A brand new satellite tv for pc picture of Turkey’s Lake Tuz is beautiful—and, if you already know extra about what it’s portraying, worrying. The beautiful seize from the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-2 satellite tv for pc reveals Turkey’s second-largest lake has utterly dried up this yr, exposing a haunting expanse of salt.

While Lake Tuz, one of many world’s largest saltwater lakes, usually grows and recedes with the seasons—it’s how the salt within the lake is created—it’s been getting smaller and smaller annually. That’s due to much less and fewer water getting into the lake, a facet impact of local weather change in addition to elevated agriculture.

The picture above, processed by the EU Copernicus Program, reveals the state of Lake Tuz in its at the moment desiccated state. But earlier than and after imagery actually places the dramatic transformation in context. The gif beneath makes use of the identical Sentinel-2 satellite tv for pc to point out the lake in January of this yr, when rain and snowmelt crammed it to a stupendous mild blue. Compare that to a stark picture pulled from October 30, the place the lake is nearly completely a snow-white expanse of salt.

Salt lakes like Lake Tuz are fashioned when a lakebed has no approach for water that flows in to get out. The water, which carries salt and different minerals, flows into the lake by way of rivers and streams. It then finally evaporates, leaving these substances behind. For Lake Tuz, water from rain and snowmelt flows into the lake within the spring, filling within the lake. It’s a reasonably shallow lake, with water depths of round 3 toes (1 meter). But a lot of that water evaporates by summer time, leaving a 3-inch (8-centimeter) layer of salt in its wake.

All that residue additionally creates a serious trade on Lake Tuz: salt mining. With an estimated 250 million tons of salt reserves, the lake is among the saltiest on the planet. One trade website places the share of salt within the lake at greater than 32%. The lake offers 60% of the salt utilized in Turkey, with the remainder exported to more than 60 countries.

Those salt deposits rely upon replenishment from water coming into the lake. But Tuz has been shrinking in recent times. This seems to be attributable to a double whammy of local weather change and drought affecting water provide, in addition to elevated agriculture and trade stress that diverts a lot of the water earlier than it could even attain the lake. A study carried out in 2007 discovered that Lake Tuz is now half the scale it was 40 years in the past.

The drought has had severe impacts on the lake’s wildlife. Lake Tuz, which is on the record to be considered a UNESCO World Heritage Site, offers precious habitat for a number of species of birds, together with an iconic inhabitants of flamingoes. This summer time, the federal government estimated that 1,000 younger birds died on account of low water ranges, whereas environmentalists say simply 5,000 birds hatched, in comparison with greater than 12,000 in 2018.

Muazzez Çelik Karakaya, who’s on the college of geoengineering and pure sciences at Konya Technical University, advised Turkish information outlet Hurriyet Daily News that the lake is at risk of extinction inside 30 years if motion is just not taken.

“As water decreases due to global warming, salt precipitation will also decrease,” she mentioned “This will have negative cultural consequences. Because more than a hundred bird species live in the region. If salt precipitation does not occur as the water decreases, a clayey sediment area will form on the surface of the lake. This means carrying a lot of dust, which can lead to many respiratory diseases.”