Is a drying Great Salt Lake affecting carbon cycling?

Screen capture of Utah State University Assistant Professor Erin Rivers conducting research on the Great Salt Lake. Video by Taylor Emerson, Digital Journalist, University Marketing & Communications

LOGAN – Eco-hydrologist Erin Rivers of Utah State University’s Quinney College of Natural Resources is investigating how shifting water levels at the Great Salt Lake are altering the way it captures and stores carbon.

“What we really want to understand is how much carbon we are releasing from the sediment once the water levels recede,” Rivers explains, “versus how much carbon we are storing in the lake itself.”

She says part of the research seeks to understand if the Great Salt Lake ecosystem will become a significant source of greenhouse gas or not.

“That’s the million dollar question and that’s what we’re trying to figure out right now,” she says. “We’re still in the early stages of our study. This first phase has been a small scale study where we’re looking at a couple of things to see what some of these patterns are.

“So, looking to the future we want to expand this study to do a bigger picture look at the lake level and how that’s affecting carbon cycling across the entire ecosystem of the Great Salt Lake.”

Rivers says the Great Salt Lake landscape is changing.

“We see a lot of sediment where the water used to be but we’re not seeing a lot of plants returning,” she explains. “That’s kind of where we’re starting to investigate; we’re not getting the same amount of carbon storage as we would as if we were getting a lot of plant growth happening in those sediments.”

Rivers says she is working on research that will give managers a better picture of how the drying lake will impact a drying and warming world.

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