Saving the Dead Sea will require political will, changes in industry best practices, and coordinated restoration efforts in a region that is notorious for its lack of cooperation.

Human-influenced climate warming has already reduced rainfall and increased evaporation in the Mideast, worsening water shortages. Up to now, climate scientists had projected that rainfall could decline another 20 percent by 2100. But the Dead Sea cores suggest that things could become much worse, much faster.

Yael Kiro, an associate research scientist at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, has received the 2017 Professor Rafi Freund Award from the Israel Geological Society for work published on the ancient climate history of the Dead Sea.

‘Peak ecological water’ is the point at which so much water is being diverted from the environment for human use, that the ecosystem can no longer function normally. It can even get to the point that an ecosystem is irreversibly damaged, and there are estimates that humans already divert almost 50% of all accessible freshwater globally. According to their article, “Since 1900, half of the world’s wetlands have disappeared. The number of freshwater species has decreased by 50% since 1970, faster than the decline of species on land or in the sea. River deltas are increasingly deprived of flows due to upstream diversions, or receive water heavily contaminated with human and industrial wastes.”

My prior post about the “The Dead Sea Dilemma” summarized the current condition of the Dead Sea and the ecological value of the region. In this post I will briefly describe two solutions that have been suggested. The Red Sea to Dead Sea Water Conveyance project – a conduit to transport water from the Red… read more

There is one thing that people do agree on in the Middle East – the Dead Sea needs help. Its surface level is dropping by an average of three feet a year and the shoreline has retreated more than a mile in some locations. Over the past 50 years, the surface area of the Sea… read more