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Satellite Imagery of Spiral Jetty Tracks Great Salt Lake Decline
Researchers analyzed 1,744 co-registered Landsat 4-9 and Sentinel-2 image chips to study how Robert Smithson's 1970 land artwork Spiral Jetty has repeatedly been submerged and exposed as the Great Salt Lake shrank. The study treats the artwork as a large-scale visual indicator of changing water levels in the lake's north arm. It suggests long-running satellite archives can document climate-driven hydrological shifts at a specific site.