| Mono Lake has been called a "dead sea". Mono Lake in California is nearly 700,000 years old, making it one of the oldest and most saline lakes in North America. Throughout its long existence, salts and minerals have washed into the lake from Eastern Sierra streams, but there is no outlet. Fresh water evaporating leaves behind salts and minerals so that now Mono Lake is about 2 1/2 times as salty and 80 times as alkaline as the ocean. Photo Credit: Nancy Noever |
