| Saline lakes have a group of comprehensive natural resources,including a large diversity of mineral resources, salt-liking biological resources and tourism resources. These resources serve as field laboratories which can provide data for the study of global change and mineralization processes. In traditional classification, saline lake study was part of limnology that studied the physics, chemistry and biology of lakes (W. G. Moor, 1975). Limnology, however, focuses only on the physical, chemical and biological properties of lakes,but fails to include the resource engineering concept. In the field of geological sciences, saline lake geology does not include the study of biological resources and ecology. Hence, neither traditional limnology nor saline lake geology could comprehensively cover the meaning of research and development of saline lakes. To meet the needs of development of saline lake research and society's demands,it is necessary to set up a raw research system that could be named “salinology”. Dealing with chemistry, physics, biology and their interaction with resources and environments, this new branch is a marginal and application disciplinary research and exploration of saline lakes, which provides data for rational management and exploitation of saline lakes and makes contributions to sustainable development of saline lake agriculture, saline lake mining and tourism business. |