F2.6 Permanent salt and soda lakes

F2. Lakes biome

F2

Profile summary

Full profile at https://global-ecosystems.org/explore/groups/F2.6

Brief description

These lakes are usually large and shallow in semi-arid regions, with high concentrations of salts, mediated by inflows of water. Their productivity from growth of algae and plants can support large numbers, but low diversity of organisms equipped with tolerance to high salinity and other solutes. They have relatively simple foodwebs, with high numbers of microbes and plankton, crustaceans, insect larvae, fish and specialised waterbirds such as flamingos.

Key features

Permanent waterbodies with high inorganic solute concentrations (particularly sodium), supporting simple trophic networks, including cyanobacteria and algae, invertebrates and specialist birds.

Overview of distribution

Mostly in semi-arid regions of Africa, southern Australia, Eurasia, Europe and western North and South America.

Map description

Major occurrences were compliled from a list of known salt lakes in Wurtsbaugh et al. (2017) and augmented by authors, then matched with names in the HydroLAKES database to identify natural lakes (types 1 and 3 of Messager et al. 2016). Minor occurrences were mapped within arid and semi-arid parts of selected freshwater ecoregions (Abell et al. 2008) by clipping ecoregions to exclude areas with mean annual rainfall >250mm (Harris et al. 2014a). Freshwater ecoregions (Abell et al. 2008) were selected if they contained occurrences of permanent salt or soda lakes if: i) their descriptions mentioned features consistent with those identified in the profile of the Ecosystem Functional Group; and ii) if their location was consistent with the ecological drivers described in the profile. Occurrences were aggregated to 10 minutes spatial resolution..

Map code and version: F2.6.web.mix v4.0. DOI

Version history

Profile versions

  • v2.1 (2022-04-06): RT Kingsford; JT Hollibaugh; B Robson; R Harper; DA Keith.1
  • v2.01 (NA): NA.
  • v2.0 (2020-05-24): RT Kingsford; JT Hollibaugh; B Robson; R Harper; DA Keith.
  • v1.0 (2020-01-20): RT Kingsford; DA Keith.

Available maps

Read more details about the current map versions here.

  • Indicative Map (code: F2.6.IM.mix, version v4.0)
  • Web navigation (code: F2.6.web.mix, version v4.0)

Read more details about older or alternative versions of maps for this functional group.

  • Indicative Map: discarded (code: F2.6.IM.mix, version v3.0)
  • Indicative Map: discarded (code: F2.6.IM.alt, version v2.0)
  • Indicative Map: discarded (code: F2.6.IM.mix, version v2.0)
  • Indicative Map: discarded (code: F2.6.IM.orig, version v2.0)
  • Indicative Map: replaced (code: F2.6.IM.orig, version v1.0)
  • Indicative Map: discarded (code: F2.6.IM.mix, version v1.0)
  • Web navigation: requires review (code: F2.6.web.orig, version v1.0)
  • Web navigation: duplicated (code: F2.6.web.map, version v1.0)

References

Main references

References used in the different versions of the profiles.

  • Boros E, Kolpakova M (2018) A review of the defining chemical properties of soda lakes and pans: An assessment on a large geographic scale of Eurasian inland saline surface waters PLoSONE 13(8):e0202205
  • Humayoun SB, Bano N, Hollibaugh JT (2003) Depth distribution of microbial diversity in Mono Lake, a meromictic soda lake in California Applied and environmental microbiology 69:1030-1042 DOI:10.1128/aem.69.2.1030-1042.2003
  • Williams WD (1998) Salinity as a determinant of the structure of biological communities in salt lakes Hydrobiologia 381:191-201

Map references

References used in the different versions of the maps (current and discarded).

  • Abell R, Thieme ML, Revenga C, Bryer M, Kottelat M, Bogutskaya N, Coad B, Mandrak N, Contreras Balderas S, Bussing W, Stiassny MLJ, Skelton P, Allen GR, Unmack P, Naseka A, Ng R, Sindorf N, Robertson J, Armijo E, Higgins JV, Heibel TJ, Wikramanayake E, Olson D, López HL, Reis RE, Lundberg JG, Sabaj Pérez MH, Petry P (2008) Freshwater ecoregions of the world: A new map of biogeographic units for freshwater biodiversity conservation, BioScience 58: 403–414. DOI:10.1641/B580507
  • Harris, I., Jones, P.D., Osborn, T.J. and Lister, D.H. (2014), Updated high-resolution grids of monthly climatic observations - the CRU TS3.10 Dataset. International Journal of Climatology 34, 623-642 doi:10.1002/joc.3711 Revised appendix
  • Linke, S., Lehner, B., Ouellet Dallaire, C., Ariwi, J., Grill, G., Anand, M., Beames, P., Burchard-Levine, V., Maxwell, S., Moidu, H., Tan, F., Thieme, M. (2019) Global hydro-environmental sub-basin and river reach characteristics at high spatial resolution Scientific Data 6: 283 DOI:10.1038/s41597-019-0300-6
  • Messager, M.L., Lehner, B., Grill, G., Nedeva, I., Schmitt, O. (2016) Estimating the volume and age of water stored in global lakes using a geo-statistical approach Nature Communications 13603 DOI:10.1038/ncomms13603
  • Pekel JF, Cottam A, Gorelick N, Belward AS (2016) High-resolution mapping of global surface water and its long-term changes Nature 540, 418-422 DOI:10.1038/nature20584
  • Wurtsbaugh, W., Miller, C., Null, S. et al. Decline of the world’s saline lakes. Nature Geoscience 10, 816–821 (2017). 10.1038/ngeo3052

Footnotes

  1. This is the current version available at official site.↩︎