| MadSci Network: Earth Sciences |
Your question is not as easy to answer as you might think. The main reason is that while the salinity of sea water is fairly constant, that of the Great Salt Lake is not. The United States Geological Survey has several web pages that are directly concerned with the lake and its salt levels:
The former has lots of information on the lake and links to further infor- mation. The latter has plots of the salinity of the lake by location and time. It goes from 6% salt in the southern parts of the lake in years of high fresh water inflow, to 28% salt in the northern part. Sea water is about 3.5% (35 grams per liter). Note that the composition of the dissolved salts is not the same. Saline lakes tend to be proportionally more alkaline than sea water is, for example, and have relatively more carbonates.Doing a crude calculation, I get about 95,000 pounds of salt per acre-foot of sea water. Great Salt Lake salt levels are then anywhere from 163,000 pounds to 760,000 pounds per acre-foot.
Try the links in the MadSci Library for more information on Earth Sciences.