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The Dead Sea – bordering Israel, the West Bank and Jordan – is the lowest point on dry earth and the oldest natural spa. Discover breathtaking natural landscapes and the surrounding desert that...
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- Overview
- Physiography and geology
The Dead Sea is a landlocked salt lake between Israel and Jordan in southwestern Asia.
Is there any life in the Dead Sea?
The Dead Sea's extreme salinity excludes all forms of life except bacteria. Fish carried in by the Jordan or by smaller streams when in flood die quickly. Apart from the vegetation along the rivers, plant life along the shores is discontinuous and consists mainly of halophytes (plants that grow in salty or alkaline soil).
Where does the Dead Sea get its water from?
The Dead Sea receives nearly all its water from the Jordan River, which flows from the north into the lake.
Why are bathers so buoyant in the Dead Sea?
The Dead Sea is situated between the hills of Judaea to the west and the Transjordanian plateaus to the east. Before the water level began dropping, the lake was some 50 miles (80 km) long, attained a maximum width of 11 miles (18 km), and had a surface area of about 394 square miles (1,020 square km). The peninsula of Al-Lisān (Arabic: “The Tongue”) divided the lake on its eastern side into two unequal basins: the northern basin encompassed about three-fourths of the lake’s total surface area and reached a depth of 1,300 feet (400 metres), and the southern basin was smaller and considerably shallower, less than 10 feet (3 metres) deep on average. During biblical times and until the 8th century ce, only the area around the northern basin was inhabited, and the lake was slightly lower than its present-day level. It rose to its highest level, 1,275 feet (389 metres) below sea level, in 1896 but receded again after 1935, stabilizing at about 1,300 feet (400 metres) below sea level for several decades.
The drop in the lake level in the late 20th and early 21st centuries changed the physical appearance of the Dead Sea. Most noticeably, the peninsula of Al-Lisān gradually extended eastward, until the lake’s northern and southern basins became separated by a strip of dry land. In addition, the southern basin was eventually subdivided into dozens of large evaporation pools (for the extraction of salt), so by the 21st century it had essentially ceased to be a natural body of water. The northern basin—effectively now the actual Dead Sea—largely retained its overall dimensions despite its great loss of water, mainly because its shoreline plunged downward so steeply from the surrounding landscape.
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International Waters
The Dead Sea region occupies part of a graben (a downfaulted block of Earth’s crust) between transform faults along a tectonic plate boundary that runs northward from the Red Sea–Gulf of Suez spreading centre to a convergent plate boundary in the Taurus Mountains of southern Turkey. The eastern fault, along the edge of the Moab Plateau, is more readily visible from the lake than is the western fault, which marks the gentler Judaean upfold.
In the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods (about 201 million to 66 million years ago), before the creation of the graben, an extended Mediterranean Sea covered Syria and Palestine. During the Miocene Epoch (23 million to 5.3 million years ago), as the Arabian Plate collided with the Eurasian Plate to the north, upheaval of the seabed produced the upfolded structures of the Transjordanian highlands and the central range of Palestine, causing the fractures that allowed the Dead Sea graben to drop. At that time the Dead Sea was probably about the size that it is today. During the Pleistocene Epoch (2,588,000 to 11,700 years ago), it rose to an elevation of about 700 feet (200 metres) above its modern level, forming a vast inland sea that stretched some 200 miles (320 km) from the H̱ula Valley area in the north to 40 miles (64 km) beyond its present southern limits. The Dead Sea did not spill over into the Gulf of Aqaba because it was blocked by a 100-foot (30-metre) rise in the highest part of Wadi Al-ʿArabah, a seasonal watercourse that flows in a valley to the east of the central Negev highlands.
Sep 8, 2021 · Map showing the location of the Dead Sea. The Dead Sea is a saline lake in southwestern Asia, located on the Jordan-Israel border. Its eastern shore is in Jordan, and the western shore is in Israel.
Jan 13, 2024 · Read our travel guide on the Dead Sea in Israel. Includes best things to do, how to get, where to stay, when to go, or if it's worth visiting.
