Soil Degradation

Salinity Impacts on Lower Murray Horticulture - Final Report

The project was developed to test the hypothesis: ‘a depressed leaching efficiency (LE) in the Lower Murray irrigation districts raises the root zone salinity and, improved water use efficiency (WUE) has an upper limit determined by that field’s LE and its variance’. The specific objectives were to: Determine/update the salinity relationships for irrigated horticulture along the Lower (more)...

Monitoring Wind Erosion in Australia

This document describes a roadside survey methodology to monitor wind erosion (and sheet/rill water erosion) risk as a surrogate indicator of long-term soil loss in South Australia. Wind erosion is a major degradation issue in the cropping districts of the State and is an ever-present hazard in most years because of extensive areas of sandy textured soils and variable rainfall. Much effort has been expended by State and National governments over the years to reduce the problem, but little data has been (more)...

Monitoring soil condition across Australia

This report identifies a range of issues related to the local and broad scale monitoring of soil condition across Australia. Four priority processes which potentially have a major impact on the welfare of all Australians are wind erosion, water erosion, soil acidification and soil carbon change. These processes are difficult to monitor because either they progress very slowly or occur as irregular catastrophic events. In mid-2006 the National Land & Water (more)...

Soil condition monitoring trial

In mid-2006 the National Land & Water Resources Audit, via the National Coordinating Committee on Soil and Terrain, convened four expert panels to advise on how each indicator might best be monitored both locally for project management and accountability purposes, and at a broader scale for reporting on the condition of our national resource base. Late in 2006 a series of trials was initiated to confirm the recommendations of the expert panels and to explore any (more)...

Monitoring Soil Condition

Water erosion hazard

Water erosion causes losses of soil that far exceed the rates of soil development and the on-site consequences affect agriculture by: decreasing soil volume available for the plant root to exploit selectively removing nutrients and organic matter breaking up paddocks into physically smaller units. Off-site effects relate to the sedimentation of creeks, rivers, estuaries and reservoirs, increased flooding, eutrophication, and the general (more)...

Soil acidification

Soil acidity is a major land degradation issue facing much of Australia. It is important to know if it is being managed appropriately to avoid costly losses in production, negative implications for the environment and possibly restricted access to future markets for our agricultural produce. Different crop species and even different cultivars have a pH range within which they are most comfortable; nutrient deficiencies and toxicity’s appear as the pH moves outside this range. Many (more)...

Soil condition: status of information for reporting against indicators

Three key global challengers are associated with soil and its degradation:

the food crisis - we will need to feed twice as many people from the same area of land by 2050

conflicting land-use trends - land is increasingly being used for purposes othe