This story originally appeared on High Country News and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Last summer, scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration observed dust blowing 85 miles from its source, Lake Abert and Summer Lake, two dried-up saline lakes in southern Oregon. This has happened before: Saline lakebeds are some of the West’s most significant sources of dust. California’s Owens Lake is the nation’s largest source of PM10, the tiny pollutants found in dust and smoke, while plumes blowing off the 800 square miles of the Great Salt Lake’s exposed bed have caused toxin-filled dust storms in Salt Lake City.

Saline lakes are rapidly losing water to climate change and agricultural and urban uses, becoming some of the West’s most threatened ecosystems. Now, new legislation is offering some support. On December 27, President Joe Biden signed the bipartisan Saline Lake Ecosystems in the Great Basin States Program Act, which allocates $25 million in funding for research and monitoring at saline lakes across the Great Basin. While this funding is an important step, it cannot give the lakes what they really need: more water.

The Interior West is full of salt lakes, created when snowmelt pools in the valley bottoms of the Basin and Range region. The valleys have no outflow, so the water remains until it evaporates, leaving behind the particles that were suspended in it. These accumulate over time, giving the lakes a high salinity.

“It creates a unique system that supports brine shrimp and alkali flies that can feed incredible populations of migratory birds,” said Ryan Houston, executive director of the Oregon Natural Desert Association, which seeks to conserve Oregon’s high desert, including Summer Lake and Lake Abert.

Yet this balance of runoff, salts, and evaporation also makes saline lakes highly sensitive to climate change. Decreasing snowpack and increasing evaporation due to higher temperatures means that there is less water in the lakes and a higher concentration of salt. That stresses shrimp and flies, which have adapted over time to specific salinities, and it also exposes dry lakebeds, creating dangerous dust storms.

Decades of diversions for agricultural and municipal use have also taken the lakes’ water. California’s Owens Lake, for instance, has been almost completely dry for nearly a century since its water was diverted to Los Angeles. A report released this month by Utah scientists and conservation organizations warned that the combination of water diversions and climate change has put the Great Salt Lake on track to disappear within five years. 

Many see poor air quality as the main reason to save the lakes. But the dust is a sign that the entire ecosystem is withering. Saline lakes are key stops on the Pacific Flyway, the bird migration route that extends from Alaska to Patagonia, Chile. “That we’re worried about dust says to me that we’ve already gone past the point of Lake Abert being lost as part of the Pacific Flyway, its most important ecological value,” said Houston. Over 80 species of birds either inhabit or migrate through Lake Abert, and 338 species depend on the Great Salt Lake.

GSA had the most marine-oriented event. It also featured one of the strongest voices for pro-ammonite gaming. The final night of the conference, I stumbled up to a Hyatt Regency ballroom for the long-awaited social event “Friends of the Cephalopods.” Under a vaulted ceiling, academics, museum workers, and the octopus-curious passed around a flagon of Kraken Rum. The group drank cephalopods, and shared a laugh with each vertebrate that came up. In the group, there were in SableOlivia Jenkins was the art and programming leader on Cloaks An Ancient Ocean, an ammonite roguelike game out of University of Utah’s Ammonite Motility Modeling Lab. Working alongside assistant professor Kathleen Ritterbush, the game was based on the lab’s research into how ammonites lived and competed for resources.

Players will face different types of shells in different oceanic periods as they attempt to survive. Jenkins dreams An Ancient Ocean will be enjoyable to all—not only cephalopod friends. It sacrifices some accuracy for entertainment, but that doesn’t mean players won’t learn. 

“I learned more about the Cold War from Metal Gear Solid 3 than I ever did in the public education system,” Jenkins says. “Just by having it be incidental to information that was directly relevant to me as a player, I was able to learn about it and had incentive to remember details.” Bonus information can be tucked into optional parts of the game, inspired by the Super Smash Bros Brawl trophy gallery. Gallery of trophy images Geoscience Communications Paper authors discussed the possibility of using glossaries and encyclopedias to guide paleo-curious individuals. Forcing Anybody can learn. “I’m trying to encourage people to look at the information that is being provided by the game without shoving it down their throats,” Jenkins says. “And that’s a tough balance. Hopefully, I hit it.”

A version in augmented reality An Ancient OceanThe game, which uses Unreal Engine 4 on museum iPads is scheduled for release in spring 2023. Additional gameplay-centric versions will be available soon following balancing and testing. Ritterbush estimates that the National Science Foundation will fund this project. An Ancient Ocean Each year, the game will be updated to reflect new field and lab discoveries. Each year, new discoveries in the field and shell species will result in programs that program the game’s backend.

Paleontology studies the world’s oldest organisms, the bedrock of biology and ecology, but that doesn’t mean the technology to share this research is stuck in the past. GSA posters focused on virtual field trip, interactive fossil software and community-building podcasts. Minecraft—both to teach and to simulate geologic phenomena. You can also use video games to play with billions upon billions of years worth of historical data. That history can be played with in just as many permutations, whether that’s cooperative dig sims or gotta-catch-’em-all animal hunting games.

Neil Kelley (Vanderbilt University Assistant) was kind enough to meet me on a rooftop bar. Pokémon’s animal diversity as much as his pro-Blathers peers across the rooftop. “In terms of the representation of really obscure groups that never get any kind of popular media representation, there’s a lot of them in Pokémon,” Kelley said. While we were speaking, Kelley said that his child huddled under him and caught Eevee. Pokémon Go. “Good exposure to biodiversity!” Kelley said as we took notice of the live monster-catching going on below us. Kelley said that Eevee was an excellent example of adaptive evolution because it can change itself depending on the environment. Before I could ask what adaptive evolution is, Kelley explained to me that I had just accidentally discovered about paleontology.

This is the original story It was published on High Country News It is part of Climate Desk collaboration.

Many of the once clear streams and rivers found in Arctic Alaska have turned orange-colored and become more acidic. The landscape, which was once undeveloped, now appears as though an industrial mine is in existence for many decades. Scientists are eager to find out why.

Roman Dial is a Professor of Biology and Mathematics at Alaska Pacific University. He first saw the drastic changes in water quality while fieldwork in Brooks Range, 2020. A group of six students from his graduate program accompanied him for a month, but they couldn’t find enough water. “There’s so many streams that are not just stained, they’re so acidic that they curdle your powdered milk,” he said. In others, the water was clear, “but you couldn’t drink it because it had a really weird mineral taste and tang.”

Dial, who has spent the last 40 years exploring the Arctic, was gathering data on climate-change-driven changes in Alaska’s tree line for a project that also includes work from ecologists Patrick Sullivan, director of the Environment and Natural Resources Institute at the University of Alaska Anchorage, and Becky Hewitt, an environmental studies professor at Amherst College. They are now investigating the mysteries surrounding water-quality. “I feel like I’m a grad student all over again in a lab that I don’t know anything about, and I’m fascinated by it,” Dial said.

Most of the rusting waterways are located within some of Alaska’s most remote protected lands: the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve, the Kobuk Valley National Park, and the Selawik Wildlife Refuge.

It is strikingly visual. “It seems like something’s been broken open or something’s been exposed in a way that has never been exposed before,” Dial said. “All the hardrock geologists who look at these pictures, they’re like, ‘Oh, that looks like acid mine waste.’” But it’s not mine waste. The researchers believe the land caused the rusty appearance of streambanks, rocks, and other structures.

It is believed that the climate is warming, which is leading to permafrost degrading. This releases iron-rich sediments, which oxidize when they come in contact with water. Water may become more acidic due to the possible oxidation of minerals from the soil. Although the research team has begun to identify the causes, it is not yet clear what the implications are. “I think the pH issue”—the acidity of the water—“is truly alarming,” said Hewitt. Although pH is important for many chemical and biotic processes, it has no effect on intricate food webs found in rivers and streams. The research team doesn’t know what could happen to fish, stream bed bugs or plant communities.

The rusting of Alaska’s rivers will also likely have an impact on human communities. Rivers such as the Wulik and Kobuk have been found to be rusting. These rivers also provide drinking water for many Northwest Alaska Native communities. Sullivan stated that if the water quality continues to deteriorate it could affect species which are the primary source of food for Alaska Native residents living a subsistence lifestyle.