what is the saltiest body of water on earth
Gaet'ale Pond
title: Water distribution on Earth text: in the oceans as a result of evaporation returning the fresh water to land as rain and snow. As a result, the vast bulk of the water on Earth is regarded as "saline" or "salt water", with an average salinity of 35‰ (or 3.5%, roughly equivalent to 34 grams of salts in 1 kg of seawater), though this varies slightly according to the amount of runoff received from surrounding land. In all, water from oceans and marginal seas, saline groundwater and water from saline closed lakes amount to over 97% of the water on Earth, though no closed lake stores title: Gaet'ale Pond text: Gaet'ale Pond Gaet'ale Pond is a small hypersaline lake located near the Dallol crater in the Danakil Depression (Afar, Ethiopia). It is placed over a hot spring of tectonic origin and has no apparent inlet or outlet streams. The water of Gaet'ale Pond has a salinity of 43%, making it the saltiest water body on Earth, the second is Don Juan Pond in Antarctica with a salinity of 338 ‰ = 33.8%. Gaet'ale pond is the biggest of a series of small ponds located at about 4 km southeast of Dallol springs. It is crescent-shaped with a diameter of about title: Dead Sea text: Dead Sea The Dead Sea ( lit. Sea of Salt; ) is a salt lake bordered by Jordan to the east and Israel and the West Bank to the west. Its surface and shores are below sea level, Earth's lowest elevation on land. The Dead Sea is deep, the deepest hypersaline lake in the world. With a salinity of 342 g/kg, or 34.2% (in 2011), it is 9.6 times as salty as the ocean and one of the world's saltiest bodies of water. This salinity makes for a harsh environment in which plants and animals cannot flourish, hence its name. title: Water distribution on Earth text: a globally significant amount of water. "Saline" groundwater is seldom considered except when evaluating water quality in arid regions. The remainder of the Earth's water constitutes the planet's "fresh water" resource. Typically, fresh water is defined as water with a salinity of "less than 1 percent that of the oceans" - i.e. below around 0.35‰. Water with a salinity between this level and 1‰ is typically referred to as "marginal water" because it is marginal for many uses by humans and animals. The ratio of salt water to fresh water on Earth is around 40 to 1. The planet's fresh title: Natural environment text: or another natural kind of body of water. An ocean is a major body of saline water, and a component of the hydrosphere. Approximately 71% of the Earth's surface (an area of some 362 million square kilometers) is covered by ocean, a continuous body of water that is customarily divided into several principal oceans and smaller seas. More than half of this area is over 3,000 meters (9,800 ft) deep. Average oceanic salinity is around 35 parts per thousand (ppt) (3.5%), and nearly all seawater has a salinity in the range of 30 to 38 ppt. Though generally recognized as