SCARPs, the Salinity Control and Reclamation Projects were implemented in Pakistan to recover the fertile agricultural lands lost to water-logging and salinity by draining accumulated effluents to the sea through a system of canals leading to the rivers in most of the cases. In one of the SCARPs, however, it was proposed to store the effluents in the natural depressions of the bed of the extinct Hakra River to evaporate under the hot and dry environment of Cholistan Desert. Thus, a system of brackish ponds was created with different ponds at different stages of ecological transformation, also...