Studies of alkaline lakes have critical biological–environmental–economic properties, but deep-time alkaline lakes are challenging to investigate. Lipid biomarkers can provide valuable insights into such lakes and their biogeochemical significance. This paper reviews and compares typical examples of ancient alkaline lakes across the world. Lipid biomarker evidences, including C₃₀-steranes, Pr/Ph, Pr/n-C₁₇-Ph/n-C₁₈, (β − +γ-carotane)/n-C_max, and gammacerane/C₃₀αβH values, suggest these alkaline lakes were reducing, hypersaline, and stratified. The n-alkanes, steranes/hopanes, C₂₈-St/C_27–29-St%, and C₂₈/C₂₉-St values indicate that the preserved biomass of the alkaline lakes were dominated by algae and bacteria, with less input from higher plants. The algae were mainly halotolerant green algae, rather than cyanobacteria. The different alkaline lakes have some subtle differences in their sedimentary environments. The paleoenvironmental setting and biomass of the alkaline lakes co-vary systematically. The ratio of algae/bacteria is positively correlated with increasingly reducing and saline conditions, because the increase in salinity improves the competitiveness of halotolerant green algae. The changes in these extreme alkaline environments are too small to cause obvious variations in the proportion of green algae/total algae, and the abundance of cyanobacteria, photoautotrophs, and/or type I methanotrophic proteobacteria. Lipid biomarker data show that the primary controlling factor on the biomass of saline and alkaline lakes is their geologic age and, to a lesser extent, their salinity. The abundance of organic matter in these sediments varies greatly, and the types of organic matter are generally good for hydrocarbon generation. The formation of oil and gas is controlled by factors such as abundance of organic matter, thermal maturity, size of lake basin, and thickness of the organic-rich sediments.

碱性湖泊的研究具有重要的生物学，环境和经济特性，但深层碱性湖泊的研究具有挑战性。脂质生物标志物可以提供对此类湖泊及其生物地球化学意义的宝贵见解。本文回顾并比较了世界各地古代碱性湖泊的典型例子。脂质生物标志物的证据，包括C ₃₀ -steranes，镨/ PH，镨/ Ñ -C ₁₇ -Ph / Ñ -C ₁₈，（β - +γ-胡萝卜烷）/ Ñ -C_最大值，和伽马蜡/ C ₃₀ αβH值表明这些碱性湖泊正在还原，高盐度和分层。的Ñ烷烃，甾烷/藿，C ₂₈-St / C _27–29 -St％和C ₂₈ / C ₂₉-St值表明，碱性湖泊的生物量主要以藻类和细菌为主，而高等植物的投入较少。藻类主要是耐盐绿藻，而不是蓝细菌。不同的碱性湖泊在沉积环境上有一些细微的差异。碱性湖泊的古环境和生物量系统地变化。藻类/细菌的比例与不断减少的盐和盐水条件呈正相关，因为盐度的增加提高了耐盐性绿藻的竞争力。这些极端碱性环境中的变化太小，无法引起绿藻/总藻类的比例以及蓝藻，光合自养菌和/或I型甲烷营养菌的丰度发生明显变化。脂质生物标志物数据表明，对盐湖和碱性湖泊生物量的主要控制因素是其地质年龄，其次是盐度。这些沉积物中有机物的丰度变化很大，有机物的类型通常对生烃有好处。油气的形成受诸如有机物丰度，热成熟度，湖盆大小和富含有机物沉积物厚度等因素控制。