The confluence of several rivers and streams of the Salt Fork River drainage system forms part of the unique environment of Salt Plains National Wildlife Refuge. They are easy to identify, standing approximately 4.5 feet tall. The highly endangered cranes can often be found foraging in wheat fields either alone or with sandhill cranes during the fall days. Within hours of hatching, they are running around the flats foraging for food.ĭuring the winter, whooping cranes utilize the edge of the lake where the salt flats have large areas devoid of any vegetation – hiding spots for predators. The newly hatched young shorebirds are precocious and will not remain in the protective nest long. Here, nests of twigs, grasses and other materials are built by birds for hiding their young and caring for them as they develop. Many species of wildlife nest directly on the salt flats, making it difficult to see their eggs from a distance. While vegetation on the flats is sparse, the birds feed on the salt brine flies that hatch when water is available. The flats are also a major migration rest area for hundreds of thousands of shorebirds during spring, summer, and fall. Caption by Andrea Meado, Jacobs Technology, and Justin Wilkinson, Texas State University, JETS Contract at NASA-JSC.The salt flats of the Salt Plains National Wildlife Refuge are a major nesting site for the endangered interior least tern, threatened western snowy plover, and American avocet. Additional images taken by astronauts and cosmonauts can be viewed at the NASA/JSC Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth. The International Space Station Program supports the laboratory as part of the ISS National Lab to help astronauts take pictures of Earth that will be of the greatest value to scientists and the public, and to make those images freely available on the Internet. The image has been cropped and enhanced to improve contrast, and lens artifacts have been removed. The image was taken by a member of the Expedition 53 crew. This fault zone has violently disrupted the region with at least 22 large-magnitude earthquakes in the past 6,000 years.Īstronaut photograph ISS053-E-134166 was acquired on October 24, 2017, with a Nikon D4 digital camera using a 50 millimeter lens, and is provided by the ISS Crew Earth Observations Facility and the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, Johnson Space Center. At the top left, we see a different style of geology: the Middle Rocky Mountain region, separated by the active Wasatch Fault zone. The relatively young (in geologic terms) Bonneville Salt Flats are located within the Basin and Range Province, a region that formed from the stretching of Earth’s crust by massive tectonic forces over the past 17 million years. Since Lake Bonneville had no outlet, that water eventually evaporated in place and left behind white salt minerals.įrom the vantage point of the ISS, landscape patterns reveal the intermingling of older geologic formations and more recent landforms in this region. The lake was fed by glacial melt water during the spring and summer seasons of the most recent glacial period. The greatest extent of ancient Lake Bonneville was about 520 kilometers (320 miles) long and 220 kilometers (130 miles) wide. The Bonneville Salt Flats are remnants of a large lake that inundated much of Utah between 14,000 and 32,000 years ago. In contrast, the colorful waters of the Great Salt Lake stand out against the desert landscape. The flats are famous for being one of the flattest places on Earth, and racing enthusiasts flock to the region each year to watch new attempts to set land-speed records.Įast of the Bonneville Flats lies the growing urban area around Salt Lake City, which is barely visible to astronauts during the day due to the low contrast with the surrounding mountains. An astronaut aboard the International Space Station (ISS) focused a camera lens on the Bonneville Salt Flats of northeast Utah-the light-toned, patchy feature in the middle of the image.
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