Abert Rim

The board puts the lake below the cliff at sixty-three square miles, and lately it has often been far smaller. Lake Abert is a terminal salt lake fed mostly by the Chewaucan River, whose water passes the farms around Paisley and, since the early 1990s, a reservoir at the river's lower end; the lake holds no water right. In 2014 it shrank to about five percent of its full size, dry for the first time since the 1930s, and it nearly dried again in 2015, 2021 and 2022. The brine shrimp died off, and the phalaropes largely stopped coming.

Where it stands