Salton Sea

The Salton Sea is a shallow, saline, endorheic rift lake on the San Andreas Fault at the southern end of the U.S. state of California. It lies between, and within, the Imperial and Coachella valleys, all of which lie within the larger Salton Trough, a pull-apart basin that stretches to the Gulf of California in Mexico. The lake occupies the lowest elevations of the trough, known as the Salton Sink, where the lake surface is 236.0 ft below sea level as of January 2018. The deepest point of the lake is only 5 ft higher than the lowest point of Death Valley. The New, Whitewater, and Alamo rivers, combined with agricultural runoff, are the primary sources that feed the lake.

Over millions of years, the Colorado River has flowed into the Imperial Valley and deposited alluvium creating fertile farmland, building up the terrain and constantly moving its main river delta. For thousands of years, the river has alternately flowed into and out of the valley, alternately creating a freshwater lake, an increasingly saline lake, and a dry desert basin, depending on river flows and the balance between inflow and evaporative loss. The cycle of filling has been about every 400–500 years and has repeated many times.

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