Pyramid Lake is fed by the Truckee River, which is mostly the outflow from Lake Tahoe. The Truckee River enters Pyramid Lake at its southern end. Pyramid Lake is an endorheic lake. It has no outlet, with water left only by evaporation, or sub-surface seepage. The lake has about 10% of the area of the Great Salt Lake, but it has about 25% more volume. The salinity is approximately 1/6 that of sea water. Although clear Lake Tahoe forms the headwaters that drain to Pyramid Lake, the Truckee River delivers more turbid waters to Pyramid Lake after traversing the steep Sierra terrain and collecting moderately high silt-loaded surface runoff.
One of the most notable features that greets arriving visitors, both by sea and by air, is a distinctive line of white salt pyramids at the southeastern end of the island. Each pyramid, roughly 50-feet high, contains approximately 10,000 metric tons of 99.6 percent pure salt. Depending on the time of the year, there can be upwards of 200,000 metric tons of salt neatly stacked in long rows awaiting shipment.
Pyramid Salt Salinity
The solar salt facility, one of the largest in the Caribbean, is today owned by Cargill, the Minneapolis, Minnesota based conglomerate. The facility covers approximately 13 percent of the island, about 16 square miles of land on the flat, southeast corner. The entire location is only a few feet above sea level.
The operation utilizes a series of 250-acre condenser ponds. Saltwater drawn directly from the Caribbean, at around 3.5 percent salinity, or from the adjoining brine lake, the Pekelmeer (Dutch for brine lake), at five percent salinity, moves through a succession of condenser ponds where the salinity of the brine is successively increased as the unrelenting sun and wind steadily evaporate the water.
When the brine reaches between 25 percent and 30 percent salinity it is moved into crystallizer ponds. As the evaporation of water increases the salinity beyond 37 percent, the salt begins to crystallize and precipitate out of the brine solution. Eventually it will form an 8 to 10-inch layer of virtually pure salt. The entire process takes 10 to 12 months, depending on the prevailing temperature and wind, as well as the precipitation and the degree to which dust and other contaminants in the air provide the nuclei that spur the crystallization of the salt.
What is even more remarkable is that the solar salt facility also houses the largest pink flamingo sanctuary in North America. As the salinity of the salt ponds increase, they each produce a distinctive ecology. Various kinds of algae and Halobacteria, an archaic precursor to bacteria, thrive in the super salty water giving the ponds their distinctive pinkish coloration. Different levels of salinity create different floras of algae and bacteria and in turn different colors in the saltpans. These organisms use the pigment bacteriorhodopsin, rather than chlorophyll, to create energy from sunlight in a chemical process unrelated to conventional photosynthesis.
Brine shrimp thrive on the algae and bacteria and the flamingoes in turn thrive on the brine shrimp. The rhodopsin pigment in the bacteria is concentrated in the brine shrimp, and is in turn absorbed by the flamingoes, resulting in their brilliant pink plumage. This is the same phenomenon that is found in the pink flamingoes in the briny lakes of the Great Rift Valley in East Africa. Cargill is to be complemented for successfully managing the complex ecology of a world-class nature reserve in the middle of an equally sophisticated, world-class, industrial-sized solar salt facility.
Looking for new sources of inexpensive salt, the Dutch found a veritable bonanza of salt in the Caribbean. They would go on to produce salt on all three of the Leeward Antilles, as well as on St. Martin and the other Dutch islands in the Lesser Antilles further east. It was Bonaire, however, that would be the center of the Dutch trade in salt. From the very beginning, Caribbean salt would be exported all over North America, as well as back to Europe.
Densities of Ceriodaphnia and Cyclops were low in microcosms at salinities > 1. Diaphanosoma could not be maintained in microcosms, regardless of salinity. Numbers of Diaptomus and Moina in microcosms were proportional to salinity level.
We speculate that high salinity in Walker Lake may indirectly benefit Diaptomus by negatively affecting predatory Cyclops, and benefit Moina by causing extinction of competing salinity-intolerant Diaphanosoma and Ceriodaphnia. Except for the response of Diaptomus, results from bioassays were in general agreement with results from microcosms and with field data. Untested predator-prey interactions could be responsible for the apparent discrepancy.
Gavin is an industrial Chemist with a background in extractive chemistry in the industrial, mining and chemical industry. He has a strong (some 15 years) background in salt production and has travelled extensively in Australia and overseas studying salt production operations.
SalinityGreat Salt Lake is between 3.5 and 8 times saltier than the ocean. The organisms that live in the water have special adaptations that allow them to survive such saline conditions.
Water level The water level changes a lot from year to year. When less water than normal flows into the lake, water levels drop and salinity rises. The shoreline recedes and wetlands dry up. Low water levels sometimes connect islands to the shore, exposing bird nesting areas to predators. During high precipitation years, lake levels rise and salinity drops. The shoreline expands and wetlands get covered by salt water, sometimes killing sensitive plants and destroying wildlife habitats. Even within a single year, it's normal for the water level to change by 2 to 3 feet. In some areas, a one foot change in elevation can cause the shoreline to move as much as one mile.
Changes in lake elevation are accompanied by changes in salinity. During wet years, incoming fresh water dilutes the salt water, and salinity decreases. During dry years, continued evaporation removes fresh water, and salinity increases.
Most terminal lakes have a high mineral content and, like Great Salt Lake, are quite salty. Even though the water flowing into Great Salt Lake is fresh, it contains small amounts of dissolved minerals. As water evaporates from the lake, the minerals stay behind. Over many thousands of years, minerals have accumulated to very high levels. The saltiest regions of Great Salt Lake are nearly 9 times saltier than the ocean.
Mungbean is an important pulse crop extensively cultivated in Southeast Asia for supply of easily digestible protein. Salinity severely limits the growth and productivity of mungbean, and weeding poses nutritional and disease constraints to mungbean cultivation. To pyramid both salt tolerance and protection against herbicide in mungbean, the AtNHX1 encoding tonoplast Na+/H+ antiporter from Arabidopsis, and bar gene associated with herbicide resistance were co-expressed through Agrobacterium-mediated transformation. Stress inducible expression of AtNHX1 significantly improved tolerance under salt stress to ionic, osmotic, and oxidative stresses in transgenic mungbean plants compared to the wild type (WT) plants, whereas constitutive expression of bar provided resistance to herbicide. Compared to WT, transgenic mungbean plants grew better with higher plant height, foliage, dry mass and seed yield under high salt stress (200 mM NaCl) in the greenhouse. The improved performance of transgenic plants under salt stress was associated with enhanced sequestration of Na+ in roots by vacuolar Na+/H+ antiporter and limited transport of toxic Na+ to shoots, possibly by restricting Na+ influx into shoots. Transgenic plants showed better intracellular ion homeostasis, osmoregulation, reduced cell membrane damage, improved photosynthetic capacity, and transpiration rate as compared to WT when subjected to salt stress. Reduction in hydrogen peroxide and oxygen radical production indicated enhanced protection of transgenic plants to both salt- and methyl vialogen (MV)-induced oxidative stress. This study laid a firm foundation for improving mungbean yield in saline lands in Southeast Asia.
This crispy, clean flavored, pyramid shaped salt is used as a finishing salt or at the end of cooking. Just gently crush it between your fingertips and sprinkle it over meat, fish, chicken, pasta, vegetables and salads
Description: This one-of-a-kind pyramid-shaped flake with the addition of intensely aromatic, certified organic oregano from the island of Crete, can be used as a finishing salt or at the end of cooking.
Use these wonderfully aromatic tiny pyramids as a finishing salt or at the end of cooking. Just gently crush it between your fingertips and sprinkle it over meat, chicken, eggs, potatoes, pasta and stews
Use this gourmet salt as a finishing salt or at the end of cooking. Just gently crush it between your fingertips and sprinkle it over pasta, meat, chicken, fish or vegetables and enjoy its full, ripe taste!
It wasn't only for its taste that salt was so prized. It was also for its preservative value. When the salt concentration outside a bacterial or fungal cell is higher than inside it, water is drawn out of the cell to reduce the outside salt concentration. This process of "osmosis" dehydrates the cell and eventually destroys it. Meat used to be preserved by soaking it in a brine solution or by covering the surface with whole grains of salt which were known as "corn," hence the origin of corned beef.
These differences, though, are hardly significant in terms of monitoring sodium intake which is very important because excess sodium is linked with high blood pressure. A quarter teaspoon of table salt has about 590 mg of sodium, coarse sea salt 580 mg, and kosher salt around 480 mg. In the context of the overall diet, which should have no more than 2300 mg of sodium, the difference in sodium content of the different salts is irrelevant. 2ff7e9595c
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