Under a $1 million research project spearheaded by the Utah Geological Survey, scientists are gathering data to understand the effects climate change, racing, repaving the salt and operating the mine on leased federal land have on preserving the Salt Flats. Researchers are seeking to pinpoint why the salt is fading and what can be done to stop it. But officials are funding a new study as they try to find a solution. In Utah, after three decades of studies examining the salt flats, nothing has slowed the deterioration. It's mined from other iconic salt flats, including in Chile, where the thickness is not shrinking in a similar manner. It’s extracted in more than a dozen countries throughout the world, mainly from prehistoric lakebeds like Bonneville's. Potash is potassium-based salt primarily used throughout the world as a fertilizer for crops such as corn, soy, rice and wheat. Scientists largely agree that years of aquifer overdraws by nearby potash mining have driven the problem, yet insist that there’s no hard evidence that simply paying the mining company to return water to the area will solve it amid detrimental human activity like extracting minerals or driving racecars. Racers struggle to find a track long enough to reach record speeds with only 8 miles of track compared 13 miles (20 kilometers) several decades ago. The crust keeps tires cool at high speeds and provides an ideal surface for racing - unless seasonal flooding fails to recede or leaves behind an unstable layer of salt. The overall footprint has shrunk to about half of its peak size in 1994. It’s thinned by roughly one-third in the last 60 years.

As nearby groundwater replaces the mineral-rich brine, evaporation yields less salt than historic cycles of flooding and evaporation left on the landscape. Research has time and again shown that the briny water in the aquifer below the flats is depleting faster than nature can replenish it.

The glistening white terrain of the Bonneville Salt Flats, a remnant of a prehistoric lakebed that is one of the American West’s many other-worldly landscapes, serves as a racetrack for land speed world records and backdrop for movies like “Independence Day” and “The World’s Fastest Indian.”īut it’s growing thinner and thinner as those who cherish it clamor for changes to save it. It’s so flat that on certain days, visitors swear they can see the curvature of the earth. In the Utah desert, a treeless expanse of pristine white salt crystals has long lured daredevil speed racers, filmmakers and social media-obsessed tourists.

Utah salt flats racing association