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Management of land salinity risk

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Summary

Managing land salinity is logistically complex due to the scale of the issue, which often requires a landscape-level approach, not just a site-specific fix.

This page will help you understand:

strategies for managing and mitigating land salinity risk
future management challenges.

Land salinity management

Salinity management action should strategically target the type and scale of salinity experienced locally, but generally consist of:

This approach centres on ‘living with the salt’, by selecting more salt-tolerant cropping varieties (such as barley or canola), using saltbush for plant fodder instead of pasture grazing, and keeping the area vegetated to prevent erosion (e.g. reduced grazing intensity, cover cropping, stubble retention or application of mulch/straw if economically viable). These approaches do not necessarily address the rate or cause of salinisation, but allow for the use of saline land for agriculture and help minimise impacts to plants.

Subsoil drainage

The instillation of subsoil drainage systems can help move saline water below the root zone. This can be paired with the application of excess irrigation water to flush salts below the root zone. However, it is important to consider the salinity of water used and the depth to groundwater when deciding if this approach is suitable for your property.

Surface drains and contour banks

Surface drains (diversion drains and ‘W’ drains) and contour banks can be used to prevent water logging and salt accumulation at the surface.

Clay amendments

Clay spreading/inversion can be used on sandy soils to enhance water retention near the top of the soil profile and reduce drainage into deeper layers (i.e. ground water recharge). Clay additions also enhance soil fertility, supporting increased plant establishment and growth. This increases water uptake by plants, further reducing the amount of groundwater recharge.

Increasing water uptake by plants decreases the amount of groundwater recharge observed. This can be achieved by:

revegetating non-arable areas of your property with deep-rooted or perennial native vegetation
using deep-rooted cropping varieties (e.g. lucerne) or converting annual crops/pastures to perennial production systems.

Future challenges

The future impact and risk of dryland salinity will depend largely on future rainfall patterns, including climate change, the nature of the groundwater systems and the effectiveness of efforts to slow or halt rising groundwater. On-going monitoring and evaluation in focus catchments will inform adaptive management and provide a basis for future salinity assessment.

Summer weeds (including deep rooted species) are now routinely controlled in more intensive cropping systems, in paddocks to be cropped the following season, to conserve stored soil moisture for the crop. This potentially allows greater leakage of ‘out of season’ summer-autumn rain to perched water-tables below the dune soils. In more traditional farming systems, particularly with longer pasture phases, summer weeds were not controlled as often.

Options to reduce the potential development of mallee seeps would need to increase overall soil water use, such as:

increasing productivity of current crops
strategic plantings of high water use, deep rooted perennial species and utilisation of pasture phases
amelioration of sandy soils with clay
winter and summer cropping.

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