Repository_Soda_Saline_2018

The major ion concentration data of sodium (Na),
potassium (K), calcium (Ca), magnesium (Mg), chloride (Cl), sulphate (SO4),
bicarbonate (HCO3), carbonate (CO3) and pH (if it was
coupled with ion data) were input into the database. The data were drawn from a
large geographic scale across Eurasia (Austria, China, Hungary, Kazakhstan,
Mongolia, Russia, Serbia, Turkey) and from a large number of saline lakes and
pans (N=220) with minimum a 1.0 g L–1 salinity threshold. The 1.0 g
L–1 salinity threshold was selected based on a former study (Boros
et al., 2014), where this threshold was experimentally found to be the
characteristic boundary of soda ecosystems. Salinity was estimated by the sum
of measured concentrations of eight major ions (Na, K, Ca, Mg, Cl, SO4,
HCO3, CO3). As generally known, sodium is by far the most
common cation in saline lakes and necessarily the dominant cation in soda type lakes. Therefore, sites were excluded from the dataset if Na was not
the most abundant ion. If seasonal or annual water data were available, mean
values were put into database. Most of the data came from papers (sources are indicated in the table) published in the period from 1956‒2017.