Field/community system scale - solutions:
Controling salinity
Controling salinity at the field scale focuses on decreasing or increasing the fluxes through the root zone.
The possible solutions listed here indicate which of the fluxes it attempts to influence.
- Reducing salt addition through reduction of irrigation application, or use of low salinity resources (flux arrow #1)
- Improving irrigation methods and applications
- Apply laser leveling
- Use raised beds, furrow irrigation instead of surface flood irrigation
- Improved crop water requirement calculations
- Desalination of irrigation water
- Treatment and use of wastewater
- Improving public awareness on “best practises” for water, land, crop and agronomy
- Adjust farming systems through better cooperation between engineers, agronomists,
and farmers through better extension. Involve active field workers in addition to land owners.
- Increased soil permeability, increased effectivenes of leaching (flux arrow #2 and #4)
- Deep rooted crop rotation (e.g. safflower, liccorice)
- Improved soil structure through chemical soil amendments
- Improved soil structure through more suitable irrigation water salinity
- Improved soil permeability through organic matter (bio-fertilizer)
- Increased removal of salts (flux arrow #3)
- Improve or construct surface drainage
- Install subsurface drainage
- Use of evaporation ponds
- Reduce interception of regional groundwater (flux arrow #5)
- Design drainage system to be shallow
- Reduced groundwater upflow (flux arrow #6)
- Sub-surface mulching
- Soil moisture control in the non-cropping season
- Reduced evaporation losses (flux arrow #7)
- Surface mulching
- Improved irrigation techniques (mini-sprinkler, surface drip, subsurface drip irrigation)
- Use of green-houses or glass-houses to control evapotranspiration
Mixed systems
A broader systems approach is taken on some farms, where the salinity management approach is using partially
a fighting salinity approach, and partially a living with salinity approach. The idea of the mixed systems is
to allow farms to partially produce high income products, and partially solve the mobilized salt problem within
the farm boundaries using a sustainable approach.
- Integrated Farm Drainage Management
- Serial Biological Concentration
Living with salinity
Living with salinity accepts that the resources are too limited to fight salinity. Living with salinity
accepts that crop production, or agricultural production, will be limited. It attempts to make the most
out of a deteriorated system. Often, the choices made in the "living with salinity" options will not be
sustainable in the long run. A simple salt balance will show that most of the living with salinity options
will end with an increased salt mass in the root zone. However, the options provide some sort of income,
labor opportunity and production from degraded systems.
- Crop selection for increased salt tolerance
- Adjusting farming systems
- Agro-forestry
- Biosaline agriculture
- Improved fertilizer application rates under saline conditions
- Use of bio-fertilizer
- Use of magnet-treated saline water
- Reuse of drainage water
- Controlled drainage systems and groundwater levels
- Better site-specific responses to soil salinity through better monitoring
- Improving public awareness on “best practises” for water, land, crop and agronomy
