List of bodies of water by salinity

This is a list of bodies of water by salinity that is limited to natural bodies of water that have a stable salinity above 0.05%, at or below which water is considered fresh.

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

Water salinity often varies by location and season, particularly with hypersaline lakes in arid areas, so the salinity figures in the table below should be interpreted as an approximate indicator.

Salinity, g/kg (‰)	Name	Type	Region or countries	Refs
433	Gaet'ale Pond	salt lake	Ethiopia	[1][2]
400	Lake Retba	salt lake	Senegal
350	Lake Vanda	salt lake	Antarctica
350	Garabogazköl	lagoon	Turkmenistan	[3]
348	Lake Assal	salt lake	Djibouti	[4]
338	Don Juan Pond	salt lake	Antarctica	[5]
337	Dead Sea	salt lake	Israel, Jordan, West Bank	[6]
324	Lake Tuz (Tuz Gölü)	salt lake	Turkey	[7]
317	Great Salt Lake, North Arm	salt lake	Great Basin, Utah, United States	[8]
300	Lake Baskunchak	salt lake	Astrakhan Oblast, Russia	[9]
85–280	Lake Urmia	salt lake	Iran	[10]
180	Little Manitou Lake	salt lake	Canada	[11]
142	Great Salt Lake, South Arm	salt lake	Great Basin, Utah, United States	[8]
120	Lake Abert	salt lake	Great Basin, Oregon, United States	[12]
88	Mono Lake	salt lake	United States	[13] (as of 2015)
66	Hamelin Pool	lagoon	Australia	[14]
44	Salton Sea	salt lake	United States	[15]
38	Mediterranean Sea	mediterranean sea	Southern Europe, Levant, North Africa	[16]
36–41	Red Sea	mediterranean sea	Egypt, Sudan, Arabian Peninsula, Horn of Africa	[17]
30–40	Lake Natron	salt lake	Tanzania	[18]
34–36	World Ocean	ocean	Worldwide	[19]
34.06 ± 0.543	Lough Hyne	marine lake	Republic of Ireland	[20]
28–32	Beaufort Sea	marginal sea	North of Alaska and Canada	[21]
0.13–31.73	Chilika Lake	lagoon	India	[22]
13–23	Black Sea	mediterranean sea	Eastern Europe, Turkey	[23]
23	Lake Van	salt lake	Turkey	[24]
12.5	Caspian Sea	inland sea	Central Asia	[25]
11.4	Sarygamysh Lake	salt lake	Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan	[26]
10	Baltic Sea	marginal sea	Northern Europe	[27][n 1]

References

1. Perez, Eduardo; Chebude, Yonas (April 2017). "Chemical Analysis of Gaet'ale, a Hypersaline Pond in Danakil Depression (Ethiopia): New Record for the Most Saline Water Body on Earth". Aquatic Geochemistry. 23 (2): 109–117. doi:10.1007/s10498-017-9312-z.
2. "Guinness World Records".
3. Aladin, Nicolai; Plotnikov, Igor (28 June 2004). Lake Basin Management Initiative - The Caspian Sea (PDF) (Report). p. 6. Retrieved 4 May 2018.
4. Woodward, Susan L. "Saline Lakes". Biomes of the World. Radford, Virginia: Department of Geospatial Science, Radford University. Retrieved 4 May 2018.
5. Hammer, U.T. (1986). Saline Lake Ecosystems of the World. Springer. p. 109. ISBN 9789061935353. Retrieved 27 March 2018.
6. Goetz, P.W. (ed.) The New Encyclopædia Britannica (15th ed.). Vol. 3, p. 937. Chicago, 1986
7. "Lake Tuz Special Environmental Protection Area (SEPA) - UNESCO World Heritage Centre". Unesco World Heritage Center. 2020. Retrieved 5 May 2020.
8. White, James S.; Null, Sarah E.; Tarboton, David (2004). "More than Meets the Eye: Managing Salinity in Great Salt Lake, Utah" (PDF). LakeLine (Fall 2004): 25–29. Retrieved 26 April 2018.
9. "Bogdinsko-Baskunchaksky - Russian Nature Reserve".
10. "Lake Urmia". Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 2012. Retrieved 28 August 2012.
11. Little Manitou Lake. The Canadian Encyclopedia.
12. Solute Balance at Abert and Summer Lakes, South-Central Oregon
13. Willever, Katherine Lynn (2016). "Biogeochemistry of a Saline, Alkaline, Terminal Lake Ecosystem in Transition; Walker Lake, Nevada". UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones (2817): 15. Retrieved 4 May 2018.
14. Suosaari, Erica; Reid, Pamela; Playford, Phillip; et al. (2016). "New multi-scale perspectives on the stromatolites of Shark Bay, Western Australia". Scientific Reports. 6 (20557): 20557. Bibcode:2016NatSR...620557S. doi:10.1038/srep20557. PMC 4738353. PMID 26838605.
15. "The Salton Sea". The Salton Sea Authority. October 1997.
16. "Ocean salinity". Science Learning Hub. Retrieved 2 July 2017.
17. A. Anati, David (March 1999). "The salinity of hypersaline brines: Concepts and misconceptions". International Journal of Salt Lake Research. 8: 55–70. doi:10.1023/A:1009059827435.
18. The Biology and Culture of Tilapias: Proceedings of the International Center for Living Aquatic Resources Management, p.38
19. "Ocean salinity".
20. "Nutrient and Ecosystem Dynamics in Ireland's Only Marine Nature Reserve (NEIDIN)" (PDF).
21. "Beaufort Sea". Great Soviet Encyclopedia (in Russian).
22. Indian Journal of Marine Sciences - Variation of Water Quality of Chilika Lake, Orissa
23. Black Sea - Encyclopedia of Ukraine
24. Yama, Tomonaga (22 March 2017). "Porewater salinity reveals past lake-level changes in Lake Van, the Earth's largest soda lake". Scientific Reports. 7 (7): 313. Bibcode:2017NatSR...7..313T. doi:10.1038/s41598-017-00371-w. PMC 5428207. PMID 28331216.
25. Lake Basin Management Initiative - The Caspian Sea (2004)
26. Orlovsky, Leah; Matsrafi, Offir; Orlovsky, Nikolai; Kouznetsov, Michael (2014). "Sarykamysh Lake: Collector of Drainage Water – The Past, the Present, and the Future". The Turkmen Lake Altyn Asyr and Water Resources in Turkmenistan. The Turkmen Lake Altyn Asyr and Water Resources in Turkmenistan. The Handbook of Environmental Chemistry. 28. Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag. pp. 107–140. doi:10.1007/698_2012_191. ISBN 978-3-642-38606-0.
27. Long Term Temperature & Salinity Records from the Baltic Sea Transition Zone

Notes

1. Some bays have considerably lower salinity.

Bibliography

• Johanna Laybourn-Parry; Jemma L. Wadham (2014). Antarctic Lakes. Oxford University Press. pp. 92–94. ISBN 978-0-19-967049-9.