'Sad to Witness' State's 4th Largest Lake Vanishing

Nevada's fourth-largest lake is slowly disappearing and researchers are trying desperately to find a way to save the saline lake before it's too late. 

Walker Lake, 75 miles south of Reno, has lost 90 percent of its volume over the past century. It is fed primarily by spring snowmelt from the Sierra Nevada via the Walker River and has no natural outlet, according to a NASA press release. 

Scientists say a combination of the decline in snowmelt as a result of climate change and the diversion of water to irrigate alfalfa fields and pasture grass in the Antelope, Bridgeport, Smith and Mason valleys has led to the reduction in the lake's footprint.

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With that reduction, the salinity of the 50-square-mile lake has increased from 3 grams per liter in the 1880s to 17 grams per liter now, which is about half that of seawater. 

The increased salinity has killed off many of the fish species historically native to Walker Lake. Today, the Lahontan cutthroat trout is one of the few species remaining in the lake and that is only thanks to stocking, NASA notes. 

According to the advocacy group Walker Lake Crusaders, the remote lake is 12 miles long, less than 5 miles wide and 500 feet deep. Since 1882, the lake has lost 174 vertical feet, going from 4,090 feet above sea level to its current 3,918 feet above sea level.

The area around the lake is undeveloped, although there was once a restaurant and boat dock at the most popular beach on the lake, Cliff House Beach. Today, the restaurant is closed and the boat dock is gone. 

"The devastating destruction of Walker Lake is extremely sad to witness," the crusaders note. "Walker Lake was once a very popular place for fishermen, boaters, tourists and all types of migrating birds. Now you are lucky to see anyone enjoying the lake."

In 2017, a team of scientists from Utah State University published a study in Nature Geoscience analyzing the decline of saline lakes worldwide. While Walker Lake is not declining as quickly as some, including the Aral Sea in Kazakhstan, which has lost 90 percent of its volume since 1960, and Iran’s Lake Urmia, which has lost a similar amount just since 2000, it is still troublesome.

Utah's Great Salt Lake has lost about half its volume since 1847, again thanks in part to climate change but in larger part to "thirsty humans."

(MORE: Here's How Much Utah's Great Salt Lake Has Declined in 5 Years)

The researchers say the lake can be saved if the inflow of fresh water to Walker Lake is increased by 24 percent, but that can really only be achieved by reducing the amount of water diverted from the lake for agriculture.

“There is a tendency to invoke ‘climate change’ as the culprit for the decline of saline lakes without fully understanding all of the hydrological balances,” the scientists said. “Climate change—with warmer temperatures, increased evaporation, and altered precipitation—does indeed represent a pervasive long-term problem for saline lakes sustainability, [but] water development (agriculture, mining, and cities) in arid basins generally represents a larger and more immediate challenge.”