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Hypersaline Environments

Salt lakes/hypersaline lakes

Salt lakes, like the Dead Sea (Israel-Jordan-Palestine) and the Great Salt lake, Utah (USA), are landlocked water bodies with a concentration of salts and other minerals higher than freshwater lakes.

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Lake Urmia. Photo under creative commons licence. Owner : Iroony.

Salt flats/dry lakes

Natural salt pans or salt flats are flat expanses of ground covered with salt and other minerals, usually shining white under the sun. They are found in deserts and are natural formations (unlike salt evaporation ponds, which are artificial).

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Bristol Lake. Photo under creative commons licence. Owner : High Plains Drifter.

Evaporation ponds/crystalliser ponds

Evaporation ponds are artificial ponds with very large surface areas that are designed to efficiently evaporate water by sunlight and exposure to the ambient temperatures. Salt evaporation ponds produce salt from seawater and are also man-made.

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Marakkanam evaporation ponds. Photo under creative commons licence. Owner : Sandip Dey.

Brine pools

A brine pool is a large area of brine on the ocean basin. These pools are bodies of water that have a salinity three to five times greater than the surrounding ocean. For deep-sea brine pools, the source of the salt is the dissolution of large salt deposits through salt tectonics. The brine often contains high concentrations of methane, providing energy to chemosynthetic animals that live near the pool.

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Brine pool craters. Photo under creative commons licence. Owner : Lophelia II 2010 Expedition.

Salt rivers

Salt rivers usually flow into salt lakes. Little is known about salinity ranges and seasonal variations, however the presence of at least one halophilic species has been observed.

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Salt river - Arizona. Photo under creative commons licence. Owner : Bernard Gagnon.

Peculiar environments

Halophiles are reported from more peculiar environments like the human gut, and fermented foods.

Budu sauce. Photo under creative commons licence. Owner : Yosri.