page_title: Salton Sea
section_title: Ecology
hierarchical_section_title: Salton Sea / Ecology
caption_attribution_description: English: Dead fishes seam the western shore of Salton Sea, CA - right at the "beach" of Salton City. A strong smell and a large group of flies was present as well. Deutsch: Tote Fische saeumen die Kueste von Salton Sea, Kalifornien und bedecken den "Strand" mit verschiedenartigsten Zerfallsstufen, einem starken Gestank und einer Menge Fliegen.
context_page_description: The Salton Sea is a shallow, saline, endorheic rift lake located directly on the San Andreas Fault, predominantly in the U.S. state of California's Imperial and Coachella valleys.
  The lake occupies the lowest elevations of the Salton Sink in the Colorado Desert of Imperial and Riverside counties in Southern California. Its surface is 236.0 ft below sea level as of January 2018. The deepest point of the sea is 5 ft higher than the lowest point of Death Valley. The sea is fed by the New, Whitewater, and Alamo rivers, as well as agricultural runoff, drainage systems, and creeks.
  Over millions of years, the Colorado River has flowed into the Imperial Valley and deposited soil, building up the terrain and constantly changing the course of the river. For thousands of years, the river has alternately flowed into and out of the valley, alternately creating a freshwater lake, an increasingly saline lake, and a dry desert basin, depending on river flows and the balance between inflow and evaporative loss. The cycle of filling has been about every 400–500 years and has repeated many times.
caption: Dead fish on the western shore of Salton City
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