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The alternative saline lake ecosystem states and adaptive environmental management

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Abstract

Our sustainable environmental management must be based on adequate ecological concepts. The question arises: what concept is better to use for understanding and management of ecosystems? To look for an answer, we concentrate our attention on saline lakes. Every ecosystem has several alternative stable states and may demonstrate regime shifts, which are large, abrupt, persistent changes in the structure and function of a system. To understand the dynamics of ecosystems the Concept of Multiplicity of Ecosystem Alternative Stable States as a new ecological paradigm has been developed recently. The author analyzes the emerging paradigm using the case of saline lakes, and discusses how to base our adaptive environmental management on the developing paradigm. Different issues of development of the concept and its application to salinology as a scientific basis of an integrated management of a saline lake and its watershed are discussed. The concept may serve as one of the key theoretical elements of the scientific basis in sustainable environmental management.

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Acknowledgement

The author is deeply grateful to all who assisted him in studying of salt lakes, as well as Mrs. Lilia Prazukina for the drawings made for this article and Dr. Bindy Datson (Australia) for her help to improve English of the manuscript.

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  1. Kovalevsky Institute of Marine Biological Research, Russian Academy of Sciences, Sevastopol, 299011, Russia

    Nickolai V. Shadrin

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Shadrin, N.V. The alternative saline lake ecosystem states and adaptive environmental management. J. Ocean. Limnol. 36, 2010–2017 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00343-018-7307-2

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