President's Message

Worldwide, salt lakes are almost as common as freshwater lakes and are increasing in number due to environmental degradation. In some countries they are uncommon, but in others like Australia they are extremely numerous.  Our society seeks to foster research into these ecosystems and also to learn how to manage them for various appropriate purposes including wise use of their minerals, for therapeutic purposes, for general ecosystem health, and for environmental conservation.

We are a diverse group of enthusiasts, trained in various sciences; engineering, management, consultancy, natural history, and more. Our subject binds us together and every three years we host an international conference.  These conferences are relatively small and very friendly meetings which are quite interdisciplinary and hence can be somewhat different from other scientific meetings. The next conference is to be in Perth, Australia in late September 2005.  Come and join us and as well see a little of Australia's vast and ancient landscapes.  With our latest severe drought about to break, we may even have some water in our episodic lakes.

I am writing this as I prepare for two international conferences on environmental conservation, as well as a local trans-disciplinary one on ecosystem health.  In all three I am to speak on the deterioration of salt lake ecosystems.  A decade ago I never thought I would need to do this, as I used to think salt lakes were robust ecosystems in remote places and therefore relatively safe from pollution and human pressures on the environment. Unfortunately this is no longer the case, even in an unpopulated country like Australia.  It seems to me that basic research is being overwhelmed by the need for management information.  Yet the latter is impossible without basic science.  There are lakes in inland Western Australia that are being adversely impacted, without yet knowing their biodiversity, let alone how they function. Healthy ecosystems are being lost even before being described.  Perhaps it is the same in your country.  Our society needs to foster basic research as well as more applied issues.  This mix was demonstrated at our last conference at Shira Lake in Khaskasia,

Siberia where both basic and applied issues were well represented.   May this continue at our next conference and in between as we focus on our favourite subject - salt lakes.  In the meantime, I look forward to seeing the papers from Shira Lake in published format, and corresponding with many new and old colleagues.

---Dr. Brian Timms, University of Newcastle, New South Wales, AUS