LEE VINING, Calif.\u00a0\u2014\u00a0At a trailhead surrounded by sagebrush, a naturalist welcomes a group of visitors to Mono Lake beside a sign that reads \u201cOasis in the Desert.\u201d<\/p>\n
Guide Ryan Garrett, his face alight, greets the group of vacationers and entreats them to see the value in the saline lake \u2014 it teems with migrating birds, it\u2019s around a million years old, and it\u2019s affected by water use in Southern California more than 300 miles away.<\/p>\n
In the early 20th century, Los Angeles built a massive aqueduct to take water from the Owens Valley and soon dried up Owens Lake. Reaching for even more water, L.A. leaders pushed farther and began tapping water from the mountain streams that feed Mono Lake. <\/p>\n
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Visitors demonstrate how tufa towers are formed by mixing a solution of calcium and carbonate during a tour of Mono Lake.<\/p>\n
\u201cAre they still taking water?\u201d one woman asks. <\/p>\n
\u201cYes, they are still diverting water,\u201d Garrett replies.<\/p>\n
As they continue, Garrett explains how Mono Lake rapidly declined from the 1940s to the 1980s. They pass interpretive signs showing how much the water level dropped: 7 feet by 1951, 25 feet by 1963. <\/p>\n
By 1982, the lake had fallen 45 feet from the natural level local people had once known. <\/p>\n
Starved of inflows, the lake lost about half its volume and became twice as salty.<\/p>\n
As they walk toward the shore, the group is dwarfed by the lake\u2019s famous craggy formations called tufa<\/a> nearly 20 feet above them. Garrett stops to describe how the towers of calcium carbonate grew underwater around freshwater springs over thousands of years, then were left exposed as the water dropped. <\/p>\n 1\/6 <\/p>\n A canoe glides between tufa towers at Mono Lake.\u00a0 (Myung J. Chun\/Los Angeles Times) <\/p>\n 2\/6 <\/p>\n Ryan Garrett takes a photo of Jerardo and Jeannette Reyes and their children after a walking tour on the shore of Mono Lake.\u00a0 (Ian James\/Los Angeles Times) <\/p>\n 3\/6 <\/p>\n A man holds the larva of an alkali fly taken from Mono Lake.\u00a0 (Ian James\/Los Angeles Times) <\/p>\n 4\/6 <\/p>\n Ryan Carle stands among tufa towers while walking to the shore of Mono Lake to spot Wilson\u2019s phalaropes.\u00a0 (Ian James\/Los Angeles Times) <\/p>\n 5\/6 <\/p>\n Wilson\u2019s phalaropes fly together over Mono Lake, passing a California gull.\u00a0 (Ian James\/Los Angeles Times) <\/p>\n 6\/6 <\/p>\n Wilson\u2019s phalaropes take flight on the shore of Mono Lake. \u00a0 (Ian James\/Los Angeles Times) <\/p>\n \u201cIf we were here in 1941, we would be underwater,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n