Salinity is the saltiness or dissolved
saltIn chemistry, salts are ionic compounds that result from the neutralization reaction of an acid and a base. They are composed of cations and anions so that the product is electrically neutral...
content of a body of
waterWater is a chemical substance with the chemical formula H2O. A water molecule contains one oxygen and two hydrogen atoms connected by covalent bonds. Water is a liquid at ambient conditions, but it often co-exists on Earth with its solid state, ice, and gaseous state . Water also exists in a...
. It is a general term used to describe the levels of different salts such as
sodium chlorideSodium chloride, also known as salt, common salt, table salt or halite, is an inorganic compound with the formula NaCl. Sodium chloride is the salt most responsible for the salinity of the ocean and of the extracellular fluid of many multicellular organisms...
,
magnesiumMagnesium sulfate is a chemical compound containing magnesium, sulfur and oxygen, with the formula MgSO4. It is often encountered as the heptahydrate epsomite , commonly called Epsom salt, from the town of Epsom in Surrey, England, where the salt was distilled from the springs that arise where the...
and
calcium sulfateCalcium sulfate is a common laboratory and industrial chemical. In the form of γ-anhydrite , it is used as a desiccant. It is also used as a coagulant in products like tofu. In the natural state, unrefined calcium sulfate is a translucent, crystalline white rock...
s, and
bicarbonateIn inorganic chemistry, bicarbonate is an intermediate form in the deprotonation of carbonic acid...
s.
Salinity in
Australian EnglishAustralian English is the name given to the group of dialects spoken in Australia that form a major variety of the English language....
and
North American EnglishNorth American English is the variety of the English language of North America, including that of the United States and Canada. Because of their shared histories and the similarities between the pronunciation, vocabulary and accent of American English and Canadian English, the two spoken languages...
may also refer to the salt content of
soilSoil is a natural body consisting of layers of mineral constituents of variable thicknesses, which differ from the parent materials in their morphological, physical, chemical, and mineralogical characteristics...
(see soil salinity).
Definitions
>
| Water salinity |
| Fresh water Fresh Water is the debut album by Australian rock and blues singer Alison McCallum, released in 1972. Rare for an Australian artist at the time, it came in a gatefold sleeve...
|
Brackish waterBrackish 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"...
|
Saline water Saline water is a general term for water that contains a significant concentration of dissolved salts . The concentration is usually expressed in parts per million of salt....
|
Brine Brine is water, saturated or nearly saturated with salt .Brine is used to preserve vegetables, fruit, fish, and meat, in a process known as brining . Brine is also commonly used to age Halloumi and Feta cheeses, or for pickling foodstuffs, as a means of preserving them...
|
| < 0.05 % |
0.05 – 3 % |
3 – 5 % |
> 5 % |
| < 0.5 ‰ |
0.5 – 30 ‰ |
30 – 50 ‰ |
> 50 ‰ |
Salinity in the ocean refers to the water's "saltiness". In oceanography, it has been traditional to express salinity not as percent, but as permille (parts per thousand) (
‰A per mil or per mille is a tenth of a percent or one part per thousand. It is written with the sign ‰ , which looks like a percent sign with an extra zero at the end...
), which is approximately
grams of salt per kilogram of solution. Other disciplines use chemical analyses of solutions, and thus salinity is frequently reported in mg/L or ppm (parts per million). Prior to 1978, salinity or halinity was expressed as ‰ usually based on the electrical conductivity ratio of the sample to "Copenhagen water", an artificial sea water manufactured to serve as a world standard. In 1978, oceanographers redefined salinity in the
Practical Salinity Scale (
PSS) as the conductivity ratio of a sea water sample to a standard KCl solution. As PSS is a ratio, it has no units. It is not the case that a salinity of 35 exactly equals 35 grams of salt per liter of solution.
These seemingly esoteric approaches to measuring and reporting salt concentrations may appear to obscure their practical use; but it must be remembered that salinity is the sum weight of many different elements within a given volume of water. It has always been the case that to get a precise salinity as a concentration and convert this to an amount of substance (sodium chloride, for instance) required knowing much more about the sample and the measurement than just the weight of the solids upon evaporation (one method of determining salinity). For example, volume is influenced by water temperature; and also the composition of the salts is not a constant (although generally very much the same throughout the world ocean). Saline waters from inland seas can have a composition that differs from that of the ocean. For the latter reason, these waters are termed
saline as differentiated from ocean waters, where the term
haline applies (although is not universally used).
Contour lineA contour line of a function of two variables is a curve along which the function has a constant value. In cartography, a contour line joins points of equal elevation above a given level, such as mean sea level...
s of constant salinity are called
isohales.
Systems of classification of water bodies based upon salinity
|
Thalassic series |
| >300 |
-------------------- |
|
hyperhaline |
| 60–80 |
-------------------- |
|
metahaline |
| 40 |
-------------------- |
|
mixoeuhaline |
| 30 |
-------------------- |
|
polyhaline |
| 18 |
-------------------- |
|
mesohaline |
| 5 |
-------------------- |
|
oligohaline |
| 0.5 |
-------------------- |
Marine waters are those of the ocean, another term for which is
euhaline seas. The salinity of euhaline seas is 30 to 35.
Brackish seas or waters have salinity in the range of 0.5 to 29 and
metahaline seas from 36 to 40. These waters are all regarded as
thalassic because their salinity is derived from the ocean and defined as
homoiohaline if salinity does not vary much over time (essentially constant). The table on the right, modified from Por (1972), follows the "Venice system" (1959).
In contrast to homoiohaline environments are certain
poikilohaline environments (which may also be
thallassic) in which the salinity variation is biologically significant.
Poikilohaline water salinities may range anywhere from 0.5 to greater than 300. The important characteristic is that these waters tend to vary in salinity over some biologically meaningful range seasonally or on some other roughly comparable time scale. Put simply, these are bodies of water with quite variable salinity.
Highly saline water, from which salts crystallize (or are about to), is referred to as
brineBrine is water, saturated or nearly saturated with salt .Brine is used to preserve vegetables, fruit, fish, and meat, in a process known as brining . Brine is also commonly used to age Halloumi and Feta cheeses, or for pickling foodstuffs, as a means of preserving them...
.
Environmental considerations
Salinity is an ecological factor of considerable importance, influencing the types of organisms that live in a body of water. As well, salinity influences the kinds of
plantPlants are living organisms belonging to the kingdom Plantae. Precise definitions of the kingdom vary, but as the term is used here, plants include familiar organisms such as trees, flowers, herbs, bushes, grasses, vines, ferns, mosses, and green algae. The group is also called green plants or...
s that will grow either in a water body, or on land fed by a water (or by a
groundwaterGroundwater is water located beneath the ground surface in soil pore spaces and in the fractures of rock formations. A unit of rock or an unconsolidated deposit is called an aquifer when it can yield a usable quantity of water. The depth at which soil pore spaces or fractures and voids in rock...
). A plant adapted to saline conditions is called a
halophyteA halophyte is a plant that grows where it is affected by salinity in the root area or by salt spray, such as in saline semi-deserts, mangrove swamps, marshes and sloughs, and seashores. An example of a halophyte is the salt marsh grass Spartina alterniflora . Relatively few plant species are...
. Organisms (mostly bacteria) that can live in very salty conditions are classified as
extremophileAn extremophile is an organism that thrives in physically or geochemically extreme conditions that are detrimental to most life on Earth. In contrast, organisms that live in more moderate environments may be termed mesophiles or neutrophiles...
s,
halophileHalophiles are extremophile organisms that thrive in environments with very high concentrations of salt. The name comes from the Greek for "salt-loving". While the term is perhaps most often applied to some halophiles classified into the Archaea domain, there are also bacterial halophiles and some...
s specifically. An organism that can withstand a wide range of salinities is
euryhalineEuryhaline organisms are able to adapt to a wide range of salinities. An example of a euryhaline fish is the molly which can live in fresh, brackish, or salt water. The European shore crab is an example of a euryhaline invertebrate that can live in salt and brackish water...
.
Salt is expensive to remove from water, and salt content is an important factor in water use (such as
potabilityDrinking water or potable water is water pure enough to be consumed or used with low risk of immediate or long term harm. In most developed countries, the water supplied to households, commerce and industry is all of drinking water standard, even though only a very small proportion is actually...
).
The degree of salinity in oceans is a driver of the
world's ocean circulationThe term thermohaline circulation refers to a part of the large-scale ocean circulation that is driven by global density gradients created by surface heat and freshwater fluxes....
, where density changes due to both salinity changes and temperature changes at the surface of the ocean produce changes in buoyancy, which cause the sinking and rising of water masses.
Changes in the salinity of the oceansPaleosalinity is the salinity of the global ocean or of an ocean basin at a point in geological history.- Importance :From Bjerrum plots, it is found that a decrease in the salinity of an aqueous fluid will act to increase the value of the carbon dioxide-carbonate system equilibrium constants,...
are thought to contribute to global changes in carbon dioxide as more saline waters are less soluble to carbon dioxide. In addition, during glacial periods, the
hydrographyHydrography is the measurement of the depths, the tides and currents of a body of water and establishment of the sea, river or lake bed topography and morphology. Normally and historically for the purpose of charting a body of water for the safe navigation of shipping...
is such that a possible cause of reduced circulation is the production of stratified oceans. Hence it is difficult in this case to subduct water through the thermohaline circulation.
See also
- Soil salinity control
- Desalination
Desalination, desalinization, or desalinisation refers to any of several processes that remove some amount of salt and other minerals from saline water...
- Salinometer
A salinometer is a device designed to measure the salinity, or dissolved salt content, of a solution.Since the salinity affect both the electrical conductivity and the specific gravity of a solution, a salinometer often consist of an ec meter or hydrometer and some means of converting those...
- Fresh water
Fresh Water is the debut album by Australian rock and blues singer Alison McCallum, released in 1972. Rare for an Australian artist at the time, it came in a gatefold sleeve...
- Seawater
Seawater is water from a sea or ocean. On average, seawater in the world's oceans has a salinity of about 3.5% . This means that every kilogram of seawater has approximately of dissolved salts . The average density of seawater at the ocean surface is 1.025 g/ml...
- Sodium Adsorption Ratio
Sodium adsorption ratio is a measure of the suitability of water for use in agricultural irrigation, as determined by the concentrations of solids dissolved in the water...
- Soil salination
Soil salinity is the salt content in the soil.- Causes of soil salinity :Salt-affected soils are caused by excess accumulation of salts, typically most pronounced at the soil surface. Salts can be transported to the soil surface by capillary transport from a salt laden water table and then...
- Stenohaline fish
Stenohaline describes an organism, usually fish, that cannot handle a wide fluctuation in the salt content of water. Stenohaline is derived from the words: "steno" meaning narrow, and "haline" meaning salt. Many fresh water fish, such as goldfish , tend to be stenohaline and die in environments of...
- Euryhaline fish
Euryhaline organisms are able to adapt to a wide range of salinities. An example of a euryhaline fish is the molly which can live in fresh, brackish, or salt water. The European shore crab is an example of a euryhaline invertebrate that can live in salt and brackish water...
- The Dead Sea
The Dead Sea , also called the Salt Sea, is a salt lake bordering Jordan to the east and Israel and the West Bank to the west. Its surface and shores are below sea level, the lowest elevation on the Earth's surface. The Dead Sea is deep, the deepest hypersaline lake in the world...
- Thermohaline circulation
The term thermohaline circulation refers to a part of the large-scale ocean circulation that is driven by global density gradients created by surface heat and freshwater fluxes....
- Paleosalinity
Paleosalinity is the salinity of the global ocean or of an ocean basin at a point in geological history.- Importance :From Bjerrum plots, it is found that a decrease in the salinity of an aqueous fluid will act to increase the value of the carbon dioxide-carbonate system equilibrium constants,...
Further reading