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Soil Salinity Is a Major Global Issue Owing to Its Adverse Impact on Agricultural Productivity and Sustainability

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Mohammad Zaman · Shabbir A. Shahid Lee Heng Guideline for Salinity Assessment, Mitigation and Adaptation Using Nuclear and Related Techniques Guideline for Salinity Assessment, Mitigation and Adaptation Using Nuclear and Related Techniques Mohammad Zaman • Shabbir A. Shahid Lee Heng Guideline for Salinity Assessment, Mitigation and Adaptation Using Nuclear and Related Techniques Mohammad Zaman Shabbir A. Shahid Soil and Water Management & Crop Senior Salinity Management Expert, Freelancer Nutrition Section, Joint FAO/IAEA Dubai, UAE Division of Nuclear Techniques in Food and Agriculture, Department of Nuclear Sciences & Applications International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Vienna, Austria Lee Heng Soil and Water Management & Crop Nutrition Section, Joint FAO/IAEA Division of Nuclear Techniques in Food and Agriculture, Department of Nuclear Sciences & Applications International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Vienna, Austria IGOIGO ISBN 978-3-319-96189-7 ISBN 978-3-319-96190-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96190-3 Library of Congress Control Number: 2018949626 © International Atomic Energy Agency 2018. This book is an open access publication. Open Access provided with a grant from the International Atomic Energy Agency. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors/editors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the IAEA, its Board of Directors, or the countries they represent. Open Access This book is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 IGO license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/igo/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the IAEA, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made. The use of the IAEA’s name for any purpose other than for attribution, and the use of the IAEA’s logo, shall be subject to a separate written license agreement between the IAEA and the user and is not authorized as part of this CC-IGO license. Note that the link provided above includes additional terms and conditions of the license. The images or other third party material in this book are included in the book’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the book’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Printed on acid-free paper This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Salt-tolerant grass growing under saline condition Foreword Soil salinity is a major global issue owing to its adverse impact on agricultural productivity and sustainability. Salinity problems occur under all climatic conditions and can result from both natural and human-induced actions. Generally speaking, saline soils occur in arid and semi-arid regions where rainfall is insufficient to meet the water requirements of the crops, and leach mineral salts out of the root-zone. The association between humans and salinity has existed for centuries and historical records show that many civilizations have failed due to increases in the salinity of agricultural fields, the most known example being Mesopotamia (now Iraq). Soil salinity undermines the resource base by decreasing soil quality and can occur due to natural causes or from misuse and mismanagement to an extent which jeopardizes the integrity of soil’s self-regulatory capacity. Soil salinity is dynamic and spreading globally in over 100 countries; no conti- nent is completely free from salinity. Soil salinization is projected to increase in future climate change scenarios due to sea level rise and impact on coastal areas, and the rise in temperature that will inevitably lead to increase evaporation and further salinization. There is a long list of countries where salt-induced land degradation occurs. Some well-known regions where salinization is extensively reported include the Aral Sea Basin (Amu-Darya and Syr-Darya River Basins) in Central Asia, the Indo-Gangetic Basin in India, the Indus Basin in Pakistan, the Yellow River Basin in China, the Euphrates Basin in Syria and Iraq, the Murray-Darling Basin in Australia, and the San Joaquin Valley in the United States. The objective of this guideline is to develop protocols for salinity and sodicity assessment, and the role of isotopic nuclear and related techniques to develop mitigation and adaptation measures to use saline and sodic soils sustainably. We have focused on important issues related to salinity and sodicity and have described these in an easy and user friendly way. The information has been compiled from latest published literature and from authors’ publications specific to the subject matter. This guideline is an outcome of a joint publication between the Soil and Water Management & Crop Nutrition Section, Joint FAO/IAEA Division of Nuclear Techniques in Food and Agriculture, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), vii viii Foreword Vienna, Austria, and a freelance senior salinity management expert based in the United Arab Emirates. We hope that this guideline will be an excellent contribution to the science and enhance the knowledge of those seeking information to assess and diagnose salinity problem at the landscape and farm levels and the role of nuclear and isotopic techniques in developing strategies to use these marginal soils sustainably. Soil and Water Management & Crop Mohammad Zaman Nutrition Section, Joint FAO/IAEA Division of Nuclear Techniques in Food and Agriculture Department of Nuclear Sciences & Applications International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Vienna, Austria Senior Salinity Management Expert, Shabbir A. Shahid Freelancer, Dubai, UAE Soil and Water Management & Crop Lee Heng Nutrition Section, Joint FAO/IAEA Division of Nuclear Techniques in Food and Agriculture Department of Nuclear Sciences & Applications International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Vienna, Austria Acknowledgements We are thankful to Prof. Pharis, R.P., Department of Biological Sciences, University of Calgary, Canada, and Dr. Shazia Zaman, University of Canterbury, for their critical review, feedback and editorial comments in the preparation of this book. We also thank Ms. Marlies Zaczek of the Soil and Water Management & Crop Nutrition Section, Joint FAO/IAEA Division, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Vienna, Austria, for her help in formatting this document and Ms. Petra Nabil Salame, PMO of Asia and the Pacific Section 2, Division for Asia and the Pacific Department of Technical Cooperation for her financial support. ix Contents 1 Introduction to Soil Salinity, Sodicity and Diagnostics Techniques ... 1 1 Introduction ........................................ 1 1.1 What Is Soil Salinity? . ....................... 2 2 Causes of Soil Salinity . 8 3 Salinity Development in Soils – A Hypothetical Cycle .......... 9 4 Types of Soil Salinity . 10 4.1 Dryland Soil Salinity ............................. 10 4.2 Secondary Soil Salinity . 10 5 Damage Caused by Soil Salinity .......................... 11 6 Facts About Salinity and How It Affects Plant Growth . ........ 11 7 Visual Indicators of Soil Salinity . 12 8 Field Assessment of Soil Salinity ......................... 12 9 Soil Sodicity and Its Diagnostics . .............. 14 9.1 Visual Indicators of Soil Sodicity . ........... 14 9.2 Field Testing of Soil Sodicity ....................... 15 9.3 Laboratory Assessment of Soil Sodicity ............... 15 10 Sodicity and Soil Structure . 15 10.1 Negative Effects of Surface Sealing . 17 10.2 Positive Effects of Surface Sealing . ........... 17 11 Classification of Salt-Affected Soils ....................... 17 11.1 US Salinity Laboratory Staff Classification . ........ 18 11.2 FAO/UNESCO Classification . 19 12 Socioeconomic Impacts of Salinity . 20 13 Environmental Impacts of Salinity . ....................... 20 14 Soil Salinity Monitoring . ............................. 20 15 Soil Sampling Frequency and Zone ........................ 21 16 Current Approaches of Salinity Diagnostics – Assessment, Mapping and Monitoring ...................................... 22 16.1 Salinity Assessment . 22 16.2 Modern Methods of Soil Salinity Measurement . 24 xi xii Contents 16.3 Use of Remote Sensing (RS) and Geographical Information System (GIS) in Salinity Mapping and Monitoring ........ 32 16.4 Global Use of Remote Sensing in Salinity Mapping and Monitoring . 33 16.5 Geo-Statistics .................................. 34 16.6 Morphological Methods ........................... 36 References ............................................
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