New research published in Journal of Great Lakes Research shows Iran’s most famous lake has shrunk by nearly 90% this September. The popular story is presented by The Guardian. Ali Mirchi, Kaveh Madani and Amir AghaKouchak, coauthors of the research paper, urge action. “In the late 1990s, Lake Urmia, in north-western Iran, was twice as […]
Preserving an Accident, the Salton Sea in California, for the Good of Nature – the article by FELICITY BARRINGER (Nov. 10, 2014) published at The New York Times. Typical story about disappearing saline lake: “In some ways, Salton’s fate is like that of other disappearing saline lakes, such as the almost-vanished Aral Sea in Central Asia […]
The annual analysis of the research activity on saline lakes in 2014 is published at the www.saltlakescience.com. The most active countires and scientists, most popular journals and research topics, top 5 paper are presented. Details are here.
Egypt’s Environmental Affairs Agency has designated its first new Wetlands of International Importance since joining the Convention in 1988, two very interesting new sites in Fayoum governorate west of the Nile River. As described by Ms Charlotte Eyong, Ramsar’s Assistant Advisor for Africa, based upon the Ramsar Information Sheets, Lake Qarun Protected Area (134,042 hectares, […]
Csilla Stenger-Kovács from University of Pannonia (Hungary) with her colleagues investigated diatom assemblages and different environmental variables from 31 shallow, saline lakes from 2 different regions of the Carpathian basin (Europe) to select the principle variables affecting the diatom communities and show the relevance of diatoms as ecological bioindicators. The statistically most significant factors that […]
An area of the Central Asian inland sea – once the fourth largest in the world – was left parched in August, according to Nasa photographs. The interactive watch of the Aral Sea’s eastern basin disappear and the text can be accessed at the Guardian. Until the 1960s, the Aral Sea was fed by two […]
ScienceDaily reported that for the first time, researchers have detected an unknown interaction between microorganisms and salt. When Escherichia coli cells are introduced into a droplet of salt water that is left to dry, bacteria manipulate the sodium chloride crystallization to create biomineralogical biosaline 3-D morphologically complex formations, where they hibernate. Afterwards, simply by rehydrating […]
The New York Times reports: LAKE URMIA, Iran — After driving for 15 minutes over the bottom of what was once Iran’s largest lake, a local environmental official stepped out of his truck, pushed his hands deep into his pockets and silently wandered into the great dry plain, as if searching for water he knew […]
Since July 2005, the blog of Oxford University Press (OUPblog) is a source for learning, understanding and reflection, providing different academic insights. Johanna Laybourn-Parry, a visiting profesor from Bristol University, at her recent post (December 8th, 2014) focused on the lake ecosystems of the Antarctic. We were attracted to this post by the key word “saline […]
Nice post about flamingo from Steve Zack, Coordinator of Bird Conservation, Wildlife Conservation Society. Below is the excerpt from this text: “The flamingo species all feed on shallow saline wetlands, most often inland lakes. They move nomadically in time and space to feed, often in huge aggregations of thousands (even millions for Lesser Flamingos) of […]