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 […]