Salt efflorescences and Saline lakes; a distributional analysis

Salt lakes and salt efflorescences are a common phenomenon of many arid zones. Rocks weather rapidly in the presence of saline materials, and the rate of such weathering may be controlled by the mineralogy of the salts concerned. The distribution of the main salt types is presented for the polar deserts of Antarctica and the Arctic, and for the warmer deserts of Australia, North America, South America, Africa and Asia. There is great variety in the types of salts encountered and marked differences between different regions, with, for example, Australia being dominated by sodium chloride (halite) and southern Canada by the sulphates of magnesium and sodium. The possible causes of such variability and its pattern are analysed in terms of the nature of inputs into drainage basins and the various changes that take place within basins. Finally, it is apparent that in those situations when weathering has been observed as an active process there are a great many different salts involved.