Salt Water Lake - Lago Enriquillo

27 Sept. 2010

I visited this salt water lake in the Southwestern part of the country on a recent trip down to visit some other volunteers. The strangest looking ecosystem ever, it is giant salt-lake in the middle of a dry area where many farmers have grazing lands and some crops. In the middle there are a few desert islands with cacti, crocodiles, and flamingoes during the winter. The DR is such a small country, but surprisingly has a huge diversity of landscapes and ecosystems.  This lake used to be part of the ocean, and then some geological faulting and lifting processes happened to disconnect it. Also interesting is that it only has rivers flowing into it, none out. The water levels depend on the amount of rainfall, but also on evaporation rates in the area. The lake as an incredibly eerie look to it right now because water levels have been rising steadily for the last several years.

 Where I was, there was about 75m of drowned trees providing a stark contrast to the lush shoreline. Another volunteer told me it had something to do with some geological uplifting that was a precursor to the Haiti 2010 earthquake as it is part of the same fault line/system The rising water level has been detrimental to the local economy. Farmers’ land for crops and grazing adjacent to the lake has been permanently flooded making it impossible to use. Also, local tourist companies have had difficulty developing accessibility to the lake, such as the building of docks, because the shoreline continues to crawl upward and water swallows up any improvements made.