brackish

Brackish water is water that has more salinity than fresh water, but not as much as seawater. It may result from mixing of seawater with fresh water, as in estuaries, or it may occur in brackish fossil aquifers. The word comes from the Middle Dutch root "brak," meaning "salty". Certain human activities can produce brackish water, in particular certain civil engineering projects such as dikes and the flooding of coastal marshland to produce brackish water pools for freshwater prawn farming. Brackish water is also the primary waste product of the salinity gradient power process. Because brackish water is hostile to the growth of most terrestrial plant species, without appropriate management it is damaging to the environment (see article on shrimp farms).

Technically, brackish water contains between 0.5 and 30 grams of salt per litre—more often expressed as 0.5 to 30 parts per thousand (ppt or ‰). Thus, brackish covers a range of salinity regimes and is not considered a precisely defined condition. It is characteristic of many brackish surface waters that their salinity can vary considerably over space and/or time.

Notable brackish bodies of water (by type, in alphabetical order)

Brackish seas

• Baltic Sea (the world’s largest pool of brackish water)
• Black Sea
• Caspian Sea (world’s largest lake)

Brackish water lakes

Map of Lake Chilka, India's largest lake, classified as a brackish water body

• Lake Charles in Lake Charles, Louisiana, U.S.
• Chilka Lake, in Orissa state, India
• Lake Issyk-Kul, Kyrgyzstan
• Laguna de Oviedo, in the Dominican Republic
• Lake Maracaibo, in Zulia State, Venezuela
• Lake Monroe in Florida, U.S.
• Pangong Tso in Ladakh, Jammu and Kashmir state, India
• Lake Van
• Lake Mogil'noe,in Kildin Island, north of Murmansk, Russia

Lochs (Scottish)

• Loch Long
• Loch of Stenness
• Loch Bee
• Loch Obisary
• Loch an Duin
• Loch Scavaig

Coastal lagoons, marshes, and deltas

• The Burgas Lakes near the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast
• The Fleet lagoon, Dorset, England
• Kaliveli Lake, Tamil Nadu, India
• Kerala Backwaters, Series of lagoons and lakes in Kerala
• Lagos Lagoon in Lagos, Nigeria
• Lake Pontchartrain, New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S.
• Pulicat Lake, north of Chennai, India
• The Rann of Kutch, on the border of India and Pakistan
• Parts of the Rhône Delta, France: An area known as the Camargue
• Widewater, and land-locked lagoon near Lancing, England

Estuaries

• Amazon River, empties so much freshwater into the Atlantic Ocean that it reduces the salinity of the sea for hundreds of miles
• Chesapeake Bay, located in Maryland and Virginia. It is the drowned river valley of the Susquehanna River. It is the largest estuary in the United States.
• Delaware Bay, an extension of the Delaware River in New Jersey and Delaware, USA
• Lower Hudson River, in New York and New Jersey, U.S.
• East River and Harlem River, New York, USA
• Lingding Yang, Guangdong, the People's Republic of China
• Port Royal Sound part of Beaufort County, South Carolina, USA The Lowcountry Estuarium - Estuary, Marsh, & Creek Life - South Carolina Coast
• Puget Sound, in Washington State, USA
• Río de la Plata, in Argentina and Uruguay.^[1]
• Saint Lawrence and Saguenay Rivers, the part downstream from Québec and Saguenay respectively
• San Francisco Bay and San Pablo Bay adjacent to San Francisco in California, U.S.
• The Thames Estuary in South East England

See also

• Biosalinity
• Brackish water aquarium
• Desalination
• Permian Sea

References

Further reading

• Moustakas, A. & I. Karakassis. How diverse is aquatic biodiversity research?, Aquatic Ecology, 39, 367-375