No abstract

A terminal lake has no outlets, losing water only through evaporation or groundwater seepage. Terminal lakes have been shrinking worldwide, and water levels have declined in at least the last 100+ years, primarily due to increasing societal water demand exacerbated by periodic droughts, lake and groundwater extraction, and climate change (Wurtsbaugh et al., 2017). In the western United States lakes have been losing water and shrinking dramatically, especially since the current drought began around the year 1999 (Piechota et al., 2011).In the Great Basin (GB) of the western US, streamflow from snowmelt in the mountains is the main inflow to the terminal lakes which are typically shallow and have a large surface area. The amount of water flow into the