Abstract
Twenty-two of the Mediterranean coastal Salinas in S. France have been abandoned for salt extraction since 1950 and most are now available for nature conservation purposes. Their management is a challenge as the abandoned Salinas are human-modified systems, compartmentalized in salt ponds, with other important modifications in the landscape. These landscape modifications were studied in more detail in two examples by studying historic maps. Thus, for the Salin de Peyriac (Aude), an original endorheic lake (Etang du Doul) was converted into a pre-concentrating pond and nowadays persists as a hypersaline coastal lagoon. Salin des Pesquiers (Var) was created since 1848 within the Etang du Pesquier coastal lagoon. Therefore, the course of the Roubaud River, the tributary to this lagoon, was deviated to flow directly to the sea. Together with the creation of a circumferential canal this resulted in destruction of the original Roubaud delta and its fringing wetlands with ecotones in their freshwater – salt water transition zones. Both abandoned Salinas can in principle be managed as coastal lagoons, because the sediment surfaces of their ponds are located below mean sea level. Nevertheless, the Ecosystem-based management of these systems has to acknowledge a large degree of artificiality. Complete ecological restoration to historic conditions appears unrealistic and is often not desirable. Hence, abandoned Salinas offer many possibilities for creative and experimental management that should be followed by action monitoring and assessed by scientific studies.