“The water has an extremely high soda and salt content, so high that it would strip the ink off my Kodak film boxes within a few seconds.” writes Brandt. Enter these waters at your own risk.īrandt visited the lake while working in Africa and discovered calcified corpses of bats and birds scattered along the shoreline. The steaming hot lake is colored bright red by bacteria. Water temperatures can reach 140 ☏ and alkalinity hovers around pH 10, similar to ammonia. Lake Urmia in northwestern Iran is the largest lake in the Middle East, and the third largest saltwater lake on earth.Īnd the Dead Sea, bordered by Jordan, Israel and Palestine, holds the title as the deepest of the world’s salty seas.īut those majestic waters all step aside as, just in time for Halloween, Lake Natron steps onto the podium as the world’s most frightening: The Caspian Sea, bordered by Iran, Azerbaijan, Russia, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan, is both the world’s largest lake and the largest saltwater lake.
It’s hot, chalky waters can turn birds and land animals into calcified statues, spookily captured by photographer Nick Brandt in his new book, Across the Ravaged Land. Flamingos, in particular, favor the area as a nesting site during the dry season, since moat-like channels and the harsh waters make an ideal fortification against predators.The Middle East boasts some of the world’s saltiest waterbodies, but none approach the horror of Lake Natron in Tanzania, one of the harshest environments on the planet. Flocks of birds often camp on its shores, and tilapia fish brave its briny waters. Most animals (us too) can’t handle water as alkaline and salty as this, but Lake Natron is home to a few species which have adapted to withstand the harsh chemical conditions. As they multiply, the holoarchaea lend the water its red hue - the rainy seasons in the area runs from March to May and at the time Landsat passed over Lake Natron, the water level was particularly low and the salt ponds were very colorful. These conditions are ripe for holoarchaea, a class of microorganisms which thrives in salty environments. Image modified after NASA Earth Observatory. Minerals and salts released by this process, particularly sodium carbonate, push the waters of Lake Natron even higher beyond water’s neutral 7 point mark on the pH scale. Waterwise, Lake Natron is chiefly supplied by the Southern Ewaso Ng’iro River and mineral-rich hot springs that are powered by Ol Doinyo’s volcanism. Its products flow, fall, roll, and push through faults all the way to the lake, enriching it in alkaline salts and other material.
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