Evaluating Saline Waters in a Plains Environment

Merritt Clifton was an environmental journalist and lived in Brigham, Quebec.

Evaluating Saline Waters is strictly a reference work for environmental specialists and university students. The assembled scholarly papers tell practically everything anyone would ever want to know about the content and biological functions of salt lakes and salt marshes, but the telling is neither lucid nor entertaining — even though many individual vignettes could become the stuff of which popular nature writing is made. For instance, the Scott paper describes how ducks who live in saline environments must trudge overland to find freshwater drinking sources. Since ducklings can’t make the trek, ducks won’t breed in a salt marsh unless fresh streams flow into it.

Professional ecologists will find Evaluating Saline Waters to be THE sourcebook on Canadian salt lakes and salt marshes to date. D.R. Cameron gives the work a further dimension in considering the possible agricultural uses of saline water, including recycled wastewater in semi-arid regions on times of drought. As long-term irrigation increases the saline content of much Canadian farmland, Cameron’s investigation of techniques for coping will be of even greater value. His heavily footnoted, scholarly prose will, however, require clarification for non-experts.