Saline lagoons
These are bodies (natural or artificial) of saline water that are partially separated from the adjacent sea. They retain a proportion of their seawater at low tide and may develop as brackish, full saline or hyper-saline water bodies. Saline lagoons are an important and relatively scarce habitat due to the special conditions that are required for their formation. They support unique invertebrates, such as the lagoon cockle and ostracods, and are important for waterfowl, marshland birds and seabirds. The presence of certain indigenous and specialist plants and animals make this habitat important to the UK’s overall biodiversity and has led to the listing of saline lagoons as a priority habitat under the EU Habitats Directive as well as being a priority UK biodiversity habitat. There are around 5200ha of saline lagoon habitat in the UK, distributed over 400 individual sites. The UK’s largest saline lagoon is found at The Fleet, Dorset and contains 70% of the total national resource of this habitat.
In the Tees Valley saline lagoons are a rare habitat. A complex of saline lagoons exists as a result of surface salt mining of the North Tees area known as the Brinefields.
