Salinity And Its Effects On The World 's Most Serious Environmental Problems

When salinity increases, warning signs appear in the landscapes of the affected areas. These warning signs include things like sick and/or dying trees, declining vegetation, colonisation of tolerant weed-like plants, bare patches where vegetation has died and saline pools in creek beds. These show that the ecosystem is being affected and at a high rate.

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).

Dryland salinity has become a large problem in Australia. As salt start to accumulate near the soil surface, plants find it harder to absorb water and then start to slowly die, as they become dehydrated. 30% loss of field crops can occur, even before the effect of soil salinity is visible.

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,

Table 1 shows that it took .2 ml of salt to change the Soil Salinity of 300 ml of soil from .3 mmhos/cm to 1 mmhos/cm. From 1 mmhos/cm it took .3 ml of NaCl to increase the Soil Salinity to 2 mmhos/cm.From 2 mmhos/cm it took .3 ml of NaCl to increase the Soil Salinity to 3 mmhos/cm. Graph 1 corresponds to Table 1, displaying the increase in Soil Salinity for amount of NaCl added. This data was collected to know how much salt to add for the main part of experiment. The data in Table 1 and Graph 1 was taken without the consideration of significant figures.

Plants are very sensitive to salt, so a forest ecosystem would be very sensitive to a salt contamination. Although all plants have a different level to tolerate salt they all would eventually get affected by the salt contamination. Plants not only get affected by osmosis but they also get affected by levels of salt. A forest ecosystem would slowly have an increase in salt and that would slowly start to have an affect on the plants in the ecosystem. When a forest ecosystem has a sustainable amount of everything it needs it has a sustainable increase in growth. But when something that is not needed or would have a bad affect on the ecosystem is added the growth of the plants will decrease, because of the chemicals in what ever is being added.

Because there is a particular salinity defining brackish water, such salinity is subject to increase due to evaporation and stagnation of water. This

Salinity is the process of salt rising to the surface and killing plants and agriculture. Salt comes up to the surface when there are no trees to absorb rain water so the water level rises which makes salt go to the surface. Salinity has become a rising problem now more than ever because of the increase of land clearing, the rise in salinity degrades the soils condition and makes the soil unsuitable for crop growing. Australia’s agriculture industry uses approximately $48 billion in food production and $32 billion in food exports so salinity has a large impact on the amount of food that can be produced and exported.

One of the pollution type is Salinization. The effect the “salt build-up in soils which kills crops or reduces yields”. GreenFacts: Facts on Health and the Environment reported that the primary source is alkaline soils because of over irrigation. As the Salt expanse

Salinity is the amount of salt that is present in riverbanks or soil and the concentration of the salt in the soil can increase if the water level rises. Salinity is a problem in Australia as there is so much salt present even underground. The rising of water from streams or rivers into the soil can carry salt that the water picked from the depths of the soil to the surface which can kill plants. Salinity can affect the biomes, agriculture, infrastructure and the economy. If the salt kills the crops, then there is no food and the farmer’s won’t have any food to trade to earn money. Animals will lose their homes and will be forced to migrate as the plants and trees in biomes can be damaged. Also Salinity can decrease the water resources. The

Therefore, Western Australia must learn from the past as the predicted spread of secondary salinity is estimated to reach 8.8 million hectares by 2050 (Parliament of Australia, 2004). Therefore this report concludes that solving the salinity crisis can only be achieved by restoring balance to the groundwater table. Based on the evidence provided in this report, rebalancing the groundwater table is achievable by repurposing unproductive farming land by introducing saline agronomy; which includes planting salt tolerant crops such as tall wheat grass, and saltbush, as well as inventive industries that can use saline ground water from pumping (Parliament of Australia,

Over the recent years, freshwaters have decreased dramatically due to water pollution. Therefore, 3% of water is freshwater and 97% is saltwater. As the result of this water pollution can have a meaningful consequence not only to animals and humans but as well as to plants. In addition, it causes an eruption of a current plant growth by harming the earth’s aquatic environment by altering the plant’s surrounding pH level. Acid rain is formed because of the atmospheric sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide which is produced by human-made sources. In fact, with most of the environment freshwater from lakes and rivers, one of the most common aquatic plants are American waterweed the elodea plant. The behavioral function of this plant is to float

The current environmental issue I decided to research was the use of road salt and I read an article from the Minnesota Post titled, “We’re Pouring Millions of Tons of Salt On Roads Each Winter. Here’s Why That’s A Problem.” by Greg Breining. As we enter the winter season in New England, most of the towns and cities are beginning to plow, sand, and salt the roads in order to guarantee upmost safety for New Englanders. The salt being spread is similar to the average table salt, just a coarse version of sodium chloride. However, people seem to disregard where the salt is ending up as it melts away the ice. The United States has been salting their roads since the 1940s, but on average there is 19.8 million tons of salt being dump onto the roads and this is running off into streams, rivers, ponds, and lakes. The high level of chloride is extremely damaging to aquatic life in these bodies of water and, unlike some chemicals, salt will remain in the water and soil for years. Aquatic damages include killing off the plankton population, which would greatly hurt the food chain. There is also the possibility of algae blooms, which would make these bodies of water unswimmable and unlivable for fish.

Salinity, is a measure of the amount of salt dissolved in the water. Usually measured in parts per thousand. It largely depends on the body of water considered. For example, it is typically between 34 and 37 parts per thousand for sea water (1). A dangerous salinity depends on the specific water considered. Brine waters are associated with a 50 ppt salinity. Thus, this salinity is considered dangerous for sea water. Salt in the sea comes from rocks on land. Ground water salinity is quite important as it’s the main source of the water we drink. Its salinity has been raising because the rain that falls on the land contains some dissolved carbon dioxide from the surrounding air (2). Rain water penetrates the rock layers and eventually

Salt stress is a major abiotic stress that leads to a series of changes including plant morphological, physiological, biochemical and molecular changes. Salinity limits the plant growth and profitable crop production worldwide [1, 2]. FAO studies reported that 7% of the arable land affected by salinity [3]. It was found that 0.83 Mha of land at coastal Bangladesh were affected by soil salinity at different degrees [4] which reaches up to 1.06 Mha in 2009 [5].