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Survey Notes is an informative, non-technical magazine on noteworthy and interesting geologic topics in Utah. It is the official Utah Geological Survey newsletter and is produced three times a year. Regular columns include the Director's Perspective, Glad You Asked, GeoSights, Teacher's Corner, Energy News, Survey News, Core Center News, and New Publications. Published as Quarterly Review (1967-1975) and Survey Notes (1976- ). Articles in this issue include: 1) Director's Perspective, by Bill Keach; 2) The Utah Geological Survey and the National Park Service: A 20-year partnership to inventory and monitor fossil resources in Utah's National Parks, by Donald DeBlieux, James Kirkland, and Vincent Santucci; 3) Great Salt Lake's Gunnison and Cub Islands Come into Focus, by Donald L. Clark and Bonnie K. Baxter; 4) Energy News: Potential Impacts of the Inflation Reduction Act on Carbon Capture and Storage in Utah, by Julia Mulhern; 5) Glad You Asked: What is a Dropstone?, by Jim Davis; and 6) GeoSights: Fossil Mountain, Millard County, Utah, by Mackenzie Cope.

Great Salt Lake is facing unprecedented danger. Without a dramatic increase in water flow to the lake in 2023 and 2024, its disappearance could cause immense damage to Utah’s public health, environment, and economy. This briefing provides background and recommends emergency measures. The choices we make over the next few months will affect our state and ecosystems throughout the West for decades to come.

Current -omics methods allow the collection of a large amount of information that helps in describing the microbial diversity in nature. Here, and as a result of a culturomic approach that rendered the collection of thousands of isolates from 5 different hypersaline sites (in Spain, USA and New Zealand), we obtained 21 strains that represent two new Salinibacter species. For these species we propose the names Salinibacter pepae sp. nov. and Salinibacter grassmerensis sp. nov. (showing average nucleotide identity (ANI) values < 95.09% and 87.08% with Sal. ruber M31T, respectively). Metabolomics revealed species-specific discriminative profiles. Sal. ruber strains were distinguished by a higher percentage of polyunsaturated fatty acids and specific N-functionalized fatty acids; and Sal. altiplanensis was distinguished by an increased number of glycosylated molecules. Based on sequence characteristics and inferred phenotype of metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs), we describe two new members of the genus Salinibacter. These species dominated in different sites and always coexisted with Sal. ruber and Sal. pepae. Based on the MAGs from three Argentinian lakes in the Pampa region of Argentina and the MAG of the Romanian lake Fără Fund, we describe the species Salinibacter pampae sp. nov. and Salinibacter abyssi sp. nov. respectively (showing ANI values 90.94% and 91.48% with Sal. ruber M31T, respectively). Sal. grassmerensis sp. nov. name was formed according to the rules of the International Code for Nomenclature of Prokaryotes (ICNP), and Sal. pepae, Sal. pampae sp. nov. and Sal. abyssi sp. nov. are proposed following the rules of the newly published Code of Nomenclature of Prokaryotes Described from Sequence Data (SeqCode). This work constitutes an example on how classification under ICNP and SeqCode can coexist, and how the official naming a cultivated organism for which the deposit in public repositories is difficult finds an intermediate solution.

Current -omics methods allow the collection of a large amount of information that helps in describing the microbial diversity in nature. Here, and as a result of a culturomic approach that rendered the collection of thousands of isolates from 5 different hypersaline sites (in Spain, USA and New Zealand), we obtained 21 strains that represent two new Salinibacter species. For these species we propose the names Salinibacter pepae sp. nov. and Salinibacter grassmerensis sp. nov. (showing average nucleotide identity (ANI) values < 95.09% and 87.08% with Sal. ruber M31T, respectively). Metabolomics revealed species-specific discriminative profiles. Sal. ruber strains were distinguished by a higher percentage of polyunsaturated fatty acids and specific N-functionalized fatty acids; and Sal. altiplanensis was distinguished by an increased number of glycosylated molecules. Based on sequence characteristics and inferred phenotype of metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs), we describe two new members of the genus Salinibacter. These species dominated in different sites and always coexisted with Sal. ruber and Sal. pepae. Based on the MAGs from three Argentinian lakes in the Pampa region of Argentina and the MAG of the Romanian lake Fără Fund, we describe the species Salinibacter pampae sp. nov. and Salinibacter abyssi sp. nov. respectively (showing ANI values 90.94% and 91.48% with Sal. ruber M31T, respectively). Sal. grassmerensis sp. nov. name was formed according to the rules of the International Code for Nomenclature of Prokaryotes (ICNP), and Sal. pepae, Sal. pampae sp. nov. and Sal. abyssi sp. nov. are proposed following the rules of the newly published Code of Nomenclature of Prokaryotes Described from Sequence Data (SeqCode). This work constitutes an example on how classification under ICNP and SeqCode can coexist, and how the official naming a cultivated organism for which the deposit in public repositories is difficult finds an intermediate solution.

Figure S1. Geographical distribution of the six locations studied here and their inter-location distances (given in the table). The distances given in each location refer to Mallorca. The hypersaline here are: Mallorca (Es Trenc and S’Avall and separated by 3.5 km) and Santa Pola in Spain, Fără Fund in Romania, Great Salt Lake (USA), Pampa (Laguna Colorada Chica and Laguna Colorada Grande, separated by 23 Km), and Lake Grassmere (New Zealand). Table S1. Statistics of Salinibacter MAGs recovered using different bioinformatic tools. MAGs selected for further analysis and taxonomic classification are marked in red. Text S1: In addition to the taxonomic study, here we assessed the different tools SPADES and MegaHIT assemblers, and MetaBAT binning tools selecting contigs with length > 2,000 pbs or > 5,000 pbs to retrieve the best quality MAG (Sup. Table S1). We observed that different tools and combinations rendered different qualities of the MAGs. The selection of contigs with length > 5,000 pbs binning rendered MAGs with a lower genome size, lower completeness and similar contamination. From the FF metagenome (Romania), the highest quality MAG was retrieved using the assembler SPADES and MetaBAT binning tool using a minimum contig length of 2,000 pbs. From CCH and CG metagenomes (Argentina), the highest quality MAGs were retrieved using the assembler MegaHIT and MetaBAT binning tool using a minimum contig length of 2,000 pbs (Sup. Table S1). Figure S2. Genomic clustering based on Average Amino-acid Identity (AAI) of genomes included in the study. Figure S3. Pangenome hierarchical clustering based on the presence (grey) or absence (black) of orthologous genes. Table S2. Pangenome statistics between genomes belonging to the same species. Table S3: CRISPR-Cas systems found in the Salinibacter pepae and Salinibacter grassmerensis genomes. Table S4. Cell morphologies of the new isolates. All cells have been cultivated onto MA agar. for 10 days at 12ºC. The morphology was ob

When it comes to the investigation of key ecosystems in the world, we often omit salt from the ecological recipe. In fact, despite occupying almost half of the volume of inland waters and providing crucial services to humanity and nature, inland saline ecosystems are often overlooked in discussions regarding the preservation of global aquatic resources of our planet. As a result, our knowledge of the biological and geochemical dynamics shaping these environments remains incomplete and we are hesitant in framing effective protective strategies against the increasing natural and anthropogenic threats faced by such habitats. Hypersaline lakes, water bodies where the concentration of salt exceeds 35 g/l, occur mainly in arid and semiarid areas resulting from hydrological imbalances triggering the accumulation of salts over time. Often considered the ‘exotic siblings’ within the family of inland waters, these ecosystems host some of the most extremophile communities worldwide and provide essential habitats for waterbirds and many other organisms in already water-stressed regions. These systems are often highlighted as natural laboratories, ideal for addressing central ecological questions due to their relatively low complexity and simple food web structures. However, recent studies on the biogeochemical mechanisms framing hypersaline communities have challenged this archetype, arguing that newly discovered highly diverse communities are characterised by specific trophic interactions shaped by high levels of specialisation. The main goal of this review is to explore our current understanding of the ecological dynamics of hypersaline ecosystems by addressing four main research questions: (i) why are hypersaline lakes unique from a biological and geochemical perspective; (ii) which biota inhabit these ecosystems and how have they adapted to the high salt conditions; (iii) how do we protect biodiversity from increasing natural and anthropogenic threats; and (iv) which sci

We have recently argued that, because microbes have pervasive - often vital - influences on our lives, and that therefore their roles must be taken into account in many of the decisions we face, society must become microbiology-literate, through the introduction of relevant microbiology topics in school curricula (Timmis et al. 2019. Environ Microbiol 21: 1513-1528). The current coronavirus pandemic is a stark example of why microbiology literacy is such a crucial enabler of informed policy decisions, particularly those involving preparedness of public-health systems for disease outbreaks and pandemics. However, a significant barrier to attaining widespread appreciation of microbial contributions to our well-being and that of the planet is the fact that microbes are seldom visible: most people are only peripherally aware of them, except when they fall ill with an infection. And it is disease, rather than all of the positive activities mediated by microbes, that colours public perception of 'germs' and endows them with their poor image. It is imperative to render microbes visible, to give them life and form for children (and adults), and to counter prevalent misconceptions, through exposure to imagination-capturing images of microbes and examples of their beneficial outputs, accompanied by a balanced narrative. This will engender automatic mental associations between everyday information inputs, as well as visual, olfactory and tactile experiences, on the one hand, and the responsible microbes/microbial communities, on the other hand. Such associations, in turn, will promote awareness of microbes and of the many positive and vital consequences of their actions, and facilitate and encourage incorporation of such consequences into relevant decision-making processes. While teaching microbiology topics in primary and secondary school is key to this objective, a strategic programme to expose children directly and personally to natural and managed microbial processes, and