Monolake, a scientific review made fun!

The monolake is a saline soda lake in the united states of America, California to be more specific. it is a very interesting lake because of its salinity, and the amount and type, or organisms living inside of it. lets learn a bit more about it. starting off with one of the questions you must have had from the beginning what special salts made this lake so salty. This lake has a very unique chemical composition, which in turn makes it alkaline, the salts in this lake are combinations of chlorides, carbonates, and sulfates. It also consists of large amounts of borate and potassium. this also intern increases the pH of this lake, the pH of monolake is a whooping 10, almost thrice of a normal river or lake. so how can organisms live their life's in this lake? There are many types of flora and fauna that appear in the mono lake at different times of the year, many of which are birds, the osprey, many types of songbirds, and phalaropes come at many different times of the year, but that’s not it. The mono lake has a one of the kind shrimp named the Artemia Monica, a species of shrimp that lives nowhere else on earth. one fact to note is that there are few organisms that live INSIDE of the lake, rather, most of the organisms USE the lake as their main shelter or have some direct connection with it. this lake also has a lot of drama connected to it, how it had to be safer, and much more, but now that I brung up on how it had to be safer, what almost destroyed it in the first place? In 1941, Los Angeles needed more water than usual, and one of the lakes closest to it was the mono lake, so they started using it and diverting water towards Los Angeles. This caused many geographic changes to the mono lake, including the fauna that used it, most of all, however, it changed one of the most important factors of it, its salinity, as there was less water in the lake, and more concentrated salt, which came because of rain and other causes. There was just not enough water in the lake to dissolve it all equally. This just shows how much human impact can change the entire outcome of something no matter how small, or large! in facts, we humans only saved it!  We also helped rebuild it after the movement. We Closed all the outgoing tributaries, and enforced laws which help the lake grow and thrive again. However, one thing that probably got affected the most in my opinion is the affect it had on nature.  a lot of fauna suffered as the lake did not have as much water as it should, which revealed parts of lake beds, which in turn showed many places where birds lay eggs, and were stolen by eagles/ etc. this reduced the number of birds in that area. one cool fact about this lake is that it's chemical composition made it possible for cool looking towers named "tufa". they are made of calcium rich salt water. They provide habitat for owls, and other organisms the live in the dark.

would you want to visit this lake? and if you would, why! let me know.

- Mirage Chemistry

(this has been inspired by the official monolake website whose link you can find at https://www.monolake.org/)