Responses of freshwater biota to rising salinity levels and implications for saline water management: a review

By K. James, B. Cant, T. Ryan. 2003

217 citations recorded by the source corpus.

All of the plants and animals that make up freshwater aquatic communities are affected by salinity. Many taxa possess morphological, physiological and life-history characteristics that provide some capacity for tolerance, acclimatisation or avoidance. These characteristics impart a level of resilience to freshwater communities. To maintain biodiversity in aquatic systems it is important to manage the rate, timing, pattern, frequency and duration of increases in salinity in terms of lethal and sublethal effects, sensitive life stages, the capacity of freshwater biota to acclimatise to salinity and long-term impacts on community structure. We have limited understanding of the impacts of saline water management on species interactions, food-web structures and how elevated salinity levels affect the integrity of communities. Little is known about the effect of salinity on complex ecosystem processes involving microbes and microalgae, or the salinity thresholds that prevent semi-aquatic and terrestrial species from using aquatic resources. Compounding effects of salinity and other stressors are also poorly understood. Our current understanding needs to be reinterpreted in a form that is accessible and useful for water managers. Because of their complexity, many of the remaining knowledge gaps can only be addressed through a multidisciplinary approach carried out in an adaptive management framework, utilising decision-making and ecological risk assessment tools.

Subfields: Ecology, Environmental Chemistry, Nature and Landscape Conservation

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In Environmental Chemistry

In Nature and Landscape Conservation

Citations in the corpus

The salinity tolerance of freshwater macroinvertebrate eggs and hatchlings in comparison to their older life-stages: a diversity of responses (2007, background): “) The younger life-stages of freshwater fish (Hart et al. 1991; James et al. 2003), a cladoceran (Hall and Burns 2002) and some macroinvertebrates (Kefford et al.”
Salinisation of rivers: an urgent ecological issue. (2013, background): “5 and 3 mS cm 1 (Hart et al., 1991; James et al., 2003; Dunlop et al., 2005; Kipriyanova et al., 2007) although several freshwater species (e.”
Exploring the effects of salinization on trophic diversity in freshwater ecosystems: a quantitative review (2018, background): “The latter are currently thought to be responsible for increasing salinization of historically freshwater envi- ronments (Hart et al., 1990, 1991; James et al., 2003; Nielsen et al., 2003; Horrigan et al., 2005), and are the focus of our review.”
Salt tolerance of the harmful cyanobacterium Microcystis aeruginosa (2007, background): “Rising salt concentrations are known to affect numerous freshwater biota (Hart et al. 1991, 2003, James et al. 2003), and may shift the species composition of phytoplankton communities (Ahmed et al. 1985, Wilson et al. 1994, Mohapatra et al. 1998, Muylaert et al. 2000, Moisander et al. 2002,…”