Unique Pit Lake Created in an Opencast Potassium Salt Mine (Dombrovska Pit Lake in Kalush, Ukraine)
Journal: Mine Water and the Environment
Year: 2018

We studied the physicochemical and biological characteristics of the Dombrovska pit lake in Ukraine. The lake formed in an abandoned opencast potassium salt mine and is one of the most saline inland water bodies in the world. It is 85 m deep (November 2015) and an annual inflow of about 2 Mm3 of water. The lake has two distinct layers. The mesohaline surface (0–5 m) layer is well oxygenated and slightly alkaline (pH = 7.5–8.8). Its mineralization, expressed as dry mass, was 50–134 g dm− 3, and i