Caption:
Women swim in a shallow pond that is a remnant of Lake Urmia. They walk almost two miles from the former beach to the pond several times each summer to bathe in the natural salt water. Iran's Lake Urmia was once the second-largest saltwater lake in the world, covering more than 2,000 square miles at its deepest in the 1990s. In the past two decades, the lake has dried out, shrinking at times to less than 20% of its average size. It's not a story of climate change, though that certainly contributed.