12/27/2023 0 Comments Oregon salt flats![]() The lake mostly dried up in 2014, 2015, 2021, and 2022 due to water withdrawals and dry weather, which caused the salinity of the lake’s remaining water to spike-becoming, at times, too high even for brine shrimp and flies.In order to improve understanding of why Abert is drying up, a team of researchers led by University of Maryland and NASA research scientist Dorothy Hall analyzed two decades of environmental data collected by the Terra satellite. But the past few decades have been anything but normal for Lake Abert. Instead, it supports large quantities of alkali flies and tiny crustaceans called brine shrimp (below), which have long provided a feast for several species of migrating birds. ![]() Under normal circumstances, the lake’s water is too salty for fish. But the food source has become threatened in recent years. The shallow, salty lake in southern Oregon has long functioned like an all-you-can-eat buffet for many of these winged travelers. Every year, tens of thousands of birds flock to Lake Abert as they journey from parts of the Great Basin toward the Pacific flyway, a migration route that extends from Alaska and Canada, through California, to Mexico and South America.
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