http://marisapaloma.com/out-of-studio daily 0.75 2018-07-03 https://static1.squarespace.com/static/56a05e1b1f4039e3596d8312/t/5aa6fb9be4966b391ffa3097/1520892877151/DSC05544.jpg Out of Studio https://static1.squarespace.com/static/56a05e1b1f4039e3596d8312/t/5abe35b7562fa7197cd7c429/1522415072871/IMG_9411.JPG Out of Studio https://static1.squarespace.com/static/56a05e1b1f4039e3596d8312/t/5ac6c0a188251b5152ee0dbd/1522975418503/P1030416.JPG Out of Studio https://static1.squarespace.com/static/56a05e1b1f4039e3596d8312/t/5b39c08bf950b774336197f5/1526066143037/ Out of Studio https://static1.squarespace.com/static/56a05e1b1f4039e3596d8312/t/5b3b96d48a922da93851c2b2/1530511391728/ Out of Studio - The Hidden Life of the Dead Sea The Dead Sea has been shrinking for decades, and its rate of depletion is accelerating. According to recent estimates, the Sea’s surface is dropping by over 1 meter annually, a rate believed to be unprecedented in several thousand years. As the Sea has shrunk, thousands of sinkholes have spontaneously appeared along its western bank (the Sea is bordered by the Palestinian West Bank and Israel to the west, and by Jordan to the east). These sinkholes, which began proliferating in the early 1980’s, have mostly occurred within an area on the western shore about 1km wide and 60km long. The causes and dynamics of these interrelated processes (the sea shrinking and the sinkholes appearing) are not altogether mysterious: the Sea is fed by the Jordan River to its north, from which water is diverted for several uses by Jordan, Israel and Palestine. Because the Dead Sea has incredibly high salinity levels, the newly exposed and ever-widening banks of the Sea are vulnerable to collapse when salt deposits are compacted in the soil, and then dissolve upon exposure to fresh groundwater. Aside from the water-diversion from the Jordan River, there are a few other geographical dynamics that are related to the shrinking sea and changing landscape. While the Dead Sea is a natural lake, the area has been inhabited, developed and used by human societies for millenia. Today, there are large extraction sites around the southern part of the Dead Sea, where salts and other minerals are extracted in shallow “salt ponds” (evaporation basins) for refinement or export. The Sea is also a tourist destination in Israel and Jordan, with public and private access points and resorts on both the southwestern and eastern shores. Neither of these two land uses are remotely new: salts and other minerals have been mined in the area for 3,000 years (potash for fertilizer and cosmetics, and asphalt for ship-building and mummification, among other uses), while the first known “health resort” in the area was built by King Herod about 2,000 years ago. The extraction and tourism industries in the area are currently growing: there are about 15 resorts in Israel and 9 in Jordan, which has proposed plans to build more in the coming years. There are currently no resorts in the occupied West Bank, where construction permits are extremely difficult to obtain, but according to a World Bank estimate, a future Dead Sea tourism industry in the West Bank could generate $290 million in annual revenue and create 2,900 jobs, suggesting the possibility of rapid development in the future. The ongoing landscape transformations can compromise the future of both the tourism and extraction industries in the area, not to mention the highly vulnerable ecologies of nearby oases. The increasing proliferation of sinkholes challenges the structural viability of the western shore, posing potential challenges to existing and future development in Israel and Palestine. The shrinking lake similarly challenges the profitability of existing and future tourist developments. Already, one can find hotels and resorts that, once situated on the Sea’s edge, are now kilometers away. On the other hand, there is also reason to speculate that the dynamics of upstream water-diversion may gradually change, as countries in the region continue developing desalination plants and other alternatives that may decrease reliance on the water from the Jordan. The intention is to tell the historical story of Dead Sea hydrology and sinkhole occurrences, in order to situate current phenomena in a context of historical water-management practices and land-uses. This requires movement between spatial scales of the Jordan Valley, the Dead Sea, and the western shoreline where most of the sinkholes are appearing, as well as the temporal scales of inhabitation/development (millenia), modern extraction/tourist developments (decades), and a potential future. http://marisapaloma.com/homepage daily 1.0 2020-07-07