Ghost Waters

A deep look at vanishing landscapes

The San Francisco Bay salt ponds

About twelve years ago just before I had my first daughter, I did a series of small watercolors of the San Francisco Bay salt ponds. Having flown over them numerous times I have always been captivated with how strange they look. On the one hand they are a bit unsettling because they are these bright vibrant colors not commonly found in such large expanses in nature. It makes you think that humanity has really poisoned the planet to create such large pools of brightly colored water.

Although in reality they are not actually terribly toxic. The colors are created by elevated concentrations of brine shrimp and microorganisms that thrive in very salty environments. Some species of birds also prefer saltier water. Salt production in the area goes all the way back to the Ohlone people though they did it on a much smaller scale close to tide pools. It was expanded during the Gold Rush era and now you see what we have there today.

San Francisco Bay Salt Ponds – 2012

It is a major modification of the natural environment for sure, but the area including the ponds still provides habitat for a lot of wildlife and are a stop over on the Pacific Flyway for migrating birds. In the early 2000s the ponds were sold by Cargill to the California Coastal Conservancy and the US Fish and Wildlife service. Many of them are being turned back into wetlands.

Organic vs. linear

The ponds are such a beautiful mixture of natural meandering water-made shapes butting right up to the straight lines of man-made containment barriers. Staring at them and then painting them, got me really interested in viewing the earth from the sky. I’ve always loved maps, geology and staring out of the window on airplanes. Now for fun I like to poke around on Google Earth and look up close at different places and see the shapes, colors and lines. Seeing nature from the sky like a bird. Watery areas make the most interesting shapes.

San Francisco Bay Salt Ponds – 2024

My thoughts meandering like the water, I started to look at places where humans have had an immense impact on the land in a serious and destructive way. I’ve been exploring other bodies of water in the Western US and look at them very closely. Here in California there are three major bodies of water that have vanished due to human engineering: Owens Lake, Tulare Lake and the Colorado River Delta.

Click on the arrows to see more pictures

Owens Lake

Owens Lake in the Eastern Sierras was famously diverted to provide Southern California with water. The movie Chinatown is based on this story and the battles around access to the water. I was curious what was left, so I looked it up and I decided to make some artworks of what I found. Some places are blurred out on the satellite pictures so it was initially hard to find complete images of the whole view, but I discovered Landsat which helps fill in some of the blanks. The abstractions you get up close are particularly interesting to me and is what my first work features.

Owens Lake – Closeup

The Colorado River Delta

The Colorado River is so heavily used that water no longer reaches the delta or the Gulf of California. The shapes and colors there are beautiful and haunting. The river mouth is the home of the smallest dolphin in the world the vaquita. They are critically endangered with only an estimated 10 surviving. In addition to the environmental degradation they are victims of bycatch due to overharvesting of sea life and harmful fishing practices. The Mexican government had instituted a protected area where fishing was not allowed but a few years ago they opened it up again, and the number of dolphins continues to decline. They will likely be gone soon.

Colorado River Delta #2

Tulare Lake

Tulare Lake was once the largest freshwater lake in the Western United States. After the area was colonized it was drained and turned into farmland. The largest community of native people north of Mexico lived around its water. It is named after the tule rushes that surrounded its banks. Finding good quality images of it has been really hard. Big chunks are largely blurred out on satellite data. It is all privately owned farmland now. During years with lots of rain and snow it re-emerges.

The Great Salt Lake

The Great Salt Lake is another body of water heavily impacted by diversion and overharvesting of water. That coupled with evaporation and it is on a steep decline. As the water floats away, the dust and soil of the area is releasing carbon and methane into the atmosphere, contributing to climate change.

Water and climate

Water is necessary for life and we are using  fresh water faster than it can be replenished in many places. The hydrological cycle is speeding up and becoming unstable due the climate emergency. It’s getting too dry or very abruptly too wet. More moisture is collecting in the outer atmosphere which magnifies planetary heating and the impacts on life on earth are serious.

The largest human use of water is agriculture. Animal agriculture specifically uses about 80% of the world’s farm land, and that includes grazing and land used for growing animal feed. In addition to this animals contribute methane to the climate crisis with their digestive gas and manure.

If everyone started eating a lot less animal products and more plant-based it would have a huge impact to stop the escalation. It’s tragic that this isn’t being discussed more and that the topic of the climate crisis in general gets so little air time in the media. This is the pivotal issue of our time and will impact all life going forward. Scientists say that we have five years to make significant changes to avoid the worst scenarios. We ignore it at our own peril.

More to come

These artworks are in honor of this complex situation, and are portraits of Mother Nature withering. It is possible to turn things around and make the planet healthy again, but it has to be a collective effort. I will post them as I finish them. These are the first more will follow.