Every year the water recedes about a meter, leaving behind a desert landscape: salt-white earth with huge craters.

One of the most beautiful and amazing places on Earth, the salt lake, located in the lowest land area of our planet, may disappear. Over the past century, its water level has dropped by 25 meters, and an ecological disaster is imminent.

1. The coastline of the rapidly shrinking Dead Sea is dotted with thousands of karst sinkholes that serve as direct evidence of detrimental human intervention – industrial use of minerals from the sea as well as water tributaries flowing into the lake.
2. Global warming is also speeding up the drying up of the Dead Sea.When a tourist complex was built in Ein Gedi in the 1980s, the waves were hitting its walls. Now the tourists from that hotel are taken to the beach about 2 km away.
3. The salt lake in the Judean Desert, surrounded by mountains, was so named because it contains almost no wildlife.
4. The water in the lake is more like olive oil – so dense and full of minerals. The most famous fact is that it is impossible to drown in the Dead Sea. For decades, no vacation in the Holy Land or on the other shore in Jordan has gone without a picture of a bather in a semi-recumbent position right on the surface.
5. The water level in the Dead Sea is dropping at a rate of about 1 meter per year. Beach chairs in Jordan and Israel constantly have to be moved closer to the water.
6. Why is the water level dropping? Over the past century, the natural resources of the Dead Sea have been actively exploited. The southern part of the lake has been turned into evaporation ponds.
7. 80% of the tributaries flowing into the Dead Sea are also used for industrial purposes and have led to a dramatic drop in the water table. For example, the Jordan River was one of the great waterways of the ancient world, and now it, built up with dams, can be crossed in some sections during the dry season.
8. Crystallized minerals and funnels filled with water can be seen on the surface of dried Dead Sea evaporation ponds near the southern Israeli resort of Neve Zoar.
9. Despite this rate of desiccation, scientists believe that the Dead Sea will not die completely. One day it will reach a point of equilibrium between the salinity of the water and the amount of moisture evaporating, and the process will stop.