partially or fully immersed object. In a column of fluid, pressure increases with depth as a result of the weight of the overlying fluid. Thus the p ...

due to its high salt content. Hypersaline lakes are found on every continent, especially in

arid A region is arid when it severely lacks available water, to the extent of hindering or preventing the growth and development of plant and animal life. Regions with arid climates tend to lack vegetation and are called xeric or desertic. Most ar ...

or semi-arid regions. In the

Arctic The Arctic ( or ) is a polar regions of Earth, polar region located at the northernmost part of Earth. The Arctic consists of the Arctic Ocean, adjacent seas, and parts of Canada (Yukon, Northwest Territories, Nunavut), Danish Realm (Greenla ...

, the Canadian

Devon Ice Cap The Devon Ice Cap is an ice cap on eastern Devon Island, Nunavut, Canada, covering an area of over . The highest point on Devon Island is found at the summit of the ice cap, with an elevation of . The ice cap has a maximum thickness of , and h ...

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 gravitational pressure decreases the pressure melting point ...

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, it contains the geographic South Pole. Antarctica is the fifth-largest contine ...

, there are larger hypersaline water bodies, lakes in the

McMurdo Dry Valleys The McMurdo Dry Valleys are a row of largely snow-free valleys in Antarctica, located within Victoria Land west of McMurdo Sound. The Dry Valleys experience extremely low humidity and surrounding mountains prevent the flow of ice from nearby ...

such as

Lake Vanda Lake Vanda is a lake in Wright Valley, Victoria Land, Ross Dependency, Antarctica. The lake is long and has a maximum depth of . On its shore, New Zealand maintained Vanda Station from 1968 to 1995. Lake Vanda is a hypersaline lake with a salin ...

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 Gaet'ale Pond is a small hypersaline lake located near the Dallol crater in the Danakil Depression (Afar Region, Ethiopia). It is located over a hot spring of tectonic origin and has no apparent inlet or outlet streams. The water of Gaet'ale Po ...

, located in the

Danakil Depression The Danakil Depression is the northern part of the Afar Triangle or Afar Depression in Ethiopia, a geological depression that has resulted from the divergence of three tectonic plates in the Horn of Africa. Geology The Danakil Depression lies ...

in Afar, Ethiopia. The water of Gaet'ale Pond has a

salinity Salinity () is the saltiness or amount of 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 dimensionless and equal ...

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 A salt lake or saline lake is a landlocked body of water that has a concentration of salts (typically sodium chloride) and other dissolved minerals significantly higher than most lakes (often defined as at least three grams of salt per litre). ...

outside of Antarctica was Lake Assal, in

Djibouti Djibouti, ar, جيبوتي ', french: link=no, Djibouti, so, Jabuuti 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 ...

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

Dead Sea The Dead Sea ( he, יַם הַמֶּלַח, ''Yam hamMelaḥ''; ar, اَلْبَحْرُ الْمَيْتُ, ''Āl-Baḥrū l-Maytū''), also known by other names, is a salt lake bordered by Jordan to the east and Israel and the West Bank ...

(34.2% salinity in 2010) and the

Great Salt Lake The Great Salt Lake is the largest saltwater lake in the Western Hemisphere and the eighth-largest terminal lake in the world. It lies in the northern part of the U.S. state of Utah and has a substantial impact upon the local climate, particula ...

in the state of

Utah Utah ( , ) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. Utah is a landlocked U.S. state bordered to its east by Colorado, to its northeast by Wyoming, to its north by Idaho, to its south by Arizona, and to it ...

, US (5–27% variable salinity). The

, dividing

Israel Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...

and the

West Bank The West Bank ( ar, الضفة الغربية, translit=aḍ-Ḍiffah al-Ġarbiyyah; he, הגדה המערבית, translit=HaGadah HaMaʽaravit, also referred to by some Israelis as ) is a landlocked territory near the coast of the Mediter ...

from

Jordan Jordan ( ar, الأردن; tr. ' ), officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan,; tr. ' is a country in Western Asia. It is situated at the crossroads of Asia, Africa, and Europe, within the Levant region, on the East Bank of the Jordan Rive ...

, 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 liberal arts college in Northfield, Minnesota. Founded in 1866, it had 2,105 undergraduate students and 269 faculty members in fall 2016. The 200-acre main campus is between Northfield and the 800-acre Cowling ...

, 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 Hydrology

See also

References