Sabkha Ecosystems: Volume IV: Cash Crop Halophyte and Biodiversity Conservation (Tasks for Vegetation Science, 47)

Sustainable development is the key for the survival in 21st century. The natural resources are finite and cannot be used with impunity because we are the custodian of these resources and have responsibility to pass these to the next generation. This monumental task requires several major commitments and most important of them is to arrest population explosion which has already reached seven billion. Natural resources like air to breath, food to eat, and water to drink, and fossil fuel to maintain this life style are being overexploited. Unrestrained consuming culture will accelerate undesired situation. This situation will have more dire consequences in resource limited ecosystems like dry lands. Given the severe scarcity of water, ever increasing population and soil salinization out of the box solutions for the provision of food and clean energy is required to spare meager fresh water resources for conventional agriculture. This volume contains a number of articles dealing with halophyte ecology, bio-geography, ecophysiology, hyper-saline soils, biofuels, biosaline agriculture, biosaline landscaping, climate change mitigation, and biodiversity. It also contains the communication of innovative ideas, such as the research into floating mangroves, seagrass terraces, as well as a World Halophyte Garden containing all known salt-tolerant plant species. It is hoped that the information provided will not only advance vegetation science, but that it will truly generate more interdisciplinarity, networking, awareness, and inspire farmers, and agricultural and landscaping stakeholders to seriously engage in halophyte cash crop production in coastal hyper-saline areas.

This is the fourth volume of the sabkha ecosystem series in Tasks for Vegetation Science. More than ten years have passed since the publication of the first volume, dealing with the Arabian Peninsula and adjacent countries. Volume two provided information on West and Central Asia, volume three on Africa and Southern Europe, where a lack of scientific capacity in this specialized field of saline dry lands was noticed. This is why volume three was comparatively thin. For the current volume however, we had almost thirty contributions, highlighting the importance of halophyte research and development, with a view to establishing pilot-farms, for food production, biofuel, analyzing atmospheric carbon sequestration, and also as places for ex situ halophyte biodiversity conservation. Two more volumes are planned, one on the sabkha ecosystems of the Americas and another one on Asia-Pacific, to conclude the global geographical coverage.