Salinity In Aus

Salinity.


Salinity is a problem that Australia is now facing. The levels of sodium chloride in some areas of the country like Western Australia, South Australia and the Murray-Darlingbasin are increasing; with salinity we face the loss of aquatic and terrestrial biodiversity.
Australian vegetation has adapted to the salty ground, woodland has long roots that keep the groundwater table in level but when the European farming came to Australia, farmers replaced woodland for crops and pastures with small roots systems, with every rainfall unused water leaches down to the watertable making it raising it and bringing all the salt up to the surface, this process continuous today.

There are two kinds of salinity; these are dry-land salinity and irrigated land salinity.Primary salinity comes with the development of soils during the past of the years, weathering of rock; salt carried by the wind are some of the causes of soil salinity. Secondary salinity is thesalinization of land water resources due to land use impacts by people; the amount of salt in Australia is not increasing but is being brought towards the surface. ( CSIRO land and water - Salinity2012)Salinity has harmful effects like lost agricultural production, stream salinity and damage to infrastructure, urban households and environmental costs. To prevent salinity farmers should follow somesteps like, retaining and regenerating native vegetation, avoiding building dams at sites where the water table is high, locating roads along ridges where disruption to water tables will be minimal,siting houses (and septic systems) away from areas with high water tables, maintaining good pasture cover through conservative stocking rates, adopting high water efficiency cropping practices whichminimise deep drainage. (Department of Environment and Resource Managemen-salinity2012)


In conclusion salinity is a problem that is causing big impacts in Australian farming, some people still don’t...