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Scientists analyze sinkholes and how mixing waters might alter the sea
April 4, 2011 | 24
The surface of the Dead Sea, already 424 meters below sea level, is falling by a meter a year. Jordanians to the east, Israelis to the west, and Syrians and Lebanese to the north are pumping so much freshwater from the Jordan River that almost none reaches the sea any more....[More]
In certain places, the water's edge has receded a full kilometer from the shore. Local resident Eli Ron shows where the sea used to be.
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More than 3,000 sinkholes have opened around the perimeter—in recent years, about one every two days.
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Sinkholes ruin towns and tourism, and have halted development along the sea's coastline, because no one can predict where the next hole will open.
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A sinkhole can form without warning. Geologist Eli Raz was swallowed by a suddenly collapsing pit and stuck for 14 hours until rescue teams found him.
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Raz and his assistant spend a few hours each day mapping the ongoing evolution of craters.
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Some big sinkholes fill with water for weeks, then drain rapidly, only to fill again. Researchers have installed an acoustic monitoring system in one such hole to continuously measure the cycle....[More]
The rope acts as a safety line should the crater begin to empty.
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Geologist Amotz Agnon from Jerusalem University explains how dissolution causes sinkholes to form. As salty lake water recedes, underground saltwater recedes with it....[More]
The Dead Sea is disappearing in part because Israeli and Jordanian companies pump water from the lake and dump it into vast ponds that evaporate, leaving behind concentrated minerals.
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To save the Dead Sea, some officials propose building a $10 billion,180-kilometer system of pipes that could bring water from the Red Sea. Scientists are testing how the mixing waters might affect the lake's chemistry and life....[More]
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24 Comments
Add CommentTry as you may to get those countries stop killing the Dead Sea. They will continue to do as they please because they consider the well being of their crops and profits more important than the Dead Sea.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhen the Dead Sea gets lower enough, the area will supply it with the water it needs. Why do you think those holes are appearing so fast? The Dead Sea may even swallow up some of those countries when it comes back to life, so let nature take care of the Dead Sea - it has been doing it for thousands of years, and why do you think they call it the Dead Sea?
A "taught rope" eh? Hmm.. I wonder who taught it, and what they taught it?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA pipeline from the Mediterranean Sea will do the trick. Except, it will be sabotaged by religious freaks.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhile it is unlikely that we can do much about the freshwater inflow to the Dead Sea, it does present a massive energy opportunity.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRun a 20 foot diameter pipeline from the Mediterranean Sea to the Dead Sea, and install a hydroelectric generator on it. That 400+ foot of head will generate megawatts of power for a long, long time.
Obviously this provides an opportunity. Simply build settlements on the dry sea bed. Nations can go to war to determine who 'owns' the sea bed and the right to settle there.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe call it the Dead Sea...The proper name is The Salt Sea. It has economic value to Israelis and Jordanians and there are springs from some of the surrounding mountains that were under water and are now above the surface. They flow fresh water into the Salt Sea and the fresh and high mineral content water seem to stay in layers.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGreenies tend to see what they want to see and fail to ask the experts on the ground.
That's good for the cause, but not good science.
I was wondering myself what the rope had learned.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd then desalinate the water that runs out of the generators.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisP.S its over 400 METERS not feet below sea level.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo, it's turning into a real Holey Sea.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI always wondered what the expression 'to teach the ropes' meant. Now I know. I bet the rope now feels like a such a loser, er, looser.
Thank you ennui. The idea of a "Med-to-Dead" canal, to replenish the water and generate hydroelectric power was promoted decades ago by Israeli leaders. Politics and environmentalist concerns (not "religious freaks", whoever they might be) sabotoged the idea while it was still on the drawing board. A vestige of the idea remains, in the form of the "Red-to-Dead" pipeline plans mentioned in the article, but to my mind this is a far less promising alternative.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOnly JESUS can "raise the dead" . . . ha ha, get it? "Dead Sea", "raise the Dead"?? Men need to stop exploiting natural resources, or we need a miracle from our Heavenly Father!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo just where does water sink to when it is already at the lowest spot on earth and right next to a sea?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJames: With any luck, the Isrealies and other theocratic groups and states will drain the dead sea of enough weight thaqt the earthquakes will reswume AS THE CHANGE IN SURFACE WEIGHT SINKS SURROUNDING HEAVIER PLATES DOWN INTO IT. tHEN MAYBE iSRAEL WILL SLIP INTO THE SEA WITH ANY LUCK!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDr. Zing: Or if the hole washes out and fills the sepression with water, the added weight might cause the earthquakes to sink the surrounding theocracies into the Dead and Med Seas. At least there would be justice as the Dead Sea kills off theocracies that killed Palestinians for myths and profits!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDr Zinj: Careful about that. The natives of the Berring Depression from the Farting Sea bordering the Aleutian Penninsula (now Islands) started simply running the sea farts through ceramic turbines ti make electricity until they realized they ciould build gigantic dams between the volcanos (now islands)with water flow holes to spin their turbines. They built the dams higher and higher all around their depression until they raised the Arctic and what BECAME the Berring Sea swea levels a mile higher until 10.5 millennia ago when a comet exploded over the North Pole, causing massive earthquakes and tsunamis that sent mountains of waters south all around the Northern Hemispheres, washing away the industrial civilization in the Bering Depression and destroying their neighboring civilizations by the Faroe Islands (now ruins undersea) and along the coast of Japan to Okinawa, washing away
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisall floraand fauna and shreds of industrial civilization and civilizatiions, even in the Atlantic.
ennui: a chunnel like the one under the north Sea should do the job!Get the flow out of hand sortly and it whould soon wash away all of Israe,l into the Dead Dtate of their inhumanity!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat is not Hazardous Science it is simple justice! Israel swallowed up Palestine, now their scientists are getting swalowed up in return!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHell,eager 54, no one can get them tp stop killing living pople, I doubt anyone will be any more successful to get them to recognize the value of a dead sea. But since by their nature, theocratsn hate life,mayb e they'll be more sympathetic with dead things that they seem to love making people!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy bother to write what your corporation is going to refuse to publish?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA natural resource is not a resource unless it is exploited, i.e. used.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPalestine is the modern name of the land of Philistia. The Philistines used to live in the area that the Gaza Strip now occupies. Palestine does NOT include either the recognized nation of Israel, nor the West Bank, except as a British fiction from the end of the Ottoman Empire; so Palestinian claims of those areas as a "homeland" are false.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPoint to remember is that while Palestinian Arabs make up the majority of the people who fled or were driven out by the Israelis, people of other religions and ethnicities were also dispossessed, including many Jews who were already living there.
Not much has changed in 60 years. Palestinians launch an indiscriminate attack on the populace. The Israel military watches where the attackers flee to, then demolish the entire block or town the attackers hid in. Simple solution is to stop poking the Israeli Lion with a sharp stick, and you'll stop being blow to smithereens. Take the Israelis who break the law to court. Only if the court is corrupt should they resort to violence; and only against the ones actually doing harm. Blowing up schools or hospitals, or even wedding or funeral ceremonies is against religious law, whether you refer to him as Allah, God, or El Shadai.
Hole washes out? The "hole" isn't going to wash out, it's a pipeline, not a tunnel. Once it's started, it will operate automatically, siphoning the water from the Med. A rupture on the side above the Med would cause it to drain out and no longer function. No catastrophic washout. A rupture on the side below the Med would cause a washout until a valve was closed. Only idiots make pipelines without valves.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe "Chunnel" runs below the English Channel, which is referred to a a branch of the Atlantic, NOT the North Sea. The Straits of Dover are considered the separator between those two bodies of water.
Sorry edromar, there was no Bering Depression civilization to be destroyed by an exploding meteor 10,000 years ago; at least not in this Universe. You must have us confused with some other parallel universe. Trying to learn history from dreaming hasn't passed evidence based testing.
The world keeps on changing and we have to adapt to it. In my school geography, I had read about Aral Sea, which is almost not there, for much the same reasons. At least the Dead Sea can be revived by canals either from Red Sea or Mediterranean, producing power to make it a paying proposition. Let Jordan and Israel decide.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe composition of the water is changing in any case. A new ecology will develop by induction of sea water and has to be constantly and made use of.