Compare And Contrast Salt And Saline Soil

The Salar de Uyuni salt flats are located in Daniel Campos Province Potosí, Bolivia, they have become Bolivia’s largest mineral resource. The resources that they are known for producing are salt, magnesium, potassium, and boron. The Salar are remnants of many lakes that use to occupy Bolivian Altiplano in the Late Pleistocene(Orris). Salar de Uyuni has become the world’s largest salt plan. The Salar serves as a major transport route across the Bolivian Altiplano and serves as major breeding ground for many species(Mason). The formation of Salar de Uyuni flats started from a large drainage system. Which then has to become an enclosed basin that does not drain to the sea and will wash away salt and arid climate where evaporation exceeds precition leaving behind salt(Orris). This has caused an extraordinary flatness to the entire Salar salt flats.

In agriculture, soil can cause limitations to plant growth through (a) depth, stoniness, texture and structure which together can influence the amount of water which can be held in the profile and the ease with which roots can penetrate and (b) the availability of nutrients (Rowell, 1994). There are four main constituents of soil: mineral matter, organic matter, air and water (Fig. 1.1).

If saltwater is applied to a plant, the plant would shrivel up and die. This is a result of the water moving out of the cells in order to try to balance the concentration of solute compared to inside the cell. The water movement out of the cell would cause the cell to shrink and the lack of water would eventually cause the plant to die.

7) What would happen if you applied saltwater to a plant? The saltwater has a lower water potential due to the solute, and therefore water would move out of the plant, dehydrating it.

Clearing and replacing the deep rooted native trees is an issue as plants absorb water as it is soaked through the soil. Plant roots remove the excess soil water, causing the groundwater to stay under the salt level, which is then recycled back into the atmosphere through the plants leaves . Thus the deeper the plants roots are the more the plant is able to soak the excess water up from the soil. When the deep rooted vegetation is replaced with shallow rooted plants the excess water cannot be absorbed causing the excess water/groundwater level to rise which sequentially pushes the salt up through the soil causing the water to become more saline.

The water in urban wellfields is contaminated with saltwater since the water flow had changed direction. The water also contains high levels of nutrients (particularly phosphorous) because of runoff from the developed areas.

Saline environments tend to hinder agricultural production by lowering crop yields, often quite substantially. The traditional response to the threat of salinity-induced crop yield reductions is to apply water in excess of plant requirements so as to leach the salts out of the root zone. (Letey and Dinar, 1986).

The Effect of Salt on Radish Seed Growth along the Nelson River in Ensi county, Indiana.

In North America, sodic soils are mostly found in the northern Great Plains of the United States. Sodic soils develops on glacial deposits and till of saline shales (Heck and Mermut, 1992). The presence of a fluctuating water table, landscape position, topography, parent material permeability elevate the sodicity on glacial deposits (Wilding et al., 1963; Lewis and drew, 1973; Munn and Boehm, 1983; Seelig et al., 190; Richardson et al, 1992). The total area of North Dakota in the United States is about 18.4 million hectares and of these 1.9 million hectare area are considered as sodic and distributed across several parent materials (Web Soil Survey, 2013). Sodic soils are characterized by high sodium (Na) concentration in cation exchange complex. Which is about greater than 15% and defined as the soil with high sodium as compared to calcium and magnesium (Salcon, 1997, Soil Taxonomy, 1999). Sodic soil is one of the problematic soils which weaken the soil structure of the soils (Rengasamy and walters, 1994). So it is important to study these soil in detail by physical, chemical and micro morphological method and in relation to environment.

Farmers have taken the initiative and pursuing innovative management and treatment techniques and adapting by studying salt-tolerant crops. The cities are also educating residents about their role in the problem and what they can do to reduce the amount of salt they contribute to the water. As the population grows, it will always be a pending thought if the new residents will worsen the problem or help create a solution to it. The Central Valley Water Board and others are working

(Unknown, 2016) Each plant has its own tolerance levels towards salt. Salt water can also have a negative impact on plant growth if too much salt is absorbed by the plant. At lower salinity levels, the effects are not always apparent, but they still exist. Salt reduces a plant's ability to absorb water and it interferes with the nutrients availability in soils. It can disrupt plant nutrition, growth, flower quality and quantity, stem length, leaf health. (Henson.J, 2012) When salt is dissolved in water, the sodium and chloride ions separate and can harm plants. Chloride ions are absorbed through the roots and then transported to the leaves, to which it is accumulated there, to toxic levels. Toxic levels are what cause the characteristic marginal leaf scorch. (University of Vermont Extension, unknown) If plants are in an environment with more salt then the optimum range they have they will

Due to chloride’s density, the salt settles sinks and settles into the bottom of a waterbody. This chemical is toxic to aquatic life and can affect the taste of drinking water. Additionally, sodium also has negative effects, “altering the soil by replacing and releasing nutrients such as calcium magnesium, and potassium into the groundwater and the surface water.” This can also be harmful to aquatic life as the increase in nutrients will affect water’s ability to get rid of acid deposition. The addition of sodium in drinking water may be harmful to humans who follow a salt-restive diet. Additives to road salt, such as ferrocyanide, also have an impact on the environment and health of organisms that associate themselves with the contaminated

Salinity is the content and movement of dissolved salt in both land and water, and has a large impact on the landscape around it. Normally, deep roots soak up most of the water before it gets to the salt contained in the groundwater below the plant root area, but due to inefficient land use, irrigation, vegetation clearance and industrialised land, it has become easier for the salt to get to the top of the soil. This can effect agricultural production, the quality of the water, and can cause soil erosion. The salt from salinity can come from many different things including erosion of rocks, and rain adding salt over thousands of years (Nccma.vic.gov.au). Salinity is becoming a major problem in some parts of Australia including Western Australia,

The comprehension of the distribution of coastal vegetation depending on their salinity tolerance is very significant to the understanding of coastal ecological modeling. Coastal ecological modeling depends largely on the interplay of salinity and the formation, productivity and perishability of coastal plants to infer or predict any coastal change. Plants that sustain in a highly saline environment are termed as halophytes, including mangroves, which tolerate salinity but perhaps do not require salt to perform their physiological activities. Mangroves are an important type of marine halophytes, which are influenced by salinity throughout their lives but manage to thrive in spite of difficulties. There are two types of halophytes: facultative halophytes and obligate halophytes. Facultative halophytes can sustain in fresh water but grow rapidly with the increase in salinity up to an optimum level. On the other hand, obligate halophyte cannot stand fresh water and have optimal growth in similar or more than the salinity range of facultative halophytes. The general consensus among scientists on mangrove categorization is that mangroves are facultative halophytes, as the distinction depends on the ability of mangroves to survive in fresh water. In the review article “On the halophytic nature of mangroves”, Krauss and Ball (2013) contended that mangroves do not need salt for survival and hence are truly facultative halophytes.

The plants that grow in saline soils have diverse ionic compositions and a range in concentrations of dissolved salts (Volkmar et al., 1998). These concentrations fluctuate because of changes in water source, drainage, evapo-transpiration, and solute availability (Volkmar et al., 1998). Due to these varying conditions, plant growth depends on a supply of inorganic nutrients, and this level of nutrients varies in time and space (Maathius and Amtmann, 1999). Either extreme condition concerning nutrients results in deficiency or toxicity in plants, and this is demonstrated by salt tolerance (Maathius and Amtmann, 1999). These conditions vary according to the plant species and growth conditions. Little is known about the genetic basis for diversity of salt tolerance in plants, and this could be partly explained through the definitions given for salinity.