Salinity

Camille Embree, Emma Nations and Emme Hidrogo

 Salinity test
-Salinity is the concentration of
dissolved salts in the water.

-It is measured in parts per

thousand.
 Salinity levels on Our field trip

Pace Bend 0.5 ppt

Mansfield Dam . 0.3 ppt

Inks Lake . 0.325 ppt

Fresh water lakes usually have a salinity of less than 0.5 ppt.
 Possible causes of high/low salinity
-High salinity can be caused by many things,
but a main cause is evaporation. Focusing on
freshwater, when the water cycle takes place
and a large amount of water is vaporized,
more salt is left in the water.

-Looking at the opposite possibility, too much

rain is a certain area can cause too little salt
for the body of water.

-Human and use can affect the amount of

salinity by either causing more salt to be
produced or allow salt to rise to the top of the
body of water.
Solutions for high salinity
-Lake retention time is a calculated
number that expresses the average
time that water spends in a
particular lake.

-Cycling allows water levels to rise,

swirl around the lake, then flush out
through the barrages.

-Lake Albert - a lake in Africa.

-Lake Erie has a lake retention time

of 2.6 years, the shortest of all of the
great lakes.
 Effects on biodiversity
-Higher salinity levels put the cells of many organisms under osmotic
stress.

-The higher the salinity levels potentially inhibit the reproduction of

existing populations of the fish in an ecosystem.

-Macrophyte diversity may also decrease, due to difficulties in plant

germination, and the success of a small number of salt- tolerant species

-The higher the salinity level is the more salt-tolerant fish will live in an
area. The fish that are not as tolerant to salt do not survive and humans
will not be able to fish for them.This affects humans because they will
only have one type of fish to chose from and the not as salt-tolerant fish
will slowly become extinct.
 Example
The salinity rates in the aral sea have been going up over time. In the
first decade, the salinity increased by 14%, which exceeded the
threshold of commercialized fishing. As a result commercialized fishing
fell from 43,430 tons in 1960 to zero in 2004. This is also one of the
causes that the aral sea is shrinking.
 sources
http://www.murrayvalleystandard.com.au/story/4078075/lakes-flushed-to-lower-salin
ity/
www.qld.gov.au/enviorment/land/soil/salinity/impact

www.freshwater.com

https://www.sciencelearn.org.nz/resources/686-ocean-salinity

https://www.sciencelearn.org.nz/resources/686-ocean-salinity

http://www.columbia.edu/~tmt2120/environmental%20impacts.htm