Resources

Documents

Introduction

• Primer: Soil Salinity (WaterLog.info)
• Primer: Soil Salinity (FAO)
• Primer: River Salinity (WaterLog.info)
• Reading List: Salinization  (Keele University, UK)

Salinity: The Science, The Solutions

• Report: Saline groundwater (IGRAC- International Groundwater Resources Assesment Centre)
• Guidebook: Salt-affected Soils and their Management (FAO) 
• Lecture Notes: Drainage for Agriculture: Water and Salt Balances of the Soil, Drainage and Soil Salinity (WaterLog.info)
• Technique/methodology: Participatory Variety Selection for Salt Tolerant Rice (Research4Development, Department for International Development, UK)
• Field Guide: 20 things to know about the impact of salt water on agricultural land in Aceh Province (FAO)
• Reader: Saline waters as resources (FAO)
• Presentation: Mulching Treatment of Saline-alkali Soil: the Concept and Methodology (Taiyuan University of Technology)
• Presentation: Regional Initiative on Water Scarcity in the Near East: Overview (FAO)
• Article: Feasibility Study of Desalination Technology utilizing the temperature difference between seawater and inland atmosphere
• Presentation: Aspects of Salt-affected Soils in the Arab World (INRGREF, Tunisia; ACSAD, Syria)
• Presentation: The Role of Biosaline Agriculture in Coping with Water Scarcity in the WANA region (International Center for Biosaline Agriculture)
• Concept Note: The Role of Biosaline Agriculture in Coping with Water Scarcity in the WANA region (International Center for Biosaline Agriculture)
• Paper: Biodrainage: An eco-friendly technique for combating wtaerlogging and salinity (International Center for Biosaline Agriculture)  

Salinity: The Politics and Economics

• Conference Note: Agency Perceptions of Alternative Salinity Policies: Are they Measuring transaction Costs? (Annual Conference of the Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, Christchurch, New Zealand)
• Policy Paper: Policy Options for Dryland Salinity Management (AgEcon Research)
   

Salinity: Control in irrigated land

• This extensive overview compiled by Roland Oosterbaan presents basic data on causes, occurence and spatial variation. It also explains how drainage is the primary solution to soil salinity in agricultural lands.
• Primer: Management of Irrigation-induced Salt-affected Soils (FAO)
• Action Plan: A Framework for Reclamation Action Plan for Affected Soils (FAO)

Free Software and Models

SaltMod: A mathematical, numerical simulation model describing the relations between agriculture, crop rotation, irrigation, rainfall, potential and actual evaporation (evapotranspiration), climate, hydrology, depth and level of water-table, capillary rise, deep percolation, soil salinity and subsurface drainage by drains or wells, and reuse (conjunctive use) of ground and drain water from wells. It includes farmers’ responses to water logging and soil salinity. (Download Manual)

CalcSalt: A simplified version of SaltMod with the advantage that calculations can be made for shorter time steps (e.g. weekly or monthly). SaltCalc can be used when field observations of irrigation, water table and soil salinity have been made and one wishes to develop a model for that situation. Normally, calibration of unknown values must be done using a range of values of the corresponding variable, running the model repeatedly for a number of time steps, and selecting from the range the value giving model results closest to observed values as the optimal value. 

LeachMod: This model is somewhat similar to SaltCalc. On the one hand the water management options are fewer (e.g. re-use of drainage or well water for irrigation do not feature here), but the model is more modern in the sense that the variable input for each time step is given in a table so that the calculations over all the time steps are done in one go. Moreover, by inserting the observed values of soil salinity in the data table, the model optimizes the leaching efficiency of the soil.

SahysMod: a combination of Saltmod with a model of ground water flow and hydraulics to account for large spatial variation through a network of polygons. It includes phreatic (unconfined) aquifers as well as soil layers with slow vertical hydraulic conductivity (soil permeability for water) resulting in semiconfined (leaky) aquifers. (Download Manual)

(Special thanks to R.J. Oosterbaan for painstakingly compiling the above software and manuals!)

Web Resources

• Webpage: Pressures on Land in Australia: Salinity
• Primer: Salinity Problem of the Dryland Regions
• Salinization Theme on the European Soil Portal- Soil Data and Information Systems

Maps/Data

• Map: Saline and Sodic Soils in Europe (by European Union Soil Research Centre)
• Map: Soil Salinity Map in  the Central and West Asia and North Africa (CWANA) Region (by International Centre for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas)
• Map: Global Overview of Saline Groundwater Occurence (Draft) (by UN-International Groundwater Resources Assessment Centre)

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