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Description

Mono Lake is a hypersaline/alkaline lake located east of California's Sierra Nevada, at the western edge of the Great Basin. Dissolved salts in the runoff from Eastern Sierra streams are trapped at Mono Lake. Mono Lake's water is now about 2.5 times saltier than the ocean and eighty times more alkaline. In 1941, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power began to divert fresh waters which would normally flow into Mono Lake. The water diversion eventually resulted in a drop of 45 ft in lake level, from 6,417 ft in 1941 to 6,372 ft in 1981. As a result of the drop, once-submerged tufa towers became exposed.