Salinization Essay ⋆ Environment Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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Salinization is the process by which excessive salts build up on land, especially agricultural land, making it unfit for use. The most common cause of salinization is insufficient drainage, which leads to water evaporating from the soil and leaving dissolved salts. This frequently occurs when irrigation has been used to increase the yields of agricultural land, but the irrigation is insufficiently drained. Improving the drainage, consequently, can help to rectify the problem. However, where there is insufficient water to provide drainage, the salinization can become a wide-scale problem. This has occurred in the Nile Delta, the Aral Sea, and the southwest United States. Salinization is an example of nonsustainable use of land.

Although salinization is assumed to be a phenomenon primarily affecting arid and semiarid zones of the world, it affects all climatic zones. More than 100 countries have been affected to date, and the number will rise as global warming places more pressure on already limited fresh water resources.

The most common salts are sodium, although in some parts of the world calcium, iron, and magnesium salts have also been found. The salts derive from a variety of sources, including rainfall, aeolian deposits, and mineral weathering. The process can be intensified with acid rain. The chemical composition of the soil and the way in which it is husbanded determines the importance and relevance of the presence of salts in particular locations.

Salinization reduces the fertility of the land and requires forcible migration to other locations, and has a number of negative impacts on the local environment. Since agriculturalists are likely to pursue similar methods in new lands that are settled, then the area suffering from salinization will spread along with migration. Since animals and plants may also be dependent on the water resources of an area, salinization can reduce their ability to survive, and may be responsible for desertification, in which the land becomes almost completely uninhabitable on a permanent basis.

Salinization disproportionately affects the poor people of the world, since the poor are much more likely to be involved in agriculture and are less likely to farm the most fertile land. Globally, around 30 million hectares of land suffer from salinization or waterlogging. There is a considerable need for improvements in the ways that water is managed and recycled throughout the world. This should be part of an integrated approach to water management that includes attention to irrigation, watershed restoration, recycled water usage, and rainwater harvesting. Technology will be necessary in this effort, since a great deal of affected land is not sufficiently well mapped or charted.

Scientific analysis of soil is also necessary to identify optimal methods of desalinization and to make recommendations for future husbandry. Such analysis can also identify when only comparatively small portions of land have been affected by salinization, and if selective leaching of the land is an option. Such technology is rarely found in the poorer parts of the world.

Bibliography:

Agriculture and Rural Development, Shaping the Future of Water for Agriculture: A Sourcebook for Investment in Agricultural Water Management (World Bank, 2005);
Seth Pritchard and Jeffrey S. Amthor, Crops and Environmental Change: An Introduction to Effects of Global Warming, Increasing Atmospheric CO2 and O3 Concentrations, and Soil Salinization on Crop Physiology and Yield (Haworth Press, 2005);
Pichu Rengasamy, “World Salinization with Emphasis on Australia,” Journal of Experimental Botany (v.57/5, 2006);
W.D. Williams, “Salinization of Rivers and Streams: An Important Environmental Hazard,” Ambio AMBOCX (v.16/4, 1987).