It’s just trying to rank those, understand how much that impact is and what we can do to mitigate or understand it,” Bernau said on a recent tour of the area, where reporters accompanied him as he measured the thickness of the salt and depth of the aquifer.

“Every use is going to have some sort of impact upon it. There’s consensus they are shrinking, but some disagreement on where to draw the perimeter. Maps show the change in the footprint of the Bonneville Salt Flats in 19. Bureau of Land Management, which oversees the area and is required by federal law to balance multiple uses and preserve it now and into the future. But rather than point fingers that direction, he and other racers blame the U.S. His organization, the Salt Flats Racing Association, is convinced the potash mining company that extracts minerals from the flats is the primary reason that the aquifer is being depleted. The salt is thinning as climate change drags the West into its third decade of drought, yet it’s unclear how that affects the seasonal flood patterns the landscape relies on to maintain its size and footprint.įrustration is boiling over for Dennis Sullivan, a car-builder and racer who set a land speed record in his 1927 Model T street roadster. Under a $1 million research project spearheaded by the Utah Geological Survey, scientists are gathering data to understand the effects climate change, racing, repaving the salt and operating the mine on leased federal land have on preserving the Salt Flats. Researchers are seeking to pinpoint why the salt is fading and what can be done to stop it. But officials are funding a new study as they try to find a solution. In Utah, after three decades of studies examining the salt flats, nothing has slowed the deterioration. It’s mined from other iconic salt flats, including in Chile, where the thickness is not shrinking in a similar manner. It’s extracted in more than a dozen countries throughout the world, mainly from prehistoric lakebeds like Bonneville’s. Potash is potassium-based salt primarily used throughout the world as a fertilizer for crops such as corn, soy, rice and wheat.

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