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Some lakes are salty. The Dead Sea and the Caspian, for example. But many lakes do not have an outlet that leads to the sea. Water flows in and evaporates. Wh
by cperciva 9y ago
Some lakes are salty. The Dead Sea and the Caspian, for example.
But many lakes do not have an outlet that leads to the sea. Water flows in and evaporates. Where does the salt go in that case?
It sticks around. The terminal lakes which aren't salty are generally ones which only formed recently (e.g., after the most recent glaciation) or ones which are not fed by rivers (e.g., Oregon's Crater Lake).
- ajross 9y agoFWIW, the Dead and Caspian seas are actually dismembered bits of ocean. They're salty because their water was originally salty. The only salty lake I can think of that didn't begin with ocean water is the Great Salt Lake, which is an evaporated basin from a much larger lake that just happened to sit on salty bedrock.
- eesmith 9y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_lake https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_lake lists a number of salt lakes. One is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mono_Lake https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mono_Lake , which did not begin with ocean water. Another one is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Juan_Pond https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Juan_Pond , which is a shallow Antarctic hypersaline lake that almost never freezes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Manitou_Lake_(Saskatchewan) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Manitou_Lake_(Saskatche... is a terminal lake which formed after the Ice Age. I'll also add a non-endorheic salt lake, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Salt_Plains_State_Park https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Salt_Plains_State_Park , made salty from the dried salts from an ancient inland sea. (I think it's the Western Interior Seaway, but I could be wrong.) In any case, it began with ocean water, which dried up, and that salt is dissolving again.