Dead Sea Dead Sea

• Category: Inland Aquatic Biomes.
• Geographic Location: Middle East.
• Summary: The Dead Sea is a deep salt lake located at one of the lowest spots on the Earth's surface. A few simple organisms thrive here; climate change is predicted to increase the region's dry spells.

As a hypersaline lake, or inland sea, located on the border between Israel and Jordan 1,329 feet (405 meters) below sea level, the Dead Sea is often referred to as the lowest place on the Earth's surface. The sea's climate is characterized by high temperatures, in the range of 90 to 102 degrees F (32 to 39 degrees C) in the summer, with low humidity; and an average annual rainfall of less than 2 inches (50 millimeters).

The Dead Sea is 42 miles (67 kilometers) long and 11 miles (18 kilometers) wide, spread around 84 miles (135 kilometers) of shoreline. Its maximum measured depth is 1,083 feet (330 meters), and overall salt concentration is 13 ounces per 0.3 gallon (340 grams per liter). Therefore, it is considered the world's deepest and saltiest lake. It contains 33.7 percent salts, compared with 3.5 percent in most oceans. The Dead Sea is a substantially dense water body, enabling people to float easily on its surface. The mineral composition, too, is different from oceans, as only 12 to 18 percent of Dead Sea salt is sodium chloride, compared with 97 percent in most oceans. Instead, the sea has large quantities of four diverse minerals: sodium, potassium, bromine, and magnesium.

The low altitude of the Dead Sea creates unique effects like high atmospheric pressure, which is beneficial for people with some respiratory illnesses. It also absorbs most of the sun's ultraviolet rays, which prevents most skin burns throughout the area's 330 sunny days each year. Also, pollen and allergens are of minimal concern here.

The lake was formed as a result of a 62-mile (100-kilometer) movement along the geologic rupture called the Dead Sea Rift. It runs along the boundary of two tectonic plates: the Arabian and African plates, reaching from the northern tip of the Red Sea to southeastern Turkey. Because of tectonic activity, parts of the sea's bottom are still sinking; the surface-water level of the Dead Sea also has varied throughout its history. Evidence exists that the sea's surface at one point historically decreased to at least 2,297 feet (700 meters) below sea level and that the lake almost dissipated entirely. Further observations of cliffs near the lake indicate previous existence of multiple sea levels several feet (meters) above its twenty-first century average of around 413 meters below sea level, representing extended rainy periods.

Hydrology

The Dead Sea is naturally fed by freshwater from the Jordan River, its main tributary. In addition, twenty-six minor rivers descend from the desert canyons on the Israeli and Jordanian banks and spill into the Dead Sea. Most of these streams, however, are seasonal. The water level of the lake is determined by the ratio between freshwater insertion and evaporation. Dams and canals built along the Jordan River to divert water for agriculture and drinking water dramatically limited the volume of water that annually reaches the lake, from 52.9 billion cubic feet (1.5 billion cubic meters) previously to about 14 billion cubic feet (400 million cubic meters) currently. Natural evaporation exceeds 35 billion cubic feet (1 billion cubic meters) annually.

Since the mid-1970s, the lake's water level fell by more than 82 feet (25 meters), and by the early 2000s, it lost elevation at a rate of about 3 feet (1 meter) per year. Because the bottom of the southern basin is so shallow, the decreasing water level resulted in the separation of the southern basin from the rest of the lake. The southern basin of the Dead Sea is used by Israeli and Jordanian salt factories as major evaporation pools to increase the precipitation rate of salts, which are used for food and fertilization industries. To maintain the water volume of the southern basin—visited by tourists drawn to the lake's therapeutic qualities and beautiful landscapes—water is pumped from the northern basin.

The water-level decline has been followed by a groundwater level drop. Normally, groundwater is replaced by freshwater streaming toward the lake; this causes some underground salt layers near the shoreline of the Dead Sea to dissolve. The salt layers were formed during past sea-level retreats and are covered in clay-containing minerals with high water adsorption, creating an elastic consistency. Under these circumstances, subsurface cavities are rapidly created; these cavities might result in gravitational collapses. This condition is believed to be the cause of the increasingly more frequent appearance of large sinkholes along the western shore, one of the biggest of which was reported to be 36 feet (11 meters) deep and 82 feet (25 meters) in diameter.

A canal to pump and transfer water from the Red Sea into the Dead Sea has been considered since the last decades of the twentieth century. The 326-mile (525-kilometer) canal would transfer 14 billion cubic feet (400 million cubic meters) of water yearly at its first stage, and several hydroelectric power plants and water desalination facilities would provide electricity and potable water to Jordan, Israel, and the Palestinian Authority. This would facilitate new settlements and tourist centers along the Arava Valley, a desert area separating the two seas.

The project's estimated costs vary from $2 billion to over $10 billion, depending on its structure and stages. The project is being carefully considered, as the transfer of mass volumes of water may have dramatic consequences, including a fracture in the pipeline resulting from an earthquake. This could result in a large spill of Red Sea water, adding a saline threat to the crops and aquifers along the Arava Valley. Furthermore, the different chemical composition of the salts in both seas may interact, increasing precipitation of calcium sulfate (plaster) in the Dead Sea, possibly changing evaporation rates. Massive outflow of water might affect the current distribution of the Red Sea and damage the ecology and marine life.

In 2005, Jordan and Israel signed an agreement to initiate a study funded by the World Bank providing a detailed estimate of the project's influence. In 2006, World Bank carried out the study. France, Greece, Italy, Japan, South Korea, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United States of America contributed about $16.7 million to the study, and the World Bank published a summary of the study in July 2012.

The study evaluated water conveyance systems combined with desalination plants and identified the optimal configuration as a pipeline with a high-level desalination plant. The system would pump 2,000 million cubic meters of water annually from the Gulf of Aqaba to an elevation of 220 meters, generating hydroelectric power from a 650 meter elevation drop to support desalination of 850 million cubic meters of seawater. The project aimed to stabilize the Dead Sea’s water level by 2054 while supplying drinking water to Israel, Jordan, and Palestine. The estimated costs are between $11.1 billion and $11.3 billion, with annual maintenance costs recovered through water and electricity tariffs.

Aquatic Life

The Dead Sea's high salinity results in scarce aquatic life, but several studies have found organisms. During rainy winters, reduction in salinity to 28 percent is interrelated with a bloom of algae called Dunaliella, which contains red pigments and shifts the dark-blue color of the water. At the bottom of the Dead Sea, a complex system of springs was discovered, running hundreds of miles (kilometers) and extending to a depth of 98 feet (30 meters). These springs burst through craters at intervals of up to 49 feet (15 meters) and depths of 66 feet (20 meters). In a study that took place in the 1970s, a bacterium with high tolerance for magnesium chloride (one of the properties of halobacteria, or salt-loving bacteria) was isolated from bottom sediment of the Dead Sea.

In 2010, a diving expedition to the springs revealed diverse communities of microorganisms, sometimes in surprisingly thick mats, in the bottom sediment layer covering large areas of the seafloor. These communities thrive near thin plumes of freshwater that shoot out from the springs. Some of the bacteria species are phototrophs; they use sunlight energy to oxidize sulfide, naturally occurring in the springs, for their metabolism. The organisms discovered at these depths are different from those responsible for the surface blooms. As the salinity of the Dead Sea is anticipated to rise due to climate change throughout the twenty-first century and beyond, this raises the question of its impact on the organisms living in these diverse aquatic communities. Studying these organisms' abilities to adapt to increasingly harsh environments, along with seasonal and geographical changes within the area, will assist scientists in understanding how these changes impact the diverse ecosystem living in an around the Dead Sea.

In the area surrounding the Dead Sea, a high diversity of animals and plants are found to thrive in the warm, dry climate. Among these are camels, ibex, jackals, hares, hyraxes, and foxes. Many birds find the climate of the Jordan River and the Dead Sea suitable for breeding, including the Dead Sea sparrow. Even without the impact of humans on the area, the Dead Sea could still disappear—as it nearly did about 100,000 years ago—by virtue of the effects of global warming. Man-made factors such as irrigation and water diversion projects, coupled with climate change, could make the area more arid than it already is and apply further pressure to the region's limited freshwater resources.

Human Settlement and Tourism

Many believe that the Dead Sea has survived for all these thousands of years thanks in part to the sparsely populated area that has traditionally surrounded it. The area is the site of significant events over the course of thousands of years, including being the biblical site of Sodom and Gomorrah, the area of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the location of numerous significant events in Jewish, Roman, and monastic history. Since the 1980s, however, the Dead Sea has attracted increasing numbers of tourists and businesses, and the local populations of Palestine, Israel, and Jordan have increased to a level of almost four times the population during the 1960s. All of these factors combined have strained the resources of the Jordan River and its many tributaries, resulting in a decrease in the water level of the Dead Sea.

A huge uptick in area tourism has also had increasingly negative effects. Developers have constructed and plan to construct hotels and spas along the shorelines of the Dead Sea, and future plans are in the works for the construction of area water parks and shopping malls to promote the Dead Sea as a tourist destination. Environmentalists warn of the added stress such development will have on the Dead Sea as well as the potential for untreated sewage leaking into the Sea and resulting in long-lasting and irreversible negative effects on its ecosystem. Many propose making the Dead Sea Basin a biosphere reserve or World Heritage Site.

Climate Change

Climate change is mainly responsible for the drying up of the Dead Sea. Over the past few decades, the water level has dropped at a rate of about 3.3 feet (1 meter) per year. This has been attributed to a lack of water inflow from the Jordan River. An increase in rainfall since the 1980s is also increasing evaporation. The reduction in water level in the Dead Sea is a direct cause of the increase in the dangerous sinkholes in the region, with more than 6,000 sinkholes identified in 2021. By 2024, there were roughly 7,000 identified sinkholes in the region. These sinkholes formed due to the lake's receding shorelines being flooded by mountain rainwater. The rainwater flowed down onto the plains and dissolved the exposed subterranean rock layer. According to many scientists in 2021, without intervention, the Dead Sea will completely evaporate within the next 100 years.

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