"This was the first of salt lakes' many lessons for me: places that seem ugly or desolate are vital and complex in ways that you don't notice until you give them a chance. These strange and embattled ecosystems contain dozens of salt lakes around the world - glistening bodies of water hidden deep in desert valleys, teeming with pinkish algae and salt-tolerant shrimp."
"Agricultural consumption and climate change are causing nearly all of them to dry up, with dire consequences for biodiversity and human health. Traveling all over the Great Basin, and to Kazakhstan, Mexico and Argentina, Tracey documents both the shrinking lakes and the varied communities working to protect them."
"Salt Lakes is personal, pragmatic and cautiously hopeful - a thoughtful meditation on what it means to inhabit a rapidly transforming world. The book doubles as a kind of aquatic autobiography: Interwoven with her reporting is the story of how Tracey came into queerness, learning to understand her own desires and values through her encounters with literature and landscape."
Caroline Tracey's book explores salt lakes as complex, biodiverse ecosystems that appear desolate but sustain unique wildlife including algae, shrimp, and birds. Located in desert valleys worldwide, these lakes face existential threats from agricultural water consumption and climate change, causing widespread drying. Tracey documents her travels across the Great Basin, Kazakhstan, Mexico, and Argentina, examining both the ecological crisis and communities working to protect these environments. The book interweaves scientific reporting with personal narrative about Tracey's own journey of self-discovery, connecting landscape transformation with human identity. Her work emphasizes that seemingly barren places possess hidden complexity and importance, offering lessons about inhabiting a rapidly changing world.
#salt-lakes-ecology #climate-change-impacts #conservation-efforts #desert-ecosystems #environmental-memoir
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