Maltese coastal salt pans : measurement, mapping and management of Xwejni salt pans at Marsalforn, Gozo

Abstract

Salt has been a foremost natural resource for millennia with a wide range of uses from preserving edible foods, and cooking with it, to cleaning, laundry, hygiene, and as a medicinal balm. In small islands having poor natural resources the production of salt from sea water, through insolation, aeolian processes and intense human endeavour, offered economic benefits and created a socio-environmental cultural heritage around the sites of production of this staple resource. The Mediterranean has a long history in relation to salt with huge underwater deposits as remnants of the desiccation 7-10mya, labelled geologically as the Messinian Salinity Crisis. Salt water intrusion, wave impacts and spray also condition coastal vegetation, state of repair of urban facades and road surfaces. [Excerpt]