Nearly all 120 major saline lakes throughout the world are facing collapse, and once decline begins, no country has reversed it. These researchers think Utah could be the first.
By Will Ruzanski and Jonathon Downard
September 15, 2026
This article is published through the Great Salt Lake Collaborative with funding from Love the Lake, an initiative of the non-profit Great Salt Lake Alliance. Editorial decisions are made independently by the Collaborative and partner newsrooms. This story was written by Will Ruzanski and Jonathon Downard for the Collaborative as part of a partnership between Amplify Utah and The Daily Utah Chronicle.
Click here to read the full article on the Daily Utah Chronicle website.
Iran’s “Great Salt Lake” is all but gone. After losing more than 90% of its water volume, Lake Urmia’s ecosystem has collapsed — and the consequences for its surrounding region have prompted what local Iranian media describe as “early stages of forced relocations,” salty dust storms and further environmental instability.
It’s the age-old tale for any saline lake in decline: once it begins to dry up, the waterway has never made a full recovery — and Utah’s Great Salt Lake could be on a similar trajectory. Described as “Sister Lakes” in one collaborative study, Lake Urmia and the Great Salt Lake once shared striking resemblances to one another: similar sizes, shapes, elevations and surrounding urban development, among other features.
Today, the Sister Lakes share a more alarming likeness: they’re declining for similar reasons. In Iran, rapid urban development, high agricultural water use and climate change have pushed Lake Urmia over a tipping point, according to the Sister Lake study. Utah is heading down a similar path, but experts like Dr. Kevin Perry, a leading Great Salt Lake dust scientist and University of Utah professor, think the state can do what Iran hasn’t.
“The people of Utah aren’t going to let Great Salt Lake disappear like Lake Urmia,” Perry said. “It’s really challenging to save any of these salt lakes, and none of them have been solved yet, but I think that Great Salt Lake might be the first.”
But what makes Utah different? And how is the state learning from Iran’s ecological failure? The Chronicle spoke with Perry, Wayne Wurtsbaugh, a Utah State University (USU) ecology professor who co-authored the Sister Lake study, and a state environmental official to learn more. Here’s what they think sets Utah apart.
Not repeating history
Utah is learning from Iran’s failure, but not through collaboration with Iranian researchers. Before stepping down from his role in July, Joel Ferry, the then-executive director of Utah’s Department of Natural Resources, told The Chronicle that Lake Urmia is “a warning cry.”
“It’s the story that we’ve seen play out over and over again, which is: once one of these terminal lakes starts to go into decline, it’s essentially irreversible,” he said. “If we continue to just do what we’ve been doing and act the way we’ve been acting, we’ve seen what’s happened with other lakes. We’re on that same trajectory.”
Recent government tensions have made collaborating with Iranian researchers difficult, Ferry said. The last major collaborative study was published in 2022, when USU’s Wayne Wurtsbaugh co-authored the Sister Lake study with an Iranian professor at Tarbiat Modares University, located in the country’s capital, Tehran.
“If nothing else, [Lake Urmia] just teaches us the story of what not to do,” Ferry said. “We read about it, and we learn from it that way. It’s a lesson we don’t want to repeat; that’s what we can learn from it, we don’t want to go that direction.”
Time and political willpower
Wurtsbaugh thinks research is just one part of the puzzle. The bigger picture, he said, involves time, political willpower and implementing material action. “We have the science, they have the science, that’s not the problem,” Wurtsbaugh said. “The real problem is the political and cultural will to get this done.”
Regional instability — including drought, armed conflict and other factors — shifted Iran’s national priorities away from restoring Lake Urmia. “They had great plans. They were going to retrain people to go from being agriculturists to doing things in cities and things like that,” Wurtsbaugh said. “But everything shifted towards dealing with other cultural issues in the country. The government changed. The president, who had dedicated $5 billion, was voted out.”
Ferry thinks “we have the political will,” emphasizing Utah is “financially able to support those actions, because it’s not cheap.”
For Perry, the tale of these Sister Lakes is shocking, but he doesn’t think Utah is heading towards the same dried-up fate. “The more I learn about Lake Urmia, I’m actually shocked at how similar it is to Great Salt Lake,” he said. “There, the catastrophes already happened. The lake is already dead, and here we put structural changes in place at the legislative level.”
Some say it isn’t enough
Both governments have faced pushback. In Utah, peaceful protests annually flow through the state’s Capitol building to demand increased action. In Iran, originally peaceful protests swept throughout Iran’s Azerbaijan region in the early 2010s after their government refused to provide financial protection for the lake. Protesters were suppressed with force, leading to hundreds of arrests after more violence was ignited.
A 2023 USU report found only 14% of Utahns believe their elected officials are doing enough to save the Great Salt Lake. For Perry — a scientist who presents his research on harmful lakebed dust to state lawmakers — there are mixed reactions.
“When I talk to the legislators, only about 20% of them take the Great Salt Lake issues seriously, and 80% of them are mostly focused on other issues, in part because I think a lot of the legislators are actually developers,” Perry said. “The story of Great Salt Lake impacting air quality, impacting the economy, the livability of our area is not something that they want to focus on because it could theoretically discourage people from wanting to move to Utah, and our entire economy is built upon continued growth.”
For Wurtsbaugh, the state’s continued growth model is standing in the way of saving the Great Salt Lake. “That brings more people… more people need water,” he said. “[Legislators] don’t see it as that serious a problem yet.”
Research fuels action
Both governments implemented various programs to help their diminishing saline lakes. Perry said Utah is keeping up with those initial policy changes. Iran, not so much.
In response to protests, former Iranian President Hassan Rouhani established the Urmia Lake Restoration Program (ULRP) in 2013 to revive the waterway. Those efforts have since stalled.
In 2022, Utah’s legislature created the Great Salt Lake Strike Team — a group of various university researchers collaborating with government scientists — to better inform state decision-making. “It’s up to the scientists and the members of the state government to provide [legislators] with accurate consensus information they can then act upon,” Perry said, describing Utah’s research apparatus as “absolutely crucial.”
Research-based action in practice
Multiple studies show setting a target lake level is not enough to save a saline lake. Rather, salinity concentration is key. When it comes to Great Salt Lake, Ferry said he agrees 100%. “That’s not going to save the lake,” he said. “We’re gonna have to do things to accomplish and achieve that outcome. Just setting a broad goal alone isn’t going to do it.”
Along with Utah Governor Spencer Cox’s proclamation to reach “healthier lake levels by 2034,” Ferry said the state is managing Great Salt Lake’s salinity levels to support a balanced ecosystem, rather than focusing solely on water levels. “We have done some significant management implementation to avoid this ecosystem collapse, which is when the salinity goes too high,” Ferry said. He emphasized that innovative state research enabled Utah’s DNR to move salt between different sections of the lake to “maintain a salinity level in a healthy range.”
“Even though the Great Salt Lake is just two feet from hitting all-time record low again, we’re nowhere near where we were in terms of salinity,” he said. “Without the research that we’ve done, without the kind of trial and error in the studies that we’ve done, we would just be still shooting in the dark.”
And with this year’s record-low snowpack — which pushed the two largest reservoirs in the United States to reach all-time record lows — Ferry views the Great Salt Lake staying above new record lows as a win. “We normally would have expected to see Great Salt Lake hit a record low this year, and it didn’t,” he said. “It didn’t because our efforts are working. Now we’re not there; we need to do more, but we’ve done a significant amount.”
Policy timeline
Utah began passing legislation to protect the Great Salt Lake in the late 2010s. Since then, the state has developed a robust water tracking system, invested in water rights and worked with private industries to limit their water use. In 2025, Gov. Cox created the Great Salt Lake 2034 Charter, providing $200 million in private commitments towards restoring the lake. More than $300 million has been appropriated for the lake, and an additional one billion dollars may come from the federal government this year.
Iran’s initial funding was much larger. In 2022, the Tehran Times reported the Iranian government earmarked over $3.5 billion for the restoration of Lake Urmia. That same year, their restoration efforts were reported at 98% complete.
Despite billions of dollars and initial signs of growth, the lake dropped back down to dangerous lows a year later. In the summer of 2026, Iran experienced a nationwide drought, worsening the issue. Iranian hydrology researcher at Urmia University’s Lake Urmia Institute Kamran Zeinalzadeh later said efforts to keep the lake permanent year-round are no longer feasible.
Some say the ULRP’s inability to save Lake Urmia stemmed from a lack of coordination between officials and citizens. Additionally, the government was not able to financially support sweeping decisions and prevent illegal water extractions. They also overlooked how water irrigation does not necessarily mean water enters the lake, according to one study.
In addition to the governor’s proclamation, Utah’s recent developments include the acquisition of U.S. Magnesium’s Great Salt Lake plant, an increase in royalty tax on the brine shrimp industry and more. It’s estimated it could cost up to $10 billion to save the Great Salt Lake.
Global decline of saline lakes
Despite accounting for just under half the volume of all lakes worldwide, nearly all 120 major saline lakes in the world are in some state of collapse due to unsustainable water use. These waterways maintain diverse ecosystems that support millions of people, their animals and livelihoods. When they disappear, the consequences — including hazardous dust storms, ecosystem collapse and economic strains — can negatively impact those living around them.
“The challenge that we’re seeing now is the lows are getting lower, the highs are getting lower too, and that means it’s a downward trend,” Ferry said. “I think that the debate right now is, how much more do we need to do to achieve the change that we want to see?”
The Great Salt Lake Strike Team found natural and human water use, mostly alfalfa farming, accounts for up to 73% of the Great Salt Lake’s decline. Climate warming accounts for 8-11%, while natural variability between different water years contributes up to 23%, according to their report.
Most of Urmia’s depletion can also be attributed to agriculture, but some studies suggest climate change has had a greater impact, accounting for up to 60% of inflow reductions. “We use so much water that we have to have 130% of normal snowpack just for the lake not to shrink, which is certainly putting significant, long-term pressure on the lake,” Perry said. “The one big thing is that we’re all in this together; we’re all water users.”
[09/19/2026] Editor’s Note: This article has been updated to reflect edits from Amplify Utah.
