![]() Steve Griffin / The Salt Lake TribuneCar tracks in the mud at the end of the road at Bonneville Salt Flats International Speedway Monday January 2, 2017. She and colleagues also plan to survey spectators at the event about their perceptions of the Bonneville Salt Flats. “It’s absolutely always changing, and many of these changes are linked to human activities, including racing.”īowen’s team planned to camp on the salt flats this weekend to collect samples of groundwater and observe the opening festivities for Speed Week, a yearly racing event which begins on Saturday. ![]() It would be more shocking to me if it weren’t changing,” she said. “It’s not really mysterious that the landscape is changing, because of course it’s changing. But the link between those interactions and changes to the landscape are less clear, she said.īowen said she also believes that natural processes, as well as climate change, are affecting the salt flats. Since they began their studies in 2015 in response to outcry from car enthusiasts who use the landscape as a specialty race course, the scientists have investigated the flats’ weather, chemistry, geology, hydrology and even the microbial inhabitants.īowen said human interactions with the iconic landscape - including the land speed racing for which the flats are internationally known and the potash mine located near the race track - may be responsible for the changes. “To think that one part of the land use isn’t having an impact is overlooking the complexity of the system,” she said.īowen leads a multidisciplinary team of researchers investigating apparent changes in the Bonneville Salt Flats, which have shrunk in the past 30 years.
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