We Discovered a New Natural Cycle!

So we all know about the carbon cycle, and the water cycle, and maybe even the nitrogen cycle. But new research has figured out there's a salt cycle, too. Problem is, that same research has found that we already broke it. Here's what that means and how we can fix our broken salt cycle!

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Sources:

[AlexanderJWF]

This is why interdisciplinary interaction should be encouraged on campuses, in business, & in the field.

[roseplate]

Hi! As someone from Iceland, I can recommend (at least on sidewalks) the usage of small gravel and stones instead of salt. You don't actually need to get rid of the ice, it'll do that on its own, you just need to create friction between it and anything on top of it. As far as I know, this way is simply better as I believe salt can also damage your shoes(?), however, I haven't looked too much into it so take that with a grain of salt (pun somewhat intended).

[TasareAlda]

It never crossed my mind that a salt cycle is a thing, but as soon as you hear it out loud it makes perfect sense. Both that it exists and that we broke it.

[chrisconklin]

You don't have to go to Russia to get salt blown into your eyes. Salt Lake City in Utah is now suffering from blowing salt from the drying up of the Great Salt Lake. What is interesting is the Great Salt Lake is the revenants of a vastly larger lake. This large region is called the intermountain west, as no water flows out to the ocean. Over millions of years, evaporating water left huge deposit of salt, like the Bonneville Salt Flats.

[patrickdurham]

The Aral Sea didn't just dry up. The soviets bled it dry to irrigate cotton and only stopped when the salt killed the cotton.

[fernbedek]

Northern Ontario tends to use sand instead of salt for the roads. In part because it's often too cold for the salt to actually do anything. So, more reliable and less environmentally sketchy.

[Praisethesunson]

I thought the salt cycle was first discovered on internet comment forums.

[cggc]

Roadsalt is not needed. In mid and northern Alaska, roads are not salted. The snow and ice are needed to protect pipes and things underground. We drive around just fine. Gravel is sometimes used, but not everywhere. People just need to chill and drive a bit slower in winter.

[sarahredmond]

How was this not a thing earlier? Grew up with wetlands next to our house, on a heavily salted state road. The water used to be fairly clear, and we even had an endangered turtle species lay eggs in our yard one year. Now the water is green, slimy, and murky, and we’ve never seen those turtles again. We used to go ‘adventures’ through the wetlands, and now it’s so nasty I don’t think we would ever be allowed to 😢

[PaulTheadra]

I very much don't believe we on some level didn't believe buying 5+ 25lb bags of salt to dump in our drives ways wouldn't have massive consequences down the road. Pun intended.

[MagicPsyche]

The city I live in treats the river like a free dump site... "They say its safe"... is their motto

[jimburton]

She reminds me of my seventh grade science teacher. For the record, that is just about the highest praise I can give someone. My teacher opened my eyes to a big world.
Thank you

[MrThingummy]

Don't forget Phosphate (PO4), everyword you said also applies to phosphates, and we are loading the environment with PO4 by adding it to tap water, loadimg it into rivers even from fully treated sewage outflows, and mining it for fertiliser.

[MsZeeZed]

The Aral Sea is a well understood problem. Soviet industrial style irrigation for a cash crop, followed by successor states governing the sea, one trying to protect it, with the other not caring more about a large need for fresh water, has resulted in an inland sea that kept the arid center of a continent remarkably lush, becoming a poisoned desert dust-bowl, shortening the livelihood and lives of anyone living near it. It can happen anywhere there isn’t a state level program to look after what even looks like robust resources.

[ambientTakeover]

Honestly with the way the Earth is facing a sand crisis, we may need to look into how we can preserve the cycle of the creation of sand on our planet. Because we've already messed up that cycle too.

[Jszar]

This is why Seattle doesn't salt roads in our occasional snowstorms. It's bad for the salmon, and we need them more than we need office workers showing their faces for a few days, or even a couple of weeks. So it's plowing and sand only.

It's different in the mountains, of course. There, you either get the roads de-iced or have to buy a snowmobile.

[YasuTaniina]

....as someone who majored in a geosciences field, I can guarantee that this is not news. This was talked about over 10 years ago in my Undergrads do not often learn about cutting edge research and when they do it's not told to them as a known fact in a university whose professor's focus on teaching rather then writing scientific papers

[marshallrobinson]

Nitrogen cycle needs some love too.

Phosphate —> Nitrate —> Nitrite —> Carbon

[BengalBoy]

In the UK our roads are smothered in Salt every winter and have always wondered the consequences of that.

The plants and animals in the soil having to deal with all that salt runoff.

[klutterkicker]

I'm guessing there are a lot of things that could be called a cycle which just aren't discussed in that way. Still the salinization of our water has been a problem discussed for at least a couple decades now.